CLEVELAND, OH (LNN) —He asked us to call him only Pip. For twenty-two years, Pip made his living the way his father had before him: twisting balloons into the shapes of dogs, of swords, of hats, for the children of a country that once had balloons to spare. On Thursday, he stood in a soup line that stretched around the block, his greasepaint faded, his red nose in his pocket, and he wept — quietly, so as not to make a scene.

Pip is one of an estimated three hundred thousand balloon-labor workers displaced by the Global Balloon Shortage, a collapse economists trace directly to the founding Balloongate incident and the subsequent monopolization of the world balloon supply by Dollar Tree. The balloon-twisting trade, once a pillar of the American entertainment economy, has been all but erased.

"You can't twist what you don't have," Pip said, seated on an overturned bucket outside the shelter. "I still know the shapes. My hands remember the shapes. There's just nothing to put them into anymore."

The soup kitchen where Pip now takes his meals is one of hundreds that have absorbed the newly unemployed clowns, jugglers, and party entertainers of the balloon economy. Volunteers report that the clowns are, as a group, the most polite guests they have ever served, and the saddest.

"They try to make the other people in line laugh," said the shelter's director, her voice breaking. "Even now. Even with nothing. One of them made a dog out of a rolled-up napkin last week. The whole room just — the whole room lost it. Everybody was crying. It was a napkin."

Pip does not blame Nordstrom. He does not blame the Crying Executive, whom he says he pities. He blames no one. He would only like, someday, to hold a balloon again. "Just to remember," he said. "Just the once."

The line moved forward. Pip put on his red nose, because a child was watching. This is a developing story.