Employed 17 part 1 Home sweet circe entirus

lt was after dark when we arrived at our next stop for the Great American  Circus. The four acre was empty when we arrived,  but totally clean and ready to welcome our town on wheels.  We yawned, smiled and set out for the spot we had rented for the spot we had rented for the nite  about twenty miles north of Fort Collins, Colorado. About half-way to our overnite spot it began to rain. lt  was still raining, when we woke in the morning, but heavier. The circus trucks trailers and employee cars ha arrived and parked in their designated spaces , before the rain started. lt was daylite before anyone with the circus stirred. By then, the rain was very heavy.All of the circus vehicles were sunk to the axels  None were able to drag themselves out of the knee-deep muck, let alone itself and one other. 
Any circus worth it's salt will have at least one elephant. The Great American had three, the oldest, a female named Babu Sue. She was very young when she came to stay with the  GA, but she was full-grown then and stood about nine feet tall. As l watched from the sidelines, eight  circus hands quickly fashioned a harness for Sue using rope and leather strap. She was then backed into the front of a 30 foot Winnebago attached to a 20 foot utility trailer. Somebody shouted "Go Sue! She lowered her head to near the ground, pushed hard against the deep mud. Once she broke it loose, she virtuly flew from the muddy field to the surrounding, paved surface. She catches her breath and on her own,returns to the rope in all the mud. Before anybody thought to put the two younger elephants to help Sue, she had already finished the task. l'll never forget the image of Sue trotting thru deep mud, nearly dancing, dragging car after car after truck thru the deep mud, to the safety of the paved areas nearby.
Much more of Baby Sue, later.
Since there was no place near Fort Collins where a circus could played outdoors, it was presented indoors at the high-school auditorium.
My first assignment with the show was as a photographer. l was given a 16mm movie camera and two still 35mm cameras. A new Big top had been delivered to us at Fort Collins, and Management wanted lotsa pictures. For more than a week
we did nothing but take pictures. We took hundreds, even thousands of stills and way lotsa movies of every aspect of the show. But mostly of the big top,
So new itself  and with all the support buildings  up-graded (at least newly painted)
Not only were my daughters very helpful to me, as always, but they began their regular jobs just as we left Fort Collins. R's job was the biggest in our family:
Beginning when the sideshow opened, she held a three pound coffee can at the entrance and encouraged the crowd to put their quarters within and enter the show. She then led them inside and escorted them thru the several shows that
culmanated
 in her act "The Electric Lady", in which she sits on a seat charged with 150,000 volts, and throws bolts of lightning all over the place and herself. To end her part of the show, she throws lightning at the fire-eater to light his torches. Her act always brought spontaneous applause.
S was virtually in charge of the bounce houses in the midway, directly across  from the sideshow. She was ten years old. l think the management had her figured at about 15. R was 13, then; management probably had her figured at about 18. O, who was then 9 worked with a family of acrobats. Her job was to be thrown and caught over what seemed to me like a long, long way. she had no problem doing it, though. 
The Circus layout is always the same. Each facility is always placed in exactly the same place relative to every other one. You probably did not need to know that since any other plan would be madness. The advance crew finds the Prime Marker on the site (described in contract) and are able to place the entire circus city foundations in an hour or two. That just leaves the rolling stock to be parked on their individual foundations  and the big top erected in it's spot. lt is all (usually) in it's place and ready for the crowd by 10:00 AM.on opening day.

One of the Elephant tenders , who we'll call Rod had at some time past developed a mighty distaste for elephants. One wondered how a guy that hated any particular beast would choose to work with or around it. But for whatever reason,  "Rod" hated elephants, but chose to work with them. One clue might be relevant. While Rod was about three inches short of four feet tall, our elephants were about nine feet tall. l'm told the logic is thus: l am 4 feet tall:l am good   .Elephant is 9 feet tall, it is bad. You would believe  this if you had seen the look on Rod's face when he was "tending" our elephants. (fearsom hatred!
 One day l was watching Rod move Sue down the main circus road on his way to put her away until the next show. When he and his charge were less than fifty   
feet away, Sue extended her trunk and very quickly and wrapped about two to three feet of it around Rod's right ankle. And tightend it up. Rod's  head, (front and center/right, hit the pavement,hard. Sue followed thru and pressed his head against the pavement again, but by then a gang of humen 7 or 8  appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and saved Rod's  butt. Actually, his life. lf she hadn't been stopped there is no way he could have survived.

The sideshow tent was also home to the elephants and it was kind of my office so l spent as much time with them as anyone. l learned that if you  spent considerable time with them and you were good to them, they would like you a lot. Whenever l visited them or just past thru the place they would up a small ruckas in my honor. And l was not alone. So far as l know, everybody, save for Rod and one or two others loved all of the circus animals and most of them loved the elephants most.

My job barking the sideshow was actually the smaller of my two main jobs. The other was what they call "Town Man". He is the guy whose main job takes little time to go to town to get nine one thousand watt light bulbs, rolls of electric wiring , rope , paint , a hundred gallons of anti-freeze, rope, paint. That's just a few that l remember. at the time it seemed like a huge job. l was barking the sideshow as the first step in training to become the next ringmaster of the Great American. The then-ringmaster had not yet given his notice, but told me that he expected to leave it to me within the then current year. So, since l wanted the top job in the circus and the sideshow was the way to get there, it became my place. Also l loved visiting the elephants. The time l spent with them was amazing. l was a cigzr-smoker at that time . At my first meeting alone with the elephants. l was holding a lit cigar as l approached Sue. She showed instant interest in the smoke. l moved the smoky end toward her and she took the cigar
and held it by the ends of her trunk. Then she rubbed the hot end against one of her front knees. The hot coal on the end of the cigar hit the floor. She then held
the cigar by it'sintake end while, a bite at a time, she ate the entire cigar. Two fresh ones , from which l removed the packaging, and dropped the cigars on the floor were instantly  consumed .

Employed 16 Part 6 East Coast Bound

We took about four and a half days to reach Washington D. C. and we arrived  there on a Tuesday in mid-morning. We decided to do some of the  touristing before we started our work and the first place visited was the
 National Gallery of Art. Actual acres of paintings, sculptures and jewels of many kinds. Later, that day We signed the D.C. part of the National Parks Police and made an appointment with the Silver Spring , Maryland Police Department for the next day. Another sale there  and yet another  one in Alexandria, Virginia.
Baltimore and Glen Burnie both said "no".

 l had always had good visits, and fun times in New York. l expected it to be good to us, for the Circus. Altogether, we pitched the circus in New York eight times, over two weeks and closed only one, the little town of Freeport on Long Island.

l was beginning to wonder just how great a salesman l am  (or not) The boss provided plenty of back-up. And moved us through Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,  Arkansas and Missouri with some successes.

As we moved North, into the upper parts of the Mid-West, we signed some good
 towns like Little Rock, Memphis, S pringfield, Kansas City,De Moines Minneapolis and St.Paul
and Duluth. l met with a Sherriff who had brought a couple of his sons who kept company with my daughters while he and l discussed how his organization

would make thousands of dollars by sponsoring our one-day event. My girls came away from their meeting with another kind of success, an ounce of cannabis, as good as we had had, since California, and priced lower than  what we had paid for something comparable. We traveled in a truck that had been fitted with a small trailer. lt was very well constructed, both the truck, which got 17 miles to a gallon of gas; and the trailer,which was tightly insulated and fitted
with 8" foam rubber mattresses.

After a few months of calling on circus prospects, George called me one day and asked if my girls and l would like to travel with the circus. We would all have our own jobs;Paula would be the Side Show greeter;Sandy would be the Bounce 
and Big Top cashiers. l would be Side-show barker and Town-Man. l guess the  girl's jobs explain themselves, as does my barking the side-show. And "Town  
Man" is the guy that goes after light bulbs, tire repair and the like. The girls and l thought it would be much better than writing sponsor contracts and we jumped on it.

Oh, one last thing. My three girls and one  more ride and walk on the elephants
during their performance. 










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