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Recollections of a Circus Pastor - Part 2 by The Rev. Don Brewer 

Submitted by Member on   5/7/2004
Last Modified

RECOLLECTIONS OF A CIRCUS PASTOR
Mud shows in the east 1963-1973
Part II The Robert G. Earl Circus 1964

By the Rev. Don Brewer (don.brewer@buckeye-express.com)

Click Here to list entire series

In the first book, O Circophilis, I talked about the fact that I have a lot of recollections of circuses in Western Pennsylvania after WWII, and my interest in show business was furthered by attending them. Recollections do not always come to the mind in proper order, and I have since remembered a very important element in my circus interest. When I was in the sixth grade our class had a gift exchange for Christmas. I was very disappointed when I opened my gift and it was a balsa model airplane kit. I was not at the time the least bit interested in model airplane building. But the boy behind me received a gift that caught my attention. It was a book titled CIRCUS DAN. And he was not the least interested in reading a book, especially not one about circus. Providence provides – we exchanged gifts, and both went home happy. The book was my first introduction to the life and people of the circus, and I read it many times. In fact, the day after school was out each spring my first activity was to sit down and read that book. I did nothing else until I was finished.

Then, as I said, my interest in circus was shelved as I went through college and started seminary. The summer before my last year in seminary I spent working in a church in Cincinnati. I picked up the paper one morning to see an article about a miniature circus playing in town. What’s a miniature circus? It sounded like it was a model. I went to the shopping center where it was “playing”. Wow! What a great idea. I went back home and brought my wife Melody to see it. It was the John Zweifel show, and a few days later I was in a doctor’s waiting room, picked up a Life magazine, and found a three page article about the Taggart miniature circus. I have to admit that I stealthily tore those pages out of the magazine and took them with me. I was so excited about starting a miniature circus that my wife went out and bought me a set of Exacto knives. With a supply of balsa wood, I became a circus model builder, sure that I was into something few other people in the world were doing.

I really enjoyed making circus wagons, but there was a problem. Four problems, actually. Wheels. How can you make wagon wheels? When I got back to Springfield, Ohio to start my last year in seminary, about the first thing I did was to go to a local hobby shop. I told the man at the counter that I was starting into circus modeling and asked if he knew where I could get wagon wheels. Hi answer was, “No, I don’t know where the circus modelers get their wheels” “Circus modelers? What circus modelers? Do you know of people who model circuses?” “Sure”, he said, “There are several guys here in town who model circuses”. Well, I was just a little disappointed. Here I thought I was into something that nobody else was doing. I thought it was just Zweifel, Taggart, and me. On the other hand it was exciting to know that there were others whose brains I could pick. The hobby store man gave me the name of Dick Schillhahn, who was kind enough when I phoned him to allow me to invite myself to his house. It began a long friendship, and it was Dick who wrote the letters introducing me to circus owners who were willing to allow me to travel with them.

Returning home from the Von show debacle in June of 1963, I realized I had to make some changes. If I was to gain enough respect from circus folks to be able to be a pastor to them, I wasn’t going to do it as a clown. There just is not that much respect for clowns among the circus fraternity. And even the show clowns do not appreciate the guest clowns very much. Besides, I frankly wasn’t a very good clown, although my wife Melody really got into her role as a tramp clown and I thought she was very funny.

Just before leaving for the Von show we had bought a black standard poodle from a pair of show folks who lived near us. They were jugglers who had a chimp and a trained dog act. I decided to have a dog act, starting with our one poodle, Tony. Now this was one smart dog. I didn’t actually train her. She showed me what she could do and I worked it into an act. Over the winter we had her bred, and kept one of the pups. By the time spring came, we had a two dog act, Tony doing the all the tricks and Stacy, being only a pup, rode around in the baby carriage pushed by her mother. This act debuted at the Circus Model Builders convention in 1964 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania on the Hoxie show. It was a pretty standard act with the exception of the finale. Tony would climb to the top of a five foot ladder, and I would throw juggling hoops to her from twelve feet away. She caught them over her neck. She almost never missed. I do not know of anyone who has trained a dog to do this trick.

Of course every circus family does two acts at least, so we came up with another one. At that time a number of shows were using magicians as center ring acts. I recall, for instance, that the King show had one at that time, and the Beatty show featured Ferry Forst, who had identical twin daughters that made transpositions easy. Hoxie had a magician named Phil Chandler who featured the buzz saw illusion. On the Mills show was a magician and his family from France. There was a bit of a problem with this guy. He wanted to be the whole show. He came to the US with an enormous amount of equipment, most of which they made him leave in winter quarters. They had to constantly tell him to shorten the act, which we would do for a few days, then start sneaking more stuff in. The show had contracted with him for three years, their usual arrangement, but had to send him back at the end of the first season. He was too much trouble. Magic acts have the advantage of being able to hold the ring longer than any other act, so magic acts were popular.

With my background in magic we put together a magic act that was pretty standard, but I found out that these little mud shows were glad to have any additions that came for free.

If you are still with me, we will go back to the beginning of Part I. The Robert G. Earl Circus was coming to our town. What the heck was the Robert G. Earl Circus? I had been following the business for a couple years, subscribed to the Amusement Business Magazine (Billboard), and knew a fair amount, but I had never heard of this show. Phone calls to friends indicated that nobody else had heard of them either. What was this fly by night, burn up the territory ragbag that was coming to my town? Fact was, it was a brand new show. By doing enough digging I found out where the show would be the day before they played Smithton, and went to check them out.

I arrived on the lot about 1:00 in the afternoon, and it was a pretty sorry site. The big top hung loosely on its poles, no sidewall up Apparently it had not been guyed out yet. Actually, it had been guyed out. It’s center poles were too short to get the center up high enough to be tight, and the sidepoles were only six feet long. It always hung loose, with pockets along the side. The top was a dark gray, allowing no light from the sun to light the inside. If you like the sight of white tops, this was not for you.

I met Bob Earl in the cookhouse. He was not shaved, and was just having breakfast. The show was about three weeks old, and they sure weren’t organized. But, as show people do, everybody pitched in and they got it set up in time to do their four o’clock show. Watching the show, I was amazed. Despite the tacky appearance of the tent, the performance was very good, indeed. Bob and Doris were aerialists, and they did an aerial cradle act and a unison trap act that were excellent, with very flashy costumes. Ground acts pretty much met the same standards. There was no elephant, but the show closed with a very pretty four-pony liberty act by Mr. Frisky and his “miniature white stallions” followed by an American Indian act with glass walking and fire blowing. Impressive.

Bob and Doris, as I say, were aerialists. They did high acts at amusement parks, fairs, and carnivals. THEY HAD NEVER TRAVELED WITH A CIRCUS IN THEIR LIVES.

But they decided to take one out. What a dumb thing to do. Everybody knows that if you have never been in the business you can’t make a success of it. As it turned out, with some time out for restructuring now and then, their show only lasted twenty five years.

I described the big top above. It was a forty with a fifteen and a twenty. The center poles were aluminum quarter poles from the last tent of the Ringling show. The top itself had apparently been a military top – hence its dark color. There was a side show top that was forty by forty with one center pole, and two other tops that were twenty by ten; one they used for a marque and the other for the cookhouse. They bought all four tents for $400. There was no boss canvasman or much in the way of laborers. Everybody just sort of pitched in to help get the stuff up.

The rolling stock consisted of a twenty foot moving van that carried the seats, the school bus that was the cookhouse, a bread truck that contained the generator, and pulled a large flatbed that held the canvas, poles, stakes and chains. Bob’s brother Gene ran the concession wagon which belonged to him. All the rolling stock had been painted by Ringling clown Paul Jung, who was later murdered in his hotel room during the New York City date. The decorations were mostly clown pictures and painted scrollwork.

After the evening show that day I took a bunch of arrows and a staple gun and arrowed them into Smithton, giving a little rest to the juggler, who usually got up early to put up the arrows. They had a pretty good day in Smithton, and I received an invitation to join them later in the summer during my vacation.

By the time we joined them in July in New York there had been personnel changes. The juggler was gone, as was Mr. Frisky, who was a somewhat contentious person and often objected to the way Bob was running the show. In their place was Gus Lindemann, whom I mistakenly identified in the last article as Herb (again the process of recollecting brings stuff out of my memory bank in improper order), and Dick Lunsford, who had a dog act and a four pony liberty act. Dick came from a family of wildwest show people, and I got to know him and eventually the rest of his family very well.

Music was provided by an organist named Mack. Mack pulled a trailer containing his organ (I think it was a Hammond) and a small living quarters. The trailer was backed into the tent and the rear door opened. Mack had the first electronic rhythm instrument I ever saw, and with the organ and the rhythm he did very well providing circus style music for a small show. He claimed that his trailer had no springs, so he had to drive slowly and carefully. I don’t know if that was true, but he always was the last to get on the lot. I had the impression that it was an excuse to get out of the work. But he was always there at showtime.

The sideshow had a bannerline that had titles on the banners, no pictures, because the picture banners cost too much. Inside were some animals owned by Jack Knolls, who was essentially a snake man, but he had some monkeys and did a lecture on his unique Australian sheep dog, with wool instead of hair. It was actually an unkempt brown standard poodle, whose hair was overgrown and matted so that it actually did look like wool. He lost that act one day while he was off the lot. The women in the show couldn’t stand that dirty dog any longer, so while he was gone they cut the dog’s hair and gave him a bath. Boy, was Jack upset when he got back.

Jack told me a yarn about when he had a snake show. He had a number of snakes in cages, and the feature was a 16 foot python that he was selling for 21 feet. He was playing a still date with a carnival in a small town. They had been there a week, but since they didn’t have a date for the next week they got permission to stay open through the next week. About Wednesday of the second week the big snake died. Now you can’t have a snake show without a big snake, Jack assured me. So he coiled it up in a dark corner of the cage. At night he would pack it in ice to keep it from deteriorating too much. Saturday he dug a hole behind the tent to bury it in when the show closed that evening. A short time before closing a guy walked up to the ticket booth and plunked down his quarter for entry, and then got into a conversation with Jack that sort of went on and on. Jack said to him, “You know, I’m closing shortly, so if you want to see the snakes you’d better do it.” The man Pulled back the sidewall, looked into the big snake cage, and replied, “Man, he sure is big, ain’t he?” Jack agreed that he was big. The man took up his conversation again. Finally, Jack informed him that he had to close, and that if he wanted to see the snakes this was it. The man pulled the sidewall back again, exclaimed, “Man, he sure is dead, ain’t he?” Jack agreed with the man that the snake was, indeed, dead, and the man walked away apparently satisfied. He was the only person in the three days to suspect that the snake was dead. Shortly Jack dumped the snake in the hole, packed up, and went on his way. That’s show business, as they say.

The miracle of the year was that despite the sorry shape of that big top it actually lasted the whole season and the Earls took it all back to winterquarters, which was their ranch style house on Antoinette Boulevard in Sarasota, ending the 1964 season. In the next segment I’ll tell you about their 1965 season, and a bit about the rest of their history.

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