demonicustitle

THE CORPSE AT THE FAIR

Yeah, there’s a dead body on display at the fairgrounds. What’s the big deal?

Visitors to the 1985 Sonoma County Fair found a tent at the far end of the midway announcing a “World of Wonders” exhibit. Admission was a buck.

Inside were cages and stalls with deformed or otherwise unusual looking animals. According to the Press Democrat the menagerie included a hundred lb. water rat (which was probably a capybara), a “five-legged cow, a steer with two noses, a five-legged lamb, a ‘punk rock’ goat and a ‘headless’ chicken.”

In the center of that barnyard freak show was a coffin. Through the plexiglass top you could see the body of an adult man. His skin was leathery and the color of mahogany with sparse hair and beard. A loincloth covered his hips.

Propped against the side of the coffin was a sign: “He is real. Count Demonicus: preserved and petrified by arsenic solution.” The July 31 edition of the PD ran a photo of the coffin with the remains faintly visible.

But wouldn’t you know it, some killjoy didn’t think it was appropriate to have a dead guy laying on the straw covered dirt just a few steps away from the barn with the 4-H bunnies. The cops were called.

Coroner Investigator Tom Siebe thought it was probably fake and told the PD “Yeah, it looks pretty good. But under plastic, things can be deceptive.” To check on it, the county took possession of the body for an x-ray. It was real.

Yet Siebe planned to give it back to the exhibitor. “It’s nothing serious,” he said to the PD. “Our interest is not to go down and confiscate and arrest, but to make sure he complies with the laws as a legitimate businessman who more than likely is ignorant of minor infractions.” Apparently in California you can get permits from the state Department of Public Health to have human remains. Fun to know!

So did Mr. World of Wonders have said permits? Uhhh…no. Wasn’t aware he needed them. For nine years he and Count Demonicus had appeared at carnivals and fairs around the country without a complaint. The previous year they were even at the Sonoma County Fair followed by a Halloween show at Knotts Berry Farm. Never were they hassled by state inspectors when crossing state lines. When questioned about what was in the back of the truck they replied honestly, “oh, just a dead body.” While on the road, exhibitor John Strong used to sleep on top the coffin although he admits today it “kind of scared me.”

Without the paperwork the county wasn’t giving Strong his mummy back. Nobody knew what to do. It was unclear where it originally came from (more about that in a minute) but it certainly wasn’t anyone from Sonoma County and was thought to be about a century old, so no plans for an inquest were mentioned. Strong consulted his Southern California attorney to no avail and tried to negotiate with Siebe that it wasn’t an entire human body. “I told him the mummy was missing a toe. A rat bit off, but that didn’t matter.”

This happened during a sloooooow news cycle (top story: Bump removed from Reagan’s nose) and the UPI wire service caught wind of the doings in Santa Rosa. But instead of the Copy Desk doing its customary rewrite of the Press Democrat’s coverage, it appears they assigned the work to an intern with a yen for creative writing. What appeared in dozens of newspapers nationwide had numerous inventions to make the story more ghoulish.

The syndicate claimed the sheriff had the coffin and body padlocked in a holding cell (what, so the corpse can’t escape?) when it was actually laying in the hallway outside the coroner’s office. Instead of being an estimated 100 years old, UPI wrote that it was about 200 and from Central Europe “but not Transylvania.”

An extended version of that piece offered a paragraph of John Strong making glib quips about losing his star attraction: “He’s the best employee I’ve ever had…he never gave me any back talk and people liked him. You never had to pay him. He always showed up for work on time and never complained like some people do. You know, he’s not like somebody else you can just train.” (Contrary to that, the PD reported he was deeply saddened; “the loss of the mummy is as much sentimental as financial for him.”)

The mutant zoo remained at the fair until it closed. Strong was bitter the “Believe it or Not!” Museum in San Francisco could exhibit shrunken heads but he couldn’t get a permit to let the public gander at an entire corpse (well, at least a nine-toed one). Wasn’t World of Wonders like a museum? He worried his best option might be to donate the body to a university for a tax write-off. But nothing was resolved; the next venue on the carnival circuit beckoned so he left town Demonicusless.

Siebe told the PD he would give Strong a few weeks to see if he could work out the legal problems, but thought the county would probably end up giving the Count a “Christian burial.” In the meantime, Demonicus was moved from the office corridor to the sheriff’s evidence locker at Los Guilucos.

So where did John Strong get the body? Whose was it, and how and when did he die? Straightforward answers were not available; there was no paperwork and what appeared in the paper was mostly hearsay, two or three generations removed.

When he purchased the body and coffin Strong was told it was a man named Jim, an Illinois mortician’s assistant who died in the late 1800s. Since Jim had no family to pay for burial his boss embalmed the body, which then remained at the funeral home for most of a century because.

That doesn’t ring true. Every county in the nation has a Potter’s Field for burying the indigent at public expense; funeral parlors don’t normally keep bodies around like unclaimed luggage. This story also sounds suspiciously like a rehash of what famously happened earlier to outlaw Elmer McCurdy, whose arsenic-preserved remains were put on display by the undertaker who charged admission to see it.

The first post-mortuary sighting of Demonicus dates to April 1972. Texas-based Magus Films – brief history here – mainly produced and repackaged X rated movies such as “Sexual Fantasies U.S.A.” (IN COLOR!) for drive-in and grindhouse theaters, but they also booked horror triple features with the coffin on display near the popcorn popper. A pair of men dressed as monks attended on either side and handed out “anti hex” tokens to ward off evil. The show appeared for several months throughout the South and Midwest.

"Festival of the Undead" ad from the El Paso Times, April 18 1972
“Festival of the Undead” ad from the El Paso Times, April 18 1972

Following the horror movie tour Demonicus was in the hands of one of the original Magus partners who ditched showbiz to enter politics, winning election to the Nevada Assembly in 1974. Strong says the politician was using the coffin as a coffee table in a living room.

(Attempts to contact the man presumed to be the Assemblyman were unsuccessful.)

The next chapter in Jim Demonicus’ afterlife began in 1976, when a classified offering a “genuine mummy for sale” appeared in the trade mag “Amusement Business.” John Strong replied and bought the exhibit for $5,500. It was actually sold to his mother, as John was only 17 or 18 years old and had just graduated from high school. (Embalmed bodies are so much more practical than a Starbucks gift card.)

There needs to be a book or biopic about the remarkable Strong family. John is more properly John III as a third generation John Strong, all performers. His grandfather was a vaudeville juggler. John’s mother was a much-respected animal trainer and his dad founded “Big John Strong’s Circus,” which played Santa Rosa almost every year in the 1960s and early 1970s.

For their kids it was a storybook childhood, actively performing soon after they could walk. John’s sister was riding a baby elephant from age four while he was learning fire eating and sword swallowing. He could do a handstand on a single finger. When he was only eleven he began collecting oddities to create a sideshow for the family circus starting with a two-headed calf, which he bought with money from selling cotton candy.

1977tent(RIGHT: John Strong’s first sideshow tent from 1977. Note the two posters and main entrance sign promoting Demonicus. Photo courtesy John Strong)

As the circus traveled around the West he would seek out animals with extra legs, heads, or other body parts to add to his collection – which, of course, would include Demonicus. John continued to add animal novelties (including Quacky, the four-legged duck and “Jimmy the Midget Pickpocketing Horse”), ending up with over 600 exhibits. The show later morphed into an old-timey circus sideshow featuring live performers.

But what became of the Count? Enforcing state laws regarding mummified bodies is pretty unprecedented and the coffin was left to gather dust at the sheriff’s warehouse. Failed efforts were made to treat the odd situation somewhat like a regular coroner’s inquiry, with a forensic anthropologist called in to find out when and why he died.

More than three years after the body was seized, Sonoma County finally made the decision to bury it. On October 7, 1988 it was quietly interred in an unmarked grave at the County Cemetery, which is that flat patch of ground east of the Rural Cemetery and next to Poppy Creek. The name on the death certificate is, “Demonicus AKA Jim AKA John Doe.”

And with that, the tale of Count Jim Demonicus ends…probably. Like any good horror movie, there’s always a chance for a sequel, and here it’s actually found on the death certificate. Under cause of the death it reads: “Investigation pending.”

Undated photo of Count Demonicus exhibit courtesy John Strong
Undated photo of Count Demonicus exhibit courtesy John Strong

Read More

railroadpreview

LET’S GO TO THE CIRCUS ON COLLEGE AVE

Hours before dawn, the boys were gathering at the depot waiting for the circus train. They would be playing hooky that day but wouldn’t get into much trouble for it; after all, their fathers did the same thing (and maybe grandfathers, too) and they had heard their elders speak wistfully about the pleasure of it, waiting in the dark with a swarm of kids and grown men for the trainload of marvels speeding their way on the rails.

From the 1916 Argus-Courier: “A monster train of red cars, loaded to the guards with circus paraphernalia and equipment of the John Robinson ten big combined shows, the oldest circus in the world, reached Petaluma Thursday morning, a little late but all safe and sound. There was a good sized reception committee on hand to welcome the showmen. Some were there who declared they had not missed seeing a circus ‘come in’ in twenty years. A few even remembered the last time the John Robinson circus visited California 35 years ago. Some small boys were at the depot as early as 3 a. m. although the circus did not arrive until 8:30.”

Setup in Santa Rosa was easier than many towns, where the fairgrounds were usually outside city limits and far from the depot. Here the show lot was nearly in the center of town – the former grounds of the old Pacific Methodist College (now the location of Santa Rosa Middle School, between E street and Brookwood Ave). Once the college buildings were removed around 1892, the nine acre vacant lot became the temporary home of every show rolling through.

This is the second item about the circuses that came to Santa Rosa and Petaluma as viewed through our local newspapers. Part one, “WHEN THE CIRCUS WAGONS CAME TO TOWN,” looked at the shows before the railroads arrived in the 1870s. With trains available the bigger and more famous circus companies began to come here and by the early 1900s, Santa Rosa could expect a visit from a world-class circus every year. The shows discussed below are only a small sample.

(CLICK or TAP any image to enlarge, or see the complete collection on Pinterest)

A big attraction for the 1883 John Robinson’s Circus was the electric light “as bright as the noon-day sun.” For advance PR they sent newspapers a humor column about “Uncle Jerry Peckum” complaining the “sarkis” tent being too close to his chicken farm: “It’s lit up so brite thet every last one o’ them tarnal fool chickins thinks it’s daylite again’, an’ got up an’ gone to layin.'” The column ended with Jerry deciding to go to the circus because “I’ve heern so much about this ‘lectricity light–an’ we may never hev a chance to see one agin.” The promo piece ran in the Petaluma Argus, naturally, because chicken.

1883 John Robinson’s Circus

The 1886 Sells Brothers Circus was the first mega-show to visit Sonoma County. While both Petaluma and Santa Rosa newspapers raved about its quality, the Petaluma Argus was outraged admission at the gate was $1.10 instead of the traditional buck.

Speaking of ripoffs: Earlier the Santa Rosa Daily Democrat ran an amusing reprint from a New York paper describing the predator/prey relationship between a circus “candy butcher” (food vendor) and the locals: “…The candy butchers in a circus never work the bottom row of seats. Country bumpkins who easily become their prey always get up on the top benches. They do this because they are afraid of the ‘butchers’ and want to hide from them. The latter move around on the top seats, and when they find a verdant fellow they fill his girl’s lap with oranges, candy, popcorn and fans. If the girl says she doesn’t want them they ask her why she took them, and make the young man pay thirteen or fourteen prices for the rubbish…” The piece continued by describing the pink in a circus’ trademark pink lemonade was a red dye added to conceal how little lemon actually was in the drink: “Strawberry lemonade men make two barrels of the delicious beverage which they sell of ten cents worth of tartaric acid and five cents worth of aniline and two lemons. They make fifty dollars a day each…”

1886 Sells Brothers Circus

I’m sure it lived up to its claim of being the “greatest show on earth,” but when the Ringling Brothers Circus made four visits during the 1900s we were flooded each time with the greatest hype on earth, as the Press Democrat seemingly printed every scrap of PR flackery the advance promoters churned out as “news” articles. “The aerial features of Ringling Brothers shows by far surpass anything of a similar nature ever exhibited in the United States. The civilized countries of the world have been thoroughly searched for the newest and most thrilling acts.” (1903) “Their Acts in Ringling Brothers’ Circus Almost Surpasses the Possible.” (1904) The low point was probably the 1907 article, “Interesting Facts Regarding the Expense of Advertising and Maintaining a Great Circus,” which was neither very interesting nor very factual: “An elephant without plenty of feed is as dangerous as a healthy stick of dynamite.” Yowp!

1900 Ringling Brothers Circus

Santa Rosa schools were dismissed at 11AM on the Thursday morning when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show came to town, which was a pragmatic surrender of any hope for keeping the kids at their desks once the parade started marching down Fourth street.

There was no Big Top for this show, just a horseshoe-shaped grandstand that could seat 16,000. The audience was apparently immense; the PD reported, “afternoon and evening the vast seating accommodations was occupied with a sea of humanity.”

These 1902 performances were not Buffalo Bill’s “last and only” shows in Santa Rosa. He was back again in 1910 for his “farewell tour,” and also in 1914, after he lost the legal use of the “Buffalo Bill” name and had to perform with the Sells-Floto Circus. For more, see “BUFFALO BILL STOPS BY TO SAY GOODBYE.”

1902 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

“Early in the day farmers from far and near came driving to town with their entire families while special trains brought crowds from points as far away as Ukiah,” reported the Press Democrat in 1904 about the third appearance here by the Ringling Brothers Circus. “By 11 o’clock the streets were thronged with a good natured perspiring crowd prepared to be amused at any thing.”

Unfortunately, Santa Rosa was suffering through a heat wave that September morning: “The Court House proved a very attractive place as it was so cool and refreshing within its walls while outside the thermometer ranged from 100 upward from 10 o’clock. Many of the windows were filled with the families and friends of the county officials, while the steps and shady portions of the grounds were packed with outside visitors. All along the line of march all available windows and other points of vantage were packed, while great throngs moved restlessly up and down the principal streets, and crowded the stores.”

The description of the circus parade was probably rewrite of PR copy, but it’s still fun to imagine a sight like this coming down Fourth street: “Never before in the history of Santa Rosa has there been such a parade as Ringling Bros, gave Thursday. Floats and chariots, half a dozen bands, numerous companies of horseback riders representing various nationalities, both men and women, a drove of thirteen camels, twenty-six elephants and many open cages of wild animals. Altogether there were over 375 horses in the parade. They were ridden, driven two and three tandem, in teams of two,. four, six, eight and twenty-four horses each. One of the most pleasing sights to the younger people were the twenty-four horse team on the band wagon and the twenty-four Shetland pony team on a float.”

1905 Press Democrat cartoon: “In Town for the Circus”

Norris & Rowe’s Circus was a Santa Rosa favorite in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, and not just because they reliably showed up every April. “On account of the fact that it is a California show,” explained the Press Democrat in 1905, “the people of this state are naturally interested in its success from year to year, and the enterprise of Norris & Rowe in having advanced in a few years from a small dog and pony show to the growing circus that they now possess, has been highly commended.”

Alas, the show had no end of problems, well symbolized by the photo below showing their 1905 “Grand Gold Glittering Street Parade” in Santa Rosa taking place during a downpour. Their last appearance here in 1909 shocked some by offering “several gambling schemes” and a racy sideshow “for men only.” The circus went bankrupt and closed in 1910. For more see: “BROKE DOWN CIRCUS.”

Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library

The Barnum and Bailey Circus made its second stop here in 1908, and the show was the biggest, best, blah, blah, blah. This trip was notable for an acrobatic act which sounds genuinely risky; the odd-but-colorful description that appeared in the Press Democrat is transcribed below (and was undoubtedly circus PR) but from other papers we can piece together what really went on.

The main performer was 20 year-old Yvone La Raque, who was seated in an “automobile” at the top of a narrow ramp near the top of the tent, about 65 feet in the air. (I can find no claim the little vehicle actually had an engine.) When her cart was released it dropped down the ramp and flew off with enough speed to somehow execute a somersault. She and the little car landed on a separate spring-cushioned ramp several feet away. The entire business took only 4-5 seconds.

Now, Gentle Reader might not think this such a great challenge; all she had to do was keep the wheels absolutely straight and do whatever weight-shifting physics needed to perform the loop-de-loop. But that was in 1907-1908, an age when steering wheels regularly fell off because gearboxes were still an experimental thing and even the best new tires sometimes burst under stress. And, of course, success depended upon workers quickly setting up the landing ramp with absolute precision while circus craziness was underway.

That was 1907 when Yvone was a solo act with a different circus; when she joined Barnum and Bailey her sister (name unknown) was added to the act, following her immediately down the ramp in an identical car and flying across to the landing ramp while Yvone looped above her. By all accounts the crowds went nuts.

I researched them with dread, certain I would discover one or both were killed or horribly mangled, but apparently they retired uninjured at the close of the 1908 season.

The start of this awful act is made from the dome of the tent. The cars ride on the same platform, one behind the other, being released simultaneously. One car is red and the other blue that their separate flights may be followed by the eye that dares to look. The leading auto arches gracefully across a wide gap, being encircled as it does so by the rear car. They land at the same instant. From the time the cars are released at the top of the incline to the landing below on the platform, Just four seconds elapse. Those who have seen the act say it amounts to four years when you figure the suspense, the worry and the awful jolting of the nerves. “You feel like a murderer waiting for the verdict,” says some one who saw the act while the circus was it New York City. “The suspense is awful. You look back over your past life. You regret as many of your sins as you can it four seconds. You want to close your eyes, but you can’t. My, what a relief when they land safely! That’s the jury bringing in a verdict of not guilty. Then you rise with a yell of joy as the young women alight without a scratch. Everybody else yells. Oh, it’s great!”

1908 Barnum and Bailey Circus

And finally we come to the Al G. Barnes Circus. The ad below is from 1921, but his show first appeared in Santa Rosa ten years earlier. I deeply regret having not found much about him beyond a few anecdotes – he clearly was gifted with a rare magnetic personality and both people and animals were drawn to him instinctively. His friend and attorney Wallace Ware tells the story of seeing Barnes throw meat to a fox in a forest, then approaching the wild animal and petting it as if it were tamed. He trained performing animals with food rewards but also by talking to them with genuine sincerity as if they could understand everything he said. Ware’s memoir, “The Unforgettables,” has a section on Al worth reading if you’d like to know more.

(RIGHT: Chevrolet and bear at the Al G. Barnes Zoo, Culver City, 1926. Courtesy of the USC Digital Library)

Barnes also had a private zoo near Los Angeles where he kept animals too old or too wild to be in the circus. It must have been enormously expensive to maintain – supposedly it numbered around 4,000 animals – but kudos to him for not destroying the unprofitable animals or selling them off to carnivals where they likely would suffer great abuses. That was the 1920s, remember; there were no animal sanctuaries for former circus animals, tame or no, and trade newspapers like Billboard and the New York Clipper regularly had want ads of circus animals for sale.

The Press Democrat treated him like a hometown boy although he was from Canada and lived in Southern California when he wasn’t touring. The PD reprinted news items about his circus, his illnesses and reported his marriage on the front page. When he died in 1931 the PD wrote its own obit: “When Al G. Barnes rode into the ring, swept off his hat, bowed and welcomed the crowd, you knew who was running the show…his death will be generally regretted, not only in a personal way but because it marks the passing of a picturesque character, one well known in the west–one of the last of the kind.”

1921 Al G. Barnes Circus

 

Read More

frontierpreview

WHEN THE CIRCUS WAGONS CAME TO TOWN

Before Thanksgiving or Independence Day were national holidays, there was only one event nearly every American celebrated, regardless of class, race or creed: The day the circus came to town. That two-century tradition ends on May 21 when Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey gives its last performance. Before the Big Top comes down for the last time, here’s a look at what it meant to small towns like Santa Rosa and Petaluma, as viewed through their newspapers.

By no means does this series represent all the circuses that came to Sonoma county – this is only a small sample. It was not uncommon to have two or three every year, and even the shows that returned often were different enough each time to be a considered new.

Because of the number of images involved I’m breaking this article into two parts. This section covers the early circuses travelling by roads and waterways; these wagon shows were dinky affairs compared to some of the monster spectaculars which came here after the railroads were available, as discussed in part two, “LET’S GO TO THE CIRCUS ON COLLEGE AVE“.

But regardless of the year or degree of magnificence, every circus day was magic and were the climax of weeks of hot anticipation. The places you had walked past thousands of times – fences with scabby whitewash, streetlight poles, the plain brick walls on the sides of businesses – those drab things were now transformed by beautiful lithograph posters showing flying trapeze women, daredevil animal trainers and other scenes you had never imagined. You know the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy opened the door to Oz into a world riot in color? It was like that, only better because YOU were about to enter such a magical place. And you would go there. Nothing on earth could stop you.

(CLICK or TAP any image to enlarge, or see the complete collection on Pinterest)

This is the oldest circus ad I’ve found in the local newspapers, dating to June, 1856. The promise that “The Police Department will be under the supervision of efficient officers” suggests the public believed a circus attracted criminals and troublemakers.

1856 Rowe Circus

 

The 1857 ad for the Lee & Bennett circus also has the “efficient officers” vow. Note they don’t say much about the acts, but boast at length of their “magnificent, new, and costly” wagons. They promise the Big Top is waterproof and ladies will get cushions for their seats. Classy!

1857 ad for the Lee & Bennett circus

 

Until the railway reached Santa Rosa in late 1870, circuses with large animals rarely visited Sonoma county in those days. This 1859 show with two elephants was the first exception. As with most circuses seen here in that era, the performance was mainly horseback stunts, acrobatics and a featured clown.

1859 Wilson circus

 

The patriotic theme of the “United States Circus” reflects the national mood in the first months of the Civil War – although it may not have gone over so well in pro-Confederacy Santa Rosa and Healdsburg. “Blondin” was the famed tightrope walker who crossed Niagara Falls.

1861 United States Circus

 

Although there was still no train service to Santa Rosa in 1869, we were on the tour route of Dan Castello’s Circus and Menagerie, the first East Coast show to come to California via the new transcontinental railroad, which had been completed less that four months earlier. “Their immense posters cover half the town, and everybody is anxiously waiting to see the greatest show of the age,” the Democrat commented. It seems the ads exaggerated the number and varieties of animals; their wagon caravan included only ten cages and a couple of elephants and camels. A correspondent to the Russian River Flag wrote, “It was agreed by us that the menagerie was a failure, but the circus part we liked very well.”

1869 Castello’s Circus and Menagerie

 

The 1872 San Francisco Circus and Roman Hippodrome was the first show in Santa Rosa to introduce exotic themes, with an “oriental pagoda” and Roman Empire-style chariot races. The show also included a political angle, with “Horace Greeley, Comic Mule.” That year Greeley was the most well-known among the eight candidates running against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant and lost by a landslide (in Santa Rosa he came in fourth). Greeley actually had died four days before this Santa Rosa performance.

1872 San Francisco Circus and Roman Hippodrome

 

Montgomery Queen’s 1874 Circus and Traveling World’s Fair drew an audience of 2,800 that night in Santa Rosa – about the same as the official population of the town. Since before the Civil War, the price for an adult ticket was always one dollar, which would be between $30-40 in today’s currency. Even if half this 1874 audience were children, they pulled in about $60,000 (adjusted for inflation) with this one show. While circus life was hard on the performers, crew and animals, it was undeniably very profitable for the owners.

1874 Montgomery Queen’s Circus and Traveling World’s Fair

 

Queen’s Great Moral Circus was here in 1875 and I’m presuming it was not a railroad show, as their route went from Petaluma to Sonoma and there was no rail line running between the towns. Aside from the appearance of a living giraffe and a “hogapotamus,” this visit was special because of a delightful story which appeared in the Sonoma Democrat:

1875 Montgomery Queen’s Great Moral Circus

 

 

GOING TO THE CIRCUS.

Yesterday morning as we were quietly strolling down town, with both hands in our pockets, thinking of nothing in particular, our meditations were disturbed by the loud demand:

“Whar are they a-goin’ to stretch the canvass?”

Looking up, there stood a tall, rawboned fellow with a grizzled beard and sun-burnt face, waiting for an answer.

“Canvas? What canvas?” we answered, all abroad like.

“Why, the circus,” you know, replied the man from the mountains.

We confessed our inability to direct him, and he pursued his way with a compassionate look on his face for our ignorance. Determined to become better posted about the circus, and to take a hand in the fun going on, we had not gone far until meeting a platform of eight small boys stretching quite across the pavement.

“Going to the circus, boys?”

“Yes, sir, answered the eight small boys together.

“Could you tell me where the tent is?”

“Yes, sir,” altogether, and eight small hands and arms pointing in the same direction.

Sure enough, there it was, nearly covering Bill Hardy’s lot with about an acre of canvass, and surrounded with empty circus wagons, loose horses and piles of baggage. The cook stove was smoking through a short pipe, and the cook, a gentleman from Africa, was taking his morning wash in a basin that looked suspiciously like a bread pan.

On the street corners pretty girls, carrying new parasols, were grouped together, looking with admiring glances into shop windows. Along the streets new arrivals of young fellows on horses, and old fellows, just as young within were soberly driving family tumouts, containing mother and the children. As a rule from three to five of the little people contrived always to get on the front seat with the driver.

The circus band struck up the inspiring strains of “Champagne Charley,” and a mingled mass of humanity began winding its way to the “horse opera.” There, from the moment of the grand entree until the close of the performance, the boys and girls seemed spellbound with the Oriental magnificence of its sights and sounds. The venerable jokes of the clown were as new and as keenly relished as, ah, me, so many years ago, when the reporter was a boy. The gaily spangled dresses of the riders, and the fearful perils of the horsemen, held the lower seats, filled with boys, in the same trance of wonder. The eight boys had managed to get seated in a row like so many chickens on a fence, their mouths slightly opened, and their honest eyes protruding enough to be scraped off with a stick. Innocent boyhood enjoying its first pleasures. Most of them had, without doubt, performed unheard of tasks for three weeks to get taken to the circus. At its close, about four o’clock, when the audience began to disperse, they broke into family groups and slowly wended their way down street to their wagons, homeward bound, with heavier hearts and lighter pockets. How many of them wished they had their dollar back? The middle-aged frontiersman of the morning was seen mounted on a cayuse, headed toward Guerneville, riding pensively along, a little sideways in the saddle, trying to urge the pony into an easy lope, doubtless for reasons best known to himself.

How much money the showman took away is a question that cannot be answered. But, judging from the number in attendance, it must have been enough to pay off the debt of either of the Santa Rosa Colleges.

 

Read More