Give Me Something to Smile About!

Soon the circus big top will come down for the season. October 18th in Dallas/Fort Worth will be the last of the 2008 performances by the Carson & Barnes Family Circus. Last month when this circus arrived in Florence, Oregon, I sat on the edge of my seat watching the acrobats, spellbound by their athletic skill. I held my breath when a motorcycle moved across a high wire. The animals – from the tiniest poodle to the huge elephant - put a broad smile on my face.

I was so impressed that I wrote to Carson & Barnes. My message was this:

I must comment on the extraordinary acts. I sat in sheer delight as the acts ran in all three rings. My eyes darted around the circus tent because I did not want to miss a thing! This live entertainment exceeded all of my expectations. Your circus performers are truly talented people, skilled athletes.

It’s has been years since I attended the circus. My only excuse is that the kids have grown, but I know now that I have missed many chances to enjoy an evening of very affordable entertainment when I skipped going to the circus. I wish people would turn off the TV, pull the plug on video games, and get out to see some real family entertainment!

You can say, because of one day, I’ve changed to a circus enthusiast. I’ll be under the Big Top watching next time our travel paths cross again.

I hope your circus will have many more seasons bringing family entertainment to cities across the US.

Is That Clown Really Ed?

“There’s two Poppa D’s!” shouted the children. “Look, there are two!” They yelled, jumped excitedly, and pointed at the two clowns emerging from the RV.

Poppa D shouted back, “Give me five!”He hand-slapped a few kids, children of the circus performers. These kids knew Poppa D. They traveled together town-to-town in a caravan of RVs during the circus season. They’d never seen the other clown. Their enthusiastic greeting prompted this second clown to show a toothy wide smile and bellow a hearty laugh. This second clown was new. In fact, he had never appeared as a clown, not ever. This was his debut, his first and only night as a clown.

“We need to give you a name,” Poppa D said under his breath to the clown.

“How about Poppa Ed?” replied the second clown.

“Hee, Hee!” Poppa D gave his loud clown laugh and announced, “This is Pappa Ed. Ta’dah!” He opened his arms with a showman’s flare.

“Ta’dah!” Poppa Ed mimicked stepping forward and opening his arms wide. His hat teetered.

Less than a couple of hours ago, Ed was, well, just Ed…my husband, the guy taking photographs as I wandered under the circus big top with Poppa D.

Poppa D, our escort and circus PR man, saw more in Ed. “There’s one way to get a real feel for the circus,” he commented after Ed snapped another digital photo. “How about appearing as a guest clown?” he asked Ed.

Ed’s first protested, “Oh, no! Not me!” Then, showing a bit if interest, his protest turned to a question: “What do I have to do?” Then, he agreed, “Okay!”

Ed watched the 4:30 PM circus performance with special interest in the clowns. He studied their antics and I knew he was making mental notes, not reconsidering his commitment. At 6 PM, he entered Poppa D’s RV. When he emerged thirty minutes later, he was Poppa Ed the clown.

I sent a photo of Ed to our daughter from my cell phone with the message: “Dad’s joined the circus.”. “That’s not really Dad, is it?” Suzie texted. “Yep!” I replied. “Has he lost his mind?” she texted again. “Nope, he’s just gonna have some fun.”

Ed did have some fun. He entertained kids and their parents on the circus midway with a color changing silk scarf borrowed from the pro Poppa D. Kids blew a puff of air on the scarf in Ed’s fist and watched it change from red and blue to yellow. The trick amazed the kids. Ed looked amazed too each time it worked. He had less luck with a small rodeo lasso. He never did master getting the rope to rotate in a circle. It wiggled limply which brought more of a laugh than if he had been successful. He gave up on the lasso and just hung the rope across his shoulder.

Ed posed for a photo with a tiny blond toddler. He gave high fives to the older kids. He waved to the shy. And, let the bolder children give him a hug.

Leading up to show time, he assured some of the other circus performers that he wasn’t really after their job.

He mimed and smiled. He shook hands with the circus goers headed to their seats. His exaggerated greetings knocked his hat loose and sent it tumbling to the ground more than once. He’d plop the hat back on top of his yellow wig and keep on smiling.
He and Poppa D took the center ring under the big top and roused the crowd in a shouting match. When the right side was declared a winner, Ed grabbed a rope suspended from the tent ceiling. He swung like Tarzan to once again please the crowd. With the audience warmed-up for the show, Ed made one more appearance before the circus crowd.

“Duck your head,” cautioned the trainer as he led the elephant through the opening of the big top. We both scrunched down.

“Ladies and gentleman! May I introduce to you our guest clown for the evening… Ed Lonsbary of Toronto Canada and his wife Patty,” the ring master stretched his words.

Poppa Ed and I waved to crowd from atop the lumbering elephant. Cameras flashed. Little kids waved. The crowd cheered. Ed black hat teetered a bit more but it didn’t fall. He had mastered the art of being a clown, if only for one night.

Hey! The Circus is in Town!

Traditional circus music started to play and a clown on a unicycle whizzed around in circles. “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, welcome to an American family tradition, the Carson and Barnes Family Circus!” This is what we’d all been waiting for – the circus.

Ponies paraded with red plumes on their heads. Amazing poodles played jump rope. Hula hoops rotated around a woman’s body while she stood on one leg. A contortionist squeezed his entire body into a small clear box and closed the lid. A daredevil road a motorcycle on the high wire. Clowns pulled silly stunts. Women swung from ropes wrapping curtains of red fabric around their bodies in an aerial artistry. Men swung from the trapeze. Colorfully clad guys and gals danced the samba. Delicately small women road on the backs of enormous elephants.

I sat in sheer delight as the acts ran in all three rings. My eyes darted around the circus tent. I did not want to miss a thing! This live entertainment exceeded all my expectations. My photos did not so if you want to see photos you need to go to the circus website www.carsonbarnescircus.com. You will see the talented people who entertained the crowd.

I do have photos of some unexpected things that happened at the circus on this August afternoon. I took my first elephant ride. Ed became a guest clown. And finally, Ed and I were invited to ride through the Big Top welcoming people to the 7 o’clock performance along with Tarzan, aka. Mike Bones from the Three Rivers Casino. We had a delightful Circus Day!

What's Really Going On Under The Big Top?

“This is the Big One!” Nearly every merchant window in Florence, Oregon displayed the yellow and red colored posters. They featured a circus elephant, red-nosed clowns and beautiful women adorned with feather plumed headdresses and glimmering costumes. “Carson & Barnes Circus, under a tent the size of a football field,” now that is BIG, and it was.

Sure, the posters grabbed our attention and so did the advance article in The Siuslaw News. But nothing got our attention at such a high magnitude as the Casino’s security team. Ed and I had been boondocking in the parking lot of Three Rivers Casino in Florence. Security came around to all the boondocking RVers asking us all to vacate the parking lots by the end of the day to make room for the circus. In 24-hours, the Casino lot would be transformed by The Big Top. Now, not only did I want to see the show, I wanted to know what’s really going on under the Big Top.

My guide introduced himself as the circus spokesman and clown “Poppa D.” Two hours before show time, Poppa D looked like an ordinary guy in a red t-shirt and shorts. By way of introduction, Poppa D explained he wasn’t always a clown but bits of clowning ran through his career. In his pre-circus life, Poppa D laughingly told me he worked as a “P E Warden”. I interpreted that to mean a physical education teacher, a job from which he retired at age 66. Before that, he served as a District Director for the Boy Scouts of America. While with BSA, he created “Freddie” the Hobo Clown, a lively addition to the Blue & Gold Banquet circuit. Freddie, he said, entertained families attending these traditional scouting events by performing pocket tricks. He did some dangerous clowning in his career too. Sometime back in 1972, Poppa D braved the bulls as a rodeo clown. Poppa D was serious about clowning, so serious that he trained as a professional clown by going to clown school in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. His wife Elaine went to the school too and created her own clown persona. Together, they travel eight months of the year performing in 500 shows in as many as 230 cities throughout 24 states in the US.

Poppa D pointed to the upper parking lot where our own coach had been the lone RV parked there a day earlier. It sure had changed. An assortment of RVs, truck campers, and a semi-trailer were crowded into the lot. This was now the circus camp. Some 130 performers and members of the support crew travel and live together on the road. There are 18 kids in the bunch whose parents work for the Carson & Barnes Family Circus. Parents home school these youngsters while on the road. Young and old crowd around the semi truck - the chuck wagon - for meals and sit at the portable tables -their informal dining room. They represent 12 countries from around the globe – Peru, Brazil, Mexico, the Ukraine, Columbia, Nicaragua and more. Before the circus season ends, these folks will travel some 50,000 miles bringing the circus to towns just like Florence, Oregon.

Carson & Barnes Family Circus is based in Hugo, Oklahoma. It’s been a family run business for over seven decades, preserving the traditional three-ring circus.

“It’s the biggest Big Top in the US,” Poppa D said with a wave of the hand emphasizing the grandeur of the circus tent. I found its dimensions on the circus website. The tent is indeed as large as a football field some 270-feet by 150-feet with over 2,000 seats.

The Big Top Crew set up the tent that very morning. According to Poppa D, set-up take 4 ½ hours. Tear down begins at 9:30 PM immediately after the end of the second performance. By 12:30 PM, the Big Top and all its parts will be packed up in 45 vehicles and ready to move by sun-up. This routine is repeated every day during the circus season.

The 119 poles for the Big Top are anchored by 450 stakes in the blacktop of the Casino lot. I asked Poppa D about the obvious pits the stakes would leave behind. Part of the tear down, he told me involves filling each hole with sand, gravel and more blacktop. A few days later, I walked through the lot where hundreds of stakes anchored the Big Top. Just as Poppa D had promised, there was not a trace of the circus stakes ever having cut through the surface of the lot.

Poppa D says the advance team needs to find lots that measure 400-feet by 300-feet to accommodate the Big Top, Concessions, animals and all the people. Fairgrounds are the best locations for the circus, casinos and church lots work too.

Poppa D and I walked under the Big Top past the three rings where performers would simultaneously entertain the afternoon and evening audiences. In all, there’d be 40 acts in each show. Can the circus acts compete with highly produced TV shows? Would the old fashioned circus fill the seats, all 2,000? Poppa D told me that the circus is an “endangered art form in the US” but is a “big deal in other countries like Mexico.” He was hoping for a big crowd in Florence drawing families with a “Butts in the Seat” promotion, one price for an entire family. No matter how many butts filled the seats, the show would go on!

The circus performers were ready. They had practiced earlier in the day under the Big Top. Rudy and Silvia were in the tractor trailer converted to a sound room testing the equipment. They would play the traditional circus music throughout the performances. Costumes hung on the racks ready for each performer to grab a quick change. The prop truck doors were open. Inside were the hoops, hats, and headdresses. The list of acts in order of performance was taped to the side of the prop truck so performers could check sequence of the acts. The elephants had been feed and watered. The generator – The Electric Department – hummed with power for the lights and sound. Whiffs of cotton candy scented the air around the concessions. Circus balloons bobbed in the breeze. Folks were lining up for tickets at the gate. The circus was taking on a new life, but a life sight-unseen to the circus goers had already unfolded under the Big Top.

August 28, 2008

Carson & Barnes Family Circus

http://www.carsonbarnescircus.com/

With special thanks to Poppa D
who made this experience & story possible.