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Recollections of a Circus Pastor - Part 1 by The Rev. Don Brewer  Submitted by Member on   5/4/2004 Last Modified RECOLLECTIONS OF A CIRCUS PASTOR Mud shows in the east, 1963-1974 by The Rev. Don Brewer (don.brewer@buckeye-express.com) Click Here to list entire series In 1964 I was a member of the Terrell Jacobs Ring (Pittsburgh area) of the Circus Model Builders. The ring was to host the national convention in Greensburg, Pennsylvania that year. We had booked in the Hoxie Brothers Circus for the main event. The previous year I had begun my ministry in a small town of 650 people, Smithton, PA. It was a nice quiet little town on the banks of the Youghiogheny River south of Pittsburgh and about fifteen miles from Greensburg. As far as I could determine it had been quite awhile since a circus had played that town. Hoxie had been in a nearby town, West Newton, the year before, and I had made my acquaintance with Hoxie and Betty Tucker at that time. In thinking about the upcoming convention that winter, I decided that I would pursue the possibility of bringing the Hoxie show to Smithton while they were in the area. I was a member of the local fire department, and they would be the logical organization to sponsor it. The fire chief owned a meat market/grocery store in town, so I walked down to the store to talk to him. He was a little busy when I walked in, so I waited for him to get free. While I was waiting another fire department member walked in, and the fire chief said to him, “Hey, since you got nothing to do, go around town and put these in windows for me.” He laid on the counter a stack of circus posters. They were unlike any circus posters I had ever seen, different from the standard ones used at the time printed by the Enquirer Company of Cincinnati. They were about the size of a window card, but they were slick white paper with all the printing in red. In the center was a small picture of a clown, and they proclaimed the coming of the ROBERT G. EARL CIRCUS to our town on May 22, sponsored by the fire department. Their arrival would start a friendship with Bob and Doris Earl that lasted for many years. But before I get into that, perhaps I had better explain how it was that I got involved in the circus in the first place. At age eight I received a magic set for Christmas. I got involved in doing magic, and this gave me an interest in show business. I was particularly interested in outdoor show business, especially the circus. I suppose I was about ten when my uncle took me to see the Cole Brothers Circus, playing on the lot that later became the Miracle Mile Shopping Center in Monroeville, PA. In addition to that I have lots of memories of circuses in my childhood, so there must have been quite a few shows playing Western Pennsylvania in the years following World War II. I hit every one I could, and when there was no circus in the area I hung around whatever carnival was playing near us. As I watched circus performances, I quickly picked up that circus performers all did more than one act, and I was particularly attentive to picking out family relationships between the folks in various acts. Thus began my interest in the people of the circus and the life they live. In the spring of 1956 I was two months from graduating high school and I “played hookey” for the first time. Christiani Brothers Circus was playing my town of Decatur, Indiana. I was up at 4:30 in the morning, and rode my bike to the city park, arriving by 5:00. The trucks were parked along the drive, and all was quiet in the misty morning. No one was stirring. I went from truck to truck, speculating on what wonders were inside. Occasionally an animal would let out a soft grunt, heightening my anticipation of wake up time. About 5:30 I heard an alarm go off in one of the trucks, and a man eventually came out to take care of the first need of the day. Eventually I met him. His name was Lee, and he introduced himself as the steward. He set about setting up the cook tent, and I helped. When he cooked the breakfast, I had my first taste of a circus meal. Later I accompanied him to town and helped buy the groceries needed for the day. I spent all day working around the cookhouse, and meeting several of the circus personnel, or having them pointed out to me. In addition to the Christiani brothers I remember a dwarf clown named Bagangi, and a young man named Ron Hennon who was clowning but later became quite a juggler in the business. It’s a good thing I was close to graduating or I might have run away with the circus. My contact with circuses was nil for the days I went to college and started seminary, although one summer I spent several weeks working with a carnival side show. My last year in seminary a pastor from New York came to the school to talk about his ministry to jazz musicians in New York, and encouraged us to think about ministries to specialized groups. That got me to thinking about outdoor show business again. I felt I knew quite a bit about outdoor show business people, and I would like to pursue a ministry to them. I would only have my vacations to travel with them, however, meaning a week or two a year. A friend who was a CMB member wrote to several circus owners for me, asking if they would be willing to invite me to travel with their show. I was willing to be a clown, as I had done some clowning with magic in my high school days. Roger Barnes answered with an invitation, writing, “So he’s a Lutheran pastor and he wants to be a clown, huh? Well, I guess that fits, because clowns are interested in happiness in this life and pastors are interested in happiness in the life to come”. My wife Melody and I had a chance to get in a little practice with the clowning bit. Christiani Wallace came to Springfield, Ohio where I was finishing up my seminary education. We arranged to guest clown with them. It was quite an introduction to the business. The clown dressing top was also the bally girls dressing top, and the curtain between was only four feet high. The four male clowns showed us how to put on make-up and allowed us to stand around in their acts. We also got to do the walk-around. One of the clowns who’s name was “Cleo” talked about an act they were working on that they called “Serpentina”. The clowns would dress as harem girls and dance around a basket that would have a fake snake which would rise out of the basket by means of a wire suspended from the rigging. His description was “It won’t be funny, but it sure will be pretty.” Through that experience I learned that the clowns had an orientation that I was not aware of. The next week we also did a day with the clowns on the Al G Kelly and Miller Brothers Circus. Kelly Miller was the only show doing a daily parade, and we were able to ride in one of the parade floats. When I was ready in June 1963 to travel with a circus, the Barnes show was nowhere near me, so I arranged to hook up with the Von Brothers Circus. My wife and I drove our Volkswagen beatle, pulling a pop-up trailer, to Bainbridge, NY. The owner of the show was Henry Vonderheid. Henry ran the show, and his parents, “Mom” and “Pop” Vonderheid to everyone, worked in concessions and novelties. When I arrived on the lot and met Henry, reminding him that he had answered a letter months before, he really didn’t recall it but allowed that it was okay for us to clown and we were welcome to the cookhouse meals. Then he asked me what I did. I told him that I am a Lutheran pastor, and in a loud voice he hollered, “Holy hell, Pop, come over here. I want you to meet somebody”. Turned out that the Vonderheid’s were Lutheran, and they were sure pleased to have a pastor on the show. The show traveled on maybe a dozen trucks. Henry always showed up at the Mills Brothers last date and arrange to buy whatever canvas the Mills boys would be willing to sell him. Not knowing what kind of situation we would be working in, my wife and I had put together a couple of stock clown routines, the toothache gag, a dumb camera act, and levitation. I was in white face and she was in tramp. There were two clowns on the show, George Matthews and another. George was quite concerned about our being there, querying me as to what arrangements I had made, as he was concerned that Vonderheid was going to fire him. We assured him that we were just temporary. I don’t know just what the other two clowns were doing before our arrival, but Vonderheid instructed them that while we were there all clowns would work in our acts. George complained that every now and then another guest clown would show up, and he didn’t like him. After we had been there a couple days the guest clown did show up. He was a policeman from Albany, NY named Joe Myers. “Uncle Joe” became good friends with our family in the years to come. The reason George didn’t like Joe was they did an act with a “rocket” that didn’t go off. In the process George would sit down on a milk crate, and a clown would throw a lit firecracker into the crate. Joe always insisted he wanted to do this part, but he substituted a cherry bomb, even when George asked him not to. According to George, the cherry bomb burned his bottom through the slats of the milk crate, and he would be furious whenever Joe did it. I worked with Joe in later years on other shows, and he was always a great guy. In his waning years he wrote me about living with his wife and watching her deteriorate with Alzheimers disease, a devastating way to end your years together. This show had quite a bit of livestock belonging to some partners that Vonderheid had. For the most part the livestock did not perform in the show, but were simply staked around the lot. The elephant was a young one named “Stormy”, a name that matched her temperament. She was nasty. One morning I had half a bucket of water left, and I figured there was no sense in wasting it, as water is often a precious commodity around a circus lot. Stormy was staked nearby, so I went over and set the bucket down within her reach, and walked away. A short time later I looked over and Stormy was standing on my crushed bucket. I had seen the handlers doing “trunk up” with her, so I went over and gave her the truck up sign. She lifted her truck, and with a cane I snagged the bail of the bucket and moved back out of reach. She swung her trunk at me and came within inches of connecting with my head. One night we were playing afairgrounds. The show had been put away and we were getting ready for bed. The elephant handler knocked on the door and asked if I had seen the elephant walk by – she was loose. I told him I hadn’t, but I would help him look for her. I stepped out into the darkness – and I mean darkness. There were hardly any lights at all. As I walked along I couldn’t help but be concerned about what I was doing. Did I really want to encounter this elephant? You can’t imagine how many things look like an elephant in the dark. What would I do if I found her? Throw her over my shoulder and carry her home, as the shepherd did in the bible story? Fortunately, it was the handler that found her and I could go back to my trailer . That was the first of several encounters with runaway animals I was to have in the years to come. One day the animal truck didn’t show up. It had been taken in for repair, and the garage botched up the job and the truck had to stay for another day. We put two shows on without any animals, and let me tell you it was a pretty weak show. The only animal was my poodle that walked around with us in what passed for the spec. On my third day Henry asked me for advice. He pointed to the trailer that contained his hippopotamus, a pit show. It had a platform that went along the side, with stairs for customers to stand on to look inside. He said that his problem was that when the trailer was parked downhill from the midway people were high enough that they could see over the side of the truck and see the hippo, and they would not buy a ticked. He asked if I could think of a way to solve the problem. I told him that all he had to do was set the steps on either end of the platform, and put an eighteen inch bally cloth on the poles that held the platform roof, and no one would see the hippo from outside. He took off his hat and threw it on the ground, said a four letter word, and said “I’ve been in show business all my life, and you come on the show for two days, and you can solve a problem I’ve been working on for weeks”. I don’t remember too much about the performance of that show. They had a family of Mexicans who did the usual juggling and risley, and a four-girl iron jaw with butterfly costumes. Herb Lindemann did his perch act with his son. We joined the show intending to make two weeks of it, but it wasn’t to be. Vonderheid’s partners were a family at war with itself. There were several fistfights among them. Vonderheid did not have a booking agent, and after I was there a couple days Henry informed me that he had no bookings for most of the next week, and that the show was collapsing of its own weight. Sure enough the next Monday was the last day, and the show closed, leaving us in Burlington, Vermont. After a stay in a church camp in the Catskills, we headed home from our first stint of traveling with the circus. Later years would see us on Robert Earl, Hoxie, Boas Bros., Circus Kirk, Wharton, and Royson, all of which I will tell you about in subsequent articles. 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