All David Simmons needs is a chuckle, a smile even, to set the hook and reel people back to his booth with more stinging insults — the weight of a man’s date, or the cheap finish of a woman’s fake gold hoop earrings.

Mr. Simmons, who is 33 and known as Patches, is a dunk-tank clown. He makes a living by shouting insults at passers-by at America’s small-town fairgrounds.

He is an anachronism in a wet suit and waterproof makeup, a gravelly voice with a microphone roasting people hard while they’re in his sightlines. His is a role that a more sensitive and inclusive world is now sweeping into the dustbin, not long after we did away with gawking at the bearded lady and two-headed boy.

Patti and Millie, his barkers, offer up revenge to the insulted: $2 for three baseballs and a chance to “drown the clown.” The game is simple, and as skills based as it gets for notoriously grifty carnival games. If you hit a tea-plate-size target with a ball, a lever beneath Mr. Simmons’s perch disengages, dropping his hulking frame into 150 gallons of lukewarm water.