Circus Memories

Did you ever read the cover headlines of The National Enquirer while waiting in line at the grocery checkout? I have NEVER forgotten the best one ever which I saw maybe 30 years ago. “Gassy Elephant Blows Trainer Through Tent Wall.” Who needed to read the story? The headline said it all. I could not stop laughing.

It is heartwarming these days to see the many clips and hear the stories of so many rescued elephants and to learn of their great intelligence and emotional lives. These mighty beasts have for centuries been used and often abused as well as heartlessly hunted and killed. I hope that not all performing elephants were brutalized, but that most of their keepers were humane and loving. I have no way of knowing this. But I will say that several truly awesome memories from my past were of the circus, and that without elephants, what is a circus? I can scarcely believe that we never again will see The Greatest Show on Earth as Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey’s last performance was in 2017. (It can be watched on YouTube).

When I was small, I used to watch a TV show that ran in 1956-7 called Circus Boy starring Noah Beery and Micky Dolenz, who a decade later starred in the TV show, The Monkeys. In second grade, before I ever saw a real live circus, I read a story about the wonderment of the circus coming to town in the days when my parents were children. A great parade with all of the animals, horses, dogs, big cats, elephants, camels, and giraffes would march through town with the circus wagons and all the performers decked out in the most amazing sequined and plumed finery. I remember watching an old black and white movie on the TV about a youth who ran away from home and joined the circus only to find that in his absence his mother had died of Typhoid Fever. Of course, I also had watched Disney’s Dumbo. Later I read the book and also saw Disney’s movie, Toby Tyler, and the other great movie starring Betty Hutton, Charlton Heston, and Jimmy Stewart. Even movies and stories about the circus were exciting!

But the first circus I remember attending was with my family in Newport, Rhode Island when I had just completed the third grade. It was July 2, 1961, so it must have been days before we left for California. It was the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus. With three rings it was the largest tent show on the road in the USA. I couldn’t tell which ring to watch at any given moment. It was dazzling and busy with no downtime whatsoever. And there have never been finer musicians than those playing in a circus band. Their double and triple-tonguing circus marches are faster than a Rossini piece. I can’t even hear that fast, much less tongue that fast!

The next time I saw a genuine circus I was a teenager in 1968, three years after we’d moved back to Newport. This time, I went with a carful of my girlfriends, again to Clyde Beatty Cole Brothers. It must have been an off night for some of the performers. The plate spinner just couldn’t keep his act together. It was sad watching him break all of his plates.

I had just commented to my friend, Celia, “What if one of those elephants poops during the performance?” when, of course, one of them did. Then, several of the others followed suit. We hooted and laughed, especially at the end of the performance when they announced they would pay volunteers from the audience to help clean up after the elephants. We did not volunteer.

It was three years later when I had a new opportunity. Mother and Dad had moved to Monroe, Louisiana. Although I was enrolled in college in Virginia, I had to spend the summer down south in their new home. I arrived too late to get a summer job, and so I filled the summer with classes at the local university, where my dad was teaching. The only people I knew there were the Canterburys across the street, a family of six children; four girls followed by two boys. When I heard that the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus was coming to town, I got all excited. M & D had no desire to go with me and I didn’t want to go alone, so they suggested I take one of the Canterbury children with me. I took James, who was 9 or 10, thinking this would be an amazing treat for him.

This was its one hundred and first edition and it was the “Greatest Show on Earth!” No longer performing under the bigtop (tent), this 5-ring show would set up in existing large venues. It happens that the Monroe Civic Center has its own rail spur where the circus train was parked in full view of the visitors. The Center seated 7600 people and it looked to me that nearly every seat was sold.

I had never seen, ever, such massive and glittering pageantry! The parade of performers was spectacular even before they started the acts! And the ACTS! My goodness! Human beings couldn’t possibly DO what those performers were doing, the aerialists, acrobats, jugglers, the trained animals… how many elephants did they have?? Maybe three dozen? I don’t know. It was inconceivable.

I kept elbowing little James and prodding, “Did you SEE that?! That’s unbelievable, incredible!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied. “I saw it last year.”

The miraculous performances may have been lost on him, but they made a deep, deep impression on me!

In my late thirties when I was taking a Photography class in Lynchburg, an assignment was to show up at the old drive-in theater grounds to photograph the raising of the Clyde Beatty Cole Brothers’ bigtop. I was surprised to find that the elephants had a major part in the heavy lifting and pulling to raise that huge canvas. Somewhere I have a big pile of black and white negatives of that morning, and surely some nice prints, too. It was a great experience, and I did take my children to the evening show. We even rode an elephant for about a minute and a half during intermission. But after having seen Ringling Brothers, I was harder to impress, although there is something awesome to be said about the sight, sounds, and smells of the bigtop.

Years later, in the early 2000s, while working as a lobbyist at Virginia’s General Assembly, I was invited to accompany a Delegate and his staff to Ringling at the Richmond Civic Center. The show was still unbelievable, but not quite as elaborate as the one I’d seen in Monroe. It seemed their elephant herd had been halved.

Since then, the elephants have been banned, and who knows what else. The era of the big circus has vanished.

Last year, a tiny family circus came to Urbanna and set up for two days in our town park. Instead of having one ring, it had a single round raised center stage. I could see the sunlight glaring through several holes in the canvas roof. There was no band, only pre-recorded music. There were no animals, only a couple of people in animal costumes. There were a couple of jugglers, an aerialist, two or three clowns and an emcee who kept the audience involved in several pranks. It was cute and exciting for the young children in attendance, but it was like a dim flashlight compared to the flash and dazzle of either of the other circuses I’ve enjoyed.

I am so thankful that I didn’t miss the big circus era. For all the electronics and gadgets that today’s children have, they don’t have any idea of the wonders they will never experience at the circus.