By VIRGIL PETERS
Special to The Gazette
(The year 2000 is the 206th year anniversary of the circus in America)
Early childhood years are years of discovery, and one of my earliest discoveries was the August summer of 1919. I was 8 years of age.
Following are some remembrances I have of my first circus, when life seemed simple and moved at a slower pace than today.
Advance men for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus plastered our town with colorful posters about two weeks prior to show day. Posters were placed in store windows and pasted on sheds, barns, store buildings, walls and fences.
The circus train arrived during the night and was off-loaded the following morning. Our gang was on hand to watch this spectacular event. Circus people with a menagerie of show animals walked to the show grounds. We tagged along like we were special. Circus people erected tents with the help of horses and elephants.
A downtown circus parade preceded the afternoon and evening shows. Trumpeting loudly, a massive bull elephant - swinging his trunk from side to side - led a herd of elephants single file, raising a cloud of dust from brick laid streets.
Glorious, ornately carved caged wagons, painted red, gold-and-cream, were each drawn by four Percheron horses, displaying lions, tigers, panthers and other animals.
Musicians rode on top of the bandwagon, playing lively tunes, which put us in a joyful mood to attend the grand performance in the large, three-ring circus tent.
The steam operated calliope, smoking and blasting loud, forceful, off-key music was at the end of the parade in case it blew up.
Sideshows lined the midway near the big, three-ring circus tent. Ten cents was the admission price to see the bearded lady, spider woman, Baby Betty and the fat lady (who weighed 620 pounds), wolf boy, a two-headed calf and the snake pit.
A tall, thin man in a white chef's tall hat, frying hamburgers under a tent sang the following tune as he worked: "Hamburger, hamburger, hamburger hot. An onion in the middle and a pickle on top makes you go-o-o flipty flop. I'm the hamburger man."
His lard-fried hamburgers cost 10 cents each, or three for a quarter.
Next came the big show.
Men and women wearing red-and-gold colored uniforms and silken gowns performed astounding tricks amid brilliant, colorful surroundings - jugglers, acrobats, clowns, beautiful bareback riders and handsome, skilled aerialists were on high wires.
The audience gasped as the animal trainer, without fear or hesitation, entered the cage, cracked his leather whip with daring and put his lions, tigers and snarling, tail-lashing black leopard through their acts.
With ease and grace, a beautiful woman performed an amazing feat, riding horseback on a pair of snow white horses that galloped at top speed around the ring. Like a coiled spring she left a ground spring board to the back of a horse, executing a series of leaps from horse to ground and ground to horse.
An army of clowns with their painted, smiling and sad faces made us laugh. One of my favorite clowns was Dr. Patchem. He could capture and hold the attention of an entire audience. Other clowns, who faked injury, were patched up by Dr. Patchem, who bound them in yards of gauze so they couldn't move.
The grand finale closed the show by bringing back a high-wire trapeze act. The audience's attention turned upward as male and female performers gracefully bowed. They were called flyers because they actually flew from one swinging bar to another bar or to catch a person swinging on another bar.
They were kings and queens as they did double and triple somersaults. The end came when flyers dove from the high wires into the safety net. Wow! I'd like to have made a leap like that.
The circus acts ended. I walked home with my parents happy, and with hope and great expectations that next summer another circus would come to our town.