Life is a Circus
I read lots and lots of on-line newspapers, and one of my favorites is Hometown Annapolis.
Annapolis is a sort of fifth-level hometown, meaning it would be about Number Five on my list of the best places to live. It’s really an All-American town, very historic, very East Coasty, and very scenic, although in a rather subtle way.
It isn’t too far from Washington, D.C. if you like to browse historical and genealogical records at the National Archives, a real treasure trove for historians and family researchers. I’ve been to Annapolis with side trips to D.C. several times, so I’m somewhat familiar with the landscape.
When I scanned the Annapolis paper this morning, my eye fell on a story in the Children’s section that reminded me of my own hometown, which shall remain unnamed here because I don’t want anyone there to know my whereabouts in case there’s a warrant out with my name on it.
The story that popped out was about the Cole Bros. Circus.
I did a little breath intake when I saw the headline. This was a real coincidence, not because I like circuses. I hate them. And not because I had been dragged to circuses against my wishes and now suffer irreparable psychological damage. No. None of these.
I actually was dragged off to the Cole Bros. Circus as a kid, more than once, in fact, because adults justify hauling defenseless kids around as excuses for satisfying their own fantasies.
That’s not the big deal here, though. A few years later, in high school, I worked for a circus in a manner of speaking, and I am firmly convinced that it was Cole Bros. That’s the only circus name I know and the only one ever to visit my hometown.
Well, to make a short story interminably longer, someone from the circus showed up at school one day recruiting temporary labor to help erect the bleachers. They offered no money, just a free meal and a ticket to the show that night.
Of course, they selected our high school because the only suckers who would work for nothing were high school boys who could not have cared less about attending the circus. We just wanted to get out of school for a day. We figured the work couldn’t be that hard.
Wrong. This was slave labor pure and simple, and about two hours after our labor started, three quarters of us had bailed out. I stuck around, and I swear, single-handedly erected almost the entire set of bleachers.
In the process, I talked to some very nice circus people, laborers mostly but a gang boss or two as well. Some told me practically their life stories, which weren’t quite as romantic as the lives depicted in the movie The Greatest Show on Earth starring the recently demised Charlton Heston.
At the end of the day, I was too tired to think about attending the circus. Circuses are for kids, anyway. But I learned a couple of lessons from my brief stint as a circus laborer.
The circus food served to me, and I presume others, was lousier than anything I’ve run across since, except possibly the green eggs served on a rolling and tossing troop ship.
And I learned that most people have interesting stories they are willing to share, even with a kid like me in a hick town down South.
The arts of observation and listening have served me well over the years.
