Billy Dunn and his brother, Danny, of Jeffersonville, Ind., inspect Charles Manson’s bus at the Kentucky State Fair

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Aug. 24 – Down the Kentucky State Fair midway, past the torture exhibition, the scandal sheet newspaper headlines announcing “Woman gives birth to frog baby,” and “Boy, 17, gives birth to baby,” we come to Charles Manson’s bus.

You pay your 90 cents, and you can look all day, no transfers necessary.

There’s no missing the bus, or the Manson Family artifacts within. A loudspeaker blares: “See the knife actually used by Susan Atkins who murdered Sharon Tate … make sure to see the ceiling above the bed they (the family) slept in and played in … see the actual clothes wore by the killers…”

Giant pictures of Manson, Sharon Tate and each of the Manson Family accused of murders fly high above the red-and-white striped tent that hides the bus from the nonpaying public.

Four 15-year-old girls from Shively are inside the tent. They are half-afraid that they will see some gore, and half-afraid they won’t. Customers cannot get inside the bus. The girls huddle and peer in a bus window at a stool sitting on an immense bed.

The sign says: “This stool was made for Manson by the family girls. He had it with him much of the time when he lectured the family or directed family orgies.”

The girls move to a picture of a woman holding a baby. The sign says: “Picture of Mary Brunner, first family member, bore Manson’s son on this bed with Family in attendance — Manson bit the umbilical cord in two and tied it with a string from his Spanish guitar — Brunner was later convicted of murder.”

The girls are disappointed in the show. Their fear of seeing some gore has turned to resentment that they didn’t.

“I expected to see some head pinchers or hand prints or something,” one says.

The much-advertised inside roof of the bus is decorated with blue and black satin material with gold tassels. There is no blood. The bed with its gold spread fills the rear half of the old school bus. The front is carpeted.

Pillows are thrown everywhere. Cigarettes, some rolled to resemble marijuana cigarettes, lie on a table. Clothes supposedly worn by Squeaky Fromme and Susan Atkins when they were arrested are on display.

A thin sharp deadly-looking knife, almost a stiletto, supposedly owned by Susan Atkins, is on display. A gold record given to Manson by Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson is on display. The family touch is completed with about six National Geographic Magazines spread across the floor.

A sign says: “The family all slept and played in this before the group became large — virtually all the killers slept and played here.

A big man, age 25, inspects the bus. He said he had seen it in another state and wanted to see it again. He said the exhibit was identical.

“I just like to look at this and other things like Bonnie and Clyde’s car,” he said. “I don’t feel squeamish or nothing.”

“Excuse me, but my wife and children are waiting outside.”

The bus is owned by Chan Stine, 44, and his wife, Vi, 46. She said yesterday that her husband and son-in-law investigated buying the bus early this spring, and couldn’t believe it was still at the California ranch, and still available.

She said they bought the bus for $50 in April from new ranch owners, and paid $400 to have it hauled from the desert. They even tried to negotiate with Manson to get his name on a title, but couldn’t.

What she also said, but what her loudspeakers never said, was that the bus had sat in the desert for eight years, had been partially burned and vandalized, had no windows or wheels, was used for firewood storage, and had been completely redecorated by a former Manson family member. The renovation took three months and $15,000.

She said the Beach Boys’ gold record came from the wife of the ranch owner for $1,500, and the stool for $500 from an old prospector who had stolen it the night the Manson Family was raided.

She wasn’t certain how the clothes and knife were obtained. She said her husband, who knows, was gone.

Mrs. Chan said some of her customers were repulsed by the bus but many were disappointed.

“A lot of them are disappointed unless they get blood,” she said. “Some people are like that. But this is a part of history and you can’t shelter people from that.”

A husband, wife, and two young boys walked the wooden platform in the tent and looked in the bus windows. They spent about five minutes in the tent. One boy carefully read the sign on the birth of the baby.

“Look at that, dad,” he said.

Lt. Martin Capello of the Inyo County (California) Sheriff’s Department, the county where the Manson family lived, said yesterday he saw the bus at the ranch last winter. He said the damage was more than fire. He said it was completely gutted, and someone had apparently blown out one side with dynamite, destroying part of the frame.

He said any clothing taken from the family would have been returned to the family, and not given to promoters.

Two Kentucky State Police troopers also looked at the bus yesterday. They said there hadn’t been any complaints about the exhibit, and that the gold Beach Boys record would indicate at least some of the items inside were valid.

The troopers talked a little about Manson, the book Helter-Skelter and the subsequent television movie.

“I liked the book better,” a trooper said. “It had more detail.”

By BOB HILL