North America's Leading Circus Fan Organization - Founded 1926
		News Events Photos Resources About Us

Search Site   WCS2015 Souvenir Merchandise! Back Issues Conventions External Links AYCO Circus Model Builders Windjammers Circus Music Circus Historical Society FEEDBACK Click HERE to e-mail your comments about our web site

Recollections of a Circus Pastor - Part 8 by The Rev. Don Brewer  Submitted by Editor on   10/17/2004 Last Modified Mud shows in the east, 1963-1973 Part VIII Royson Brothers Circus 1973 (Editor's note: This is the final article of the series.) By the Rev. Don Brewer (don.brewer@buckeye-express.com) Click Here to list entire series All the preceding recollections were based on short term stays with circuses, basically a one to three week vacation. I really wanted to spend at least one extended period with the circus, and got my chance in 1973 . I sent a letter to Dick Lunsford, and he phoned back and said “Come on”. We arrived at “winterquarters” in Douglas, Georgia early in April. It was actually the corner of a field in a farm owned by a friend of Red Lunsford. It was just a place to leave the equipment for the winter, nothing more. “Royson” was a combination of Red’s name, Roy, and son, which was Richard. Red intimated that the term also was an old slang for getting the best of someone. Red’s wife had died a few years before. And who should be the other family on the show? Bob and Yvonne Stevens. We sure were among friends. In addition was Dick’s adopted son, Melvin, and a woman named Ruth who ran the pie car and cooked. Several working men came and went during the season. I was really impressed with the way the show was framed for playing small southern towns with the personnel they had. Red had played the south for many years with wild west type circuses. He had played these little towns many times. He claimed that these towns were so predictable any show that came in, be it circus, wild west , magic, or puppet show, would make with the same amount of money. He had put this show together to be successful using the kind of personnel he had and the way he wanted to run it. First of all, it was booked every other day, three or four days a week. Charlie Christian was the booking agent. The day in between was for moving and getting some of the work done. We caravanned the trucks to the next lot, and once we got there the first item of business was for Dick to find a way to get us electricity and water. Usually we were near some kind of building, and he would promote somebody to let us plug into a socket. Sometimes he just broke into the building and plugged in. With electricity and water taken care of, we rolled out the big top on the ground, leaving it rolled up for the night. That was enough for the off day. The caravan consisted of six show vehicles. Dick led, driving a school bus that was the pie car, with the back door being the ticket booth, and also where concession stuff was stored. The second vehicle was a crew pickup, pulling Dick’s trailer, driven by Dick’s current girl, Dee. I followed, driving the main rig, a school bus that carried all the equipment. The cab was cut immediately behind the driver, and also had an eight foot extension on the back, on which was built the canvas spool. In the center were the seat jacks and stringers, seat boards, poles, stakes, and anything needed for the performance. On the sides were cabinets that held the seat boards. It was a heavy and long rig, a beast to drive. Behind me came Melvin driving the elephant truck, then Red driving the stock truck and pulling the little trailer he lived in. Last was Bobby Stevens, driving a pickup pulling a long trailer which housed performance equipment, the bear, and had a living quarters in the front for Ruth. The stake driver was in the pickup. Yvonne usually followed with the Stevens truck and trailer. Since we had small children, my wife Melody stayed later on the lot and came in when the kids were up and ready. Charlie Christian mailed back a map on how to get to each town from the previous one. It took a bit of knowing to understand it, because no matter which direction we were going in, the map started at the bottom of the page and the destination town was at the top of the page. Before we left we would all look at the map, then Dick would have it with him as he led.. Caravanning rules were that we drove with lights on, turning them off if there was a problem, as a signal to the lead car. Always drive at a speed that you can see the next car in the rear view mirror, and never make a turn until you are sure the following car could see what you were doing. Things usually went well as long as we stuck to those rules. There were times, however, when the map didn’t quite make sense and we ended up in places we didn’t intend. Once we drove for two and a half hours and ended up back where we started. Generally the jumps weren’t too bad. The tent was rolled onto the spool on the back of the seat truck. It was a long thin tent, I think a forty with five twenties, square end. That would make it a six pole top, with twenty foot aluminum centerpoles. The sidepoles were cypress, which they had cut and made themselves from the Okeefinokee. That would give us five performing areas. The first space held my wife’s trapeze rigging. Since the top was a strap top, a guyed out rigging could not be hung from the centerpoles, so I borrowed rigging from Bob Stevens, two fifteen foot poles for which I had to have a cranebar made to hang the trapeze. Since the tent was so narrow and space was needed on the “track” to run the horses during the wild west act I had to run the guywires over the top of the sidewall to stakes and block and tackle outside the tent. The second space was used by Yvonne, and Lou Ann’s ladder was hung on those centerpoles. The third space was used for our balloon act,. the bear act, wild west act, and elephant. The fourth space had the only ringcurb, where Dick did the liberty pony act and Melody and daughters did the magic act. My daughter Dawn’s aerial ladder was hung above this ring. The last space held my 12 foot high aerial balance beam rigging. The long side held the long seat section, but for a good day we could also set seats on the short side on each side of the center performers’ entrance. As you walked into the tent through the performer’s entrance there was a table on the right with the record player and the public address amplifier. Red did most of the announcing, and I did some of it. Dick was unable to do much announcing as he had a serious voice problem caused by getting kicked in the neck while trying to unload a bronc years before. His voice sounded as thought he had a bad case of bronchitis. The lighting was provided by “Chandeliers” consisting of four light bulb clusters in galvanized washtubs on each pole. We advertised shows at four and six. In winterquarters Dick warned me that we would never start on time, as in these towns nobody ever showed up on time. He was exactly right. Most days at four o’clock and at six o’clock the lot was empty. People started showing up about a quarter after, and we usually didn’t start the show until after half past. Nobody ever complained, as everybody knew that’s the way it would be. Consequently there was nothing on the midway – no side show, no pit show. The only thing on the midway was the back end of the pie car, from which Red sold tickets. No marquee, we just tied back the flap in the corner of the tent, and people went in. There wasn’t even a sign that said CIRCUS. Inside the top, in the front end, was the novelty stand, the concessions, and a jewelry stand which Dick provided to give Dee something to do. The performance ran in this approximate order: Liberty Ponies - three ponies worked by Dick Magic act – Melody and the three Brewer daughters Dog act by Yvonne Stevens Trapeze - Melody Wild West Act – Red, Dick, and Melvin Consisted of some whip cracking , rope spinning, and lassoing of horses as they ran by Balloon sculpturing – Don and Melody Brewer Followed by balloon packet pitch “Clown” wardrobe act – a contest using boys from the audience Single pony – Yvonne Aerial ladders – LeeAnn Stevens and Dawn Brewer Bear act – presented by Dick Aerial balance beam – Don Brewer Elephant – Presented by Colonel Red Lunsford Prior to the beginning of the show I did a peanut pitch selling Cromer peanuts, a wellknown name for peanuts in the south. There was no clown act as such, but Dick had a burro for a rube act that he used once in awhile. In all they had the three ponies from the liberty act (which had been four ponies when Dick was on the Earl show), two or three riding horses, the burro, and a miniature mule that was staked out as something for people to see. We played many towns where people had never seen an elephant. The sidewall was just high enough for Boo to get in, but she brushed the edge of the top as she entered. Many times as she entered the top the long side across from the performers’ entrance would completely empty as people ran for the ends; they were afraid of the elephant, and watched the act standing in the ends, the seats totally empty. Red owned the show, Dick was the manager. Red was the boss canvasman. They had a stake driver that was a home made job on two pneumatic tires. The tires were filled with water to add weight. It was an unwieldy thing to push around, but it got the stakes down. I mentioned that the top was rolled on a spool built on the end of the school bus that held everything else. That made for some pretty tricky driving, for it was quite a long rig. For about two weeks the power steering didn’t work, and I finally had to insist that they get it fixed because my chest hurt so bad from trying to turn the wheel. It was quite a trick to get the tent rolled onto the spool. The tent had to be folded longways so that it was about eight feet wide. The end was then tied onto the spool using the sidewall ropes. A hand crank was inserted in each end of the spool, and then the bus had to be backed up while people turned the cranks to roll it up. Of course the top was never in a straight line, so Red had to guide me as I backed the truck. Needless to say, there was a lot of hollering necessary to get it done, but it worked. Red loved to tell yarns. Boy, did he love to tell yarns. He would catch you and start into a story whether you wanted to hear it or not. In winterquarters I had a lot to do to get my stuff ready, and was often frustrated to get caught by Red in a story that as far as I was concerned was a waste of my time. One day I had to get some welding done on Melody’s trapeze cranebar, so I mentioned to him in the morning that I would need directions to the welding shop. “You get your stuff ready and then come and see me”, he said. By the time I had it all ready it was the middle of the afternoon. I told my wife that I wished I didn’t have to get the information from Red because it was getting late and I was afraid he was going to tie me up telling stories. I looked around and found Red sitting in the pie car eating lunch. I thought perhaps if I didn’t go in all the way he wouldn’t detain me, so I jumped onto the first step and said “Hey, Red, I’m ready to take my stuff to the welders, where is it?” He set down his sandwich, turned to me and said, “You come in here and sit down, and I’m going to finish my sandwich. Then I’ll tell you three lies, and then I’ll tell you where the welder is”. So I had to sit and listen. Fortunately when he was done he and Dick piled me into one of their vehicles and took me to get it done. Red was seventy years old. He always wore a cowboy hat, longsleeved grey shirt, and long grey pants. It was hot in the south, and I ran around in a T-shirt and shorts. I asked him one time how he could stand the heat in the clothes he wore. He told me the tale of a day he almost died from the heat. He was called Red, of course, because of his complexion. One very hot day in his youth he collapsed and was taken to the hospital, The doctor told him that he was about 15 minutes away from boiling his blood, as a red complexioned person’s bloodvessels are close to the skin and much more affected by the heat than other people’s. His long pants and long sleeves were necessary to survival. In the early years Red had played these southern towns with a three person wild west act. It was Red, his wife, and another man. They had three pickup trucks and three trailers, and they were the whole show. One day they were setting up the show when a local magistrate showed up to inform him that they had a law on the books that the only kind of show that was allowed to exhibit in the town was an educational show. Red assured him that the show would be educational. So throughout the performance Red would stop and explain to the audience how they trained this animal to do that trick, how they twirled ropes, threw lassoes, etc. After the show the magistrate showed up to say, “Well, you sure pulled one over on me. You had an educational show, you explained it all, and there wasn’t a damn one of us who could do any of it”. There, I just told you one of Red’s yarns. Dick had picked up his father’s penchant for telling tales. Like Red, he would launch into one of his stories at the most inopportune times. Sometimes they were legitimate stories of show business, sometimes they were just old jokes that he had masked and you didn’t know it was a joke until he hit you with the punchline. “One time Carol was driving through (a town) when she heard a siren behind her. She pulled over and the cop came up to the car and said, “Lady, didn’t you see that red light back there?” Carol replied, “Red light? Officer, I didn’t even see the house.” Ta bump. Though I was often frustrated when I got caught by one or the other of them when I considered myself too busy to listen to stories, telling stories was actually one of the most important things I learned that summer. I took Red and Dick’s story telling principles and began to tell stories in my sermons. I have taken workshops on sermon writing and preaching over the years, but learned more about how to make a sermon interesting from Red and Dick than from anyone else. Circus people are not very welcome in a town. Whenever there is a ruckus the local constabulary always takes the towner’s side. So Dick had a very engaging way of fending off possible problems. Everybody was “old buddy”, and instead of getting all huffed up about a situation in which he was being taken advantage of, he would come up with something like, “Old buddy, isn’t there some way we can work this out?” He was really good at fending off problems. That is, when it had to do with something connected to the business. In a bar he would just as soon have a fistfight. Coming from long years of traveling with small shows they had come up with many ways to solve problems. For instance, with few people around a show one of the problems was that towners thought nothing of entering trailers or trucks that had their doors open. Red solved that by having a dog that went with each such vehicle, and the dog was tied in such a way that it guarded the door. And the dog knew what his job was. My first day in winterquarters I went past the ramp of the stock truck, and a little dog came tearing out from underneath and was about to take my leg off. After I moved beyond its reach – I think I made it in one jump- I couldn’t make out whether it was a dog or a monkey. Honestly, it looked like a monkey to me. It was skinny with a long tail and frizzy hair. That dog was amazing. Whenever they would load or unload the animals the dog insisted on standing on the ramp and barking constantly. Somehow it managed to stay away from the feet of those horses. One day I noticed that there was a crowd of folks around the stock truck, and the dog was doing its duty barking ferociously and running around the circle that the rope allowed him. Suddenly the rope broke, and the dog went plunging into the crowd. I ran over there, sure that the dog was going to bite everyone in sight. However, once the dog got free of the rope and among the people, it lost its aggressiveness. Suddenly it was docile, wagged its tail, and walked gingerly among the legs. I guess it was unable to cope with the new environment. Anyway, the dogs did a good job of keeping people away from the equipment Some quips from Dick about the circus business: I put six trucks on the road to sell a box of popcorn The circus is a jealous mistress Someday I’m going to run away from the circus and join the home I’m in the circus because when I was a kid I cut my leg on a stake and it’s been infected ever since. I can’t leave the business because I can’t wait to see what it’s going to do to me tomorrow. I have mentioned Melvin, who Dick always introduced as his adopted son. He intimated that he did have children in several places. He said he got a real shock one day, however. They were playing a southern town. A high school boy had come to watch the set-up, and ended up working the day. I think his name was George. He asked Dick for a job for the summer, and Dick said “Sure, go home and get your stuff.” The boy’s mother brought him back and he introduced her to Dick, then went off to stow his gear. The mother opened her purse and took out a snap shot. “Is this you?” she asked, showing the snapshot to Dick. “Yeah”, he answered, “That’s me about twenty years ago”. “I thought so”, she said. “George is your son”. Once I was remarking about how different it was in the south from what I was accustomed to in the north, especially the part about how nobody came to the show at the advertised time. Dick told the story about playing western towns out on the prairie. He said that you would get up in the morning and look around, and there wouldn’t be a building as far as you could see. You would figure you were going to die out there. An hour before show time you could see dust rising on the horizon. Presently the show would be surrounded by Indians. They would get a ticket and line up at the front door. Forget about making a tip on the side show bally. All they were interested in was the big show. When the doors opened they would walk in and sit down. They never moved, laughed, or applauded. They just sat there. When the show was over the announcer would have to tell the audience that the show was concluded and please exit the way they came in. The audience would get up without a word, leave the tent, and line up at the ticket wagon to purchase a ticket for the next show. One of my perks was the banners. I was to sell, paint, and hang the banners, and make the banner announcement during the show. So every morning I would head for town to sell six foot banners for five bucks. I got two bucks, the show got two bucks, and the committee got one. Let me tell you this northerner had a terrible time understanding the Georgia cracker accents in those backcountry towns. I also had to slow down my own talking speed, because they couldn’t understand me. I could usually sell five or six banners at the beginning of the season. However, in June the 1973 oil embargo hit. My consistent advertisers were the gas stations in these small towns, but suddenly they couldn’t get gas, and they had no reason to advertise. The economy slumped, and nobody would buy banners. About that time Bob Stevens got tired of handling the novelties, so I gave up the banners and became the novelty department. My best seller was the monkey on a string that went for one dollar. Some promoter whose name I never did know bought ten days in South Carolina. He did a lousy job promoting them, and they were real losers. One day while we were setting up there was the usual number of folks standing around gawking. They stayed around until four o’clock, but nobody else showed up and none of the gawkers bought a ticket. So, we didn’t do a four o’clock show, which had happened a couple times before. At six o’clock we were ready for the evening show, and there were no customers. By six thirty the lot was empty, so we just tore it down and put it away without doing a show. In order to get away from the summer heat the show was booked into the North Carolina mountain areas beginning about the middle of July. Probably the height of that part of the tour was three days in Cherokee. We had a wonderful lot right downtown and did good business. These Indians didn’t act like the ones Dick had told me about in the west, and they appreciated our being there One day we had the top about half up and a towner came roaring onto the lot and declared that we better take down that tent because the committee didn’t have permission to use the lot and there was going to be a softball game there that evening. Dick came over to hear the claim, and I asked him if we were going move the tent and his reply was “You never move the tent. If you take it down, you pack it up and leave town. Once you move the tent your help will never trust you again” “Never move” was the rule not only for the tent but for the show in general. However, we broke the rule once and it was a good thing we did. We were playing in Georgia. The lot was behind a school, on the practice field. However, to get there we had to descend a red clay incline that took us down about thirty feet below ground level. It was a Sunday and we were there for a Monday showing. We had gotten all our living quarters set up, but had not rolled out the big top yet. By this time I had been living the outside life long enough that I could smell the weather like a seasoned performer. And we could all smell rain. Dick observed that if we had a good rainstorm there was no way we would be able to get the equipment up that clay incline, and we’d be stuck there for a week. Red said “You don’t move the show”. Dick said “I’m the manager and we’re moving.” So we all set about throwing things together and by the time we were heading up the hill the rain started. We just made it. It was an horrendous storm. Red commended Dick for the decision, because it was obvious that had we not moved we would have been in trouble. That storm was so bad that when we got to the next town the committeeman was tearing his hair out because the lot was flooded and there was no place to set up. That was another neat thing about playing every other day. Since the next day was open, we simply postponed the shows one day. After the show was put to bed each night we all gathered in the pie car for the nightcap. Dick kept the place supplied with beer which he sold to us for 50 cents a can. For whatever working men we might have it would go on their tab. Having alcohol available on the lot is essential, because if your men ever left the lot in search of booze you would never see them again. The end of August found us around Chattanooga, Tennessee. The route from there was to take us back south, with a long jump of over a hundred miles. My wife’s mothering instincts kicked in and she informed me that she loved me honey but the season was over for us and we were heading north to get the kids in school. Dick had a line on a couple in Florida who could take our place, so we said goodbye to the Royson Brothers Circus and headed north, back to an ordinary existence. We left the circus to join the home. Things I learned on the circus: The lot is always on the other side of town. No matter which direction you come into a town from, you have to drive all the way through town to get to the lot. And the next day you have to drive back through the town to get on the road to the next town. Always work toward the truck. If you laid something down always lay it down in the direction of the truck it goes in. This may seem petty, but with dozens of pieces of equipment that had to be picked up and carried you save every step you can. Always park facing off the lot – facing toward the exit. If the lot becomes flooded and the elephant has to pull you off, you don’t want to be facing in the wrong direction. Nobody every quits a circus. If they want to leave they simply don’t show up in the next town. For a working man he gets a trash bag, loads all his gear in it, and announces that he is going downtown to do his laundry. It’s called blowing the show. The first day you are with a show you are an outsider. The next day you are one of the family. Fred Bradna’s comment in his book that the big top creates the community is true. The lot works better when the top is up than on off days when the top is not there to define spaces. Email This Resource   Copyright © 1999-2015 Circus Fans Association of America and Authors. For more information view our  Copyright Policy & Privacy Policy .

Most Viewed Back Issues of The White Tops CFA Future National Convention Schedule CFA Annual National Conventions & Circuses Clowns and Clowning - by Joseph W. Rogers, Ph.D. Educational Resources for Teaching about the Circus Last Viewed Recollections of a Circus Pastor - Part 8 by The Rev. Don Brewer Adam Forepaugh (February 28, 1831-January 20, 1890) Clown Stop Top 13 - Mollie Bailey 2010-11_Report-Membership