Blog number 122 Oct. 10, 2007
When I was about eight or nine, Bill, John and I (older brother, younger brother, and me) worked as roustabouts for Barnum and Bailey's three ring circus. I am pretty sure that all we did was to pull on ropes along with a bunch of other people - mostly adults, which raised the three huge tents of the circus. This is the same circus where my uncle was tried for killing elephants and found not guilty.
When we finished, we were given tickets to the circus. For some reason Pat (my younger sister) was dropped off to stay with us at this time.
We handed our tickets to the ticket taker and he let Pat in even though she didn't have a ticket. She must have been three or four years old. Notice here that there were four very young children, alone with no supervision, wandering around the grounds of a traveling circus at twilight in a big city.
It was a different time.
We went down the side of the tents, looking at all the animals we had already been looking at all day, and left. The ticket taker said something to us as we left, something about leaving, but it didn't register with any of us. I don't really remember for sure, but using logic, we must have walked home.
When we got home, my mother asked us in surprise, "You didn't stay for the show?" We told her we saw the animals. It was only when I was older that I realized we had missed the trapeze artists, the bareback lady horse rider, the clowns, the lion tamer, the whole damn circus! Worked all day for nothing. Well, not for nothing. I got a story to tell in my old age out of it.
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