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Recollections of a Circus Pastor - Part 6 by The Rev. Don Brewer 

Submitted by Editor on   7/15/2004
Last Modified

Mud shows in the east, 1963-1973 Circus Kirk 1969

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

Click Here to list entire series

My involvement in Circus Kirk began with a phone call on a Saturday afternoon from Charlie Boas in March of 1969. Boas Brothers Circus the year before had not been a successful operation, and he did not see any way of carrying on with that format, but was not willing to give up his teaching job in order to take out a circus for longer than school vacation months. He had given the matter considerable thought over the winter, and had decided that some format using students was the only route to go.

He had spoken with the man in charge of youth ministries for the Central Pennsylvania Synod of the Lutheran Church about possible church involvement. He had expressed some interest, and Charlie had an appointment with him the following Tuesday to present a program for a church sponsored youth circus. The problem was that Charlie had no such program. All he had was the equipment. Did I have any ideas? Over the weekend I drew up a presentation with a workable format, drove to Charlie’s on Monday, and the two of us went to the synod office on Tuesday. The plan was accepted, I was appointed church liaison, and we were off and running.

Charlie chose the name Circus Kirk because it had a church connection but could be used in a secular connection as well. Charlie wanted to cover all the possible bases. Basically we used the same equipment as Boas Bros. with the addition of three school buses that were purchased and outfitted for dormitories. Another addition was a stake driver, the kind that was used by road crews. It was brand new. The first time they tried to use it the hammer fell out of the sleeve and they had to find a way to put it back. It had to be sent to a welder to put spring catch on the bottom. But before it could be used Charlie insisted that its color be changed from yellow, a normal road equipment color, but considered unlucky by show people. He bought the red paint and the kinds painted it. After that it worked well.

One of the stated goals of the youth circus was that we would provide summer employment to about thirty youth at a time when summer employment was difficult. We sent fliers out to all Pennsylvania colleges offering summer employment to talented youth who could perform. We included in the information that this was church sponsored and would have a Christian message. We assumed that we would hear from Christian gymnasts, magicians, and a host of young people with talent that could easily be presented in a circus setting. We didn’t quite get that.

Another goal for the show that came out of the sixties enthusiasm was that it would be an interracial youth program. I believe this was the year that Ringling came out with their unicycling basketball act, an attempt at fulfilling the same expectations of the public. Unfortunately we got only one African American male, so we were not so interracial as we wanted to be. We also had two Jewish men, and a few who were less than enamored with the church. All in all it was not exactly the Christian camping experience that we had suggested to the synod it would be, but we had what we had. One of Charlie’s favorite lines was “Ya gotta go with whatcha got”.

Because of the church involvement Circus Kirk wasn’t just to be a normal circus. There had to be a message to the audience consistent with the goals of the church. The message part came in several ways. The opening spec was reminiscent of the old circus specs, only without the animals. It came from the fact that medieval church fairs would draw wandering performers to entertain the crowds. Churches were named for saints, and the fair would always be held on the nameday of the saint. Therefore it was possible to know when and where fairs would be held. This gathering of performers likely resulted in various performers joining together to perform in other places not having fairs, and thus were precursors of the circus.

Circus Kirk’s spec would open with peasant folk walking around the track enjoying the fair, with vendors hawking their wares and various performers here and there showing their skills. A canvas version of the front of a church, with a French gothic door, was suspended at the performers’ entrance. After awhile the church bell would ring and the priest would appear at the church door. All the fairgoers would then gather at the church door for a blessing from the priest. In this way we presented the connection between church and circus..

The part of the priest was played by Dale, a white-haired veteran of the circus world, who was the only pro on the show. Charlie hired him because he had a liberty horse act and the show needed at least some animals. Dale had two white and two black liberty horses that performed without any trappings. It was a very good act, and added well to the show. Dale took awhile to work into the priest role, however. He wasn’t too comfortable with it. When the priest blessed the people, he was to make the sign of the cross. This was all very new to Dale, and his first signs were of a variety of geometric figures. We finally had to show him how to make the sign of the cross.

The second way in which the message presented was in the clown acts. Again, this was true to circus tradition. Many clown acts had messages; remember the firehouse act, the highway construction act, the toothache, and many more. They were all parodies of real life. The first Circus Kirk clown act was a re-enactment of the story of Zaccheus. Two clowns dressed in tuxedoes and derbies walked into the ring, slapping each other on the back and showing each other their rolls of money. They kept looking to the main entrance, obviously waiting for someone. A ragged clown with a blue face (an attempt at bringing in the racial issue) wandered in from the performers’ entrance. He also tried to join the crowd waiting, but the two well heeled clowns pushed and kicked him away. He finally retreated to the end of the performing area, climbing a ladder in order to see better. Presently a figure dressed in white appeared at the entrance and walked in. The two well heeled clowns mobbed him, slapping him on the back and showing him their money. He ignored them, went over to the ladder, and helped the tramp clown down, and they exited arm in arm. The two well-healed clowns left, kicking one another.

In another act a construction crew whose mission was to build a bridge over a river stood around arguing how this was to be done. While they were engaged in their political and engineering debates, a family of simple folk came along, threw a line of pop cases into the river, and crossed. Obviously a parody on the system. Another parody on the system took on the then current Vietnam war. Two armies fought one another, being spurred on by their generals at the rear of the front. Eventually all the soldiers were killed. Without soldiers the two generals had no one to fight with or order around, so they shook hands and went out arm in arm. There may have been other such clown acts over the time the show was out that I am not aware of, for the youth changed them whenever they came up with a new one.

The last aspect of message came at the closing. The entire company would walk around the track in front of the audience, waving and carrying banners with various messages on them, some with Bible messages and some with secular messages such as one would have seen on dorm wall posters in the day (Not to decide is to decide). One of the non-believing students came to me to complain that he did not want to carry a bible message banner; I told him he didn’t have to, that there were plenty of banners to choose from and he should pick one he could live with. The banners were very well made by Charlie’s church in York, PA, who regarded them as their contribution to the endeavor.

In addition to the above acts there was a terrific baton twirler. We put together a Roman ladder act in order to use the talent of the one African American who would finish the act by doing a handstand at the top of the ladders. There were the usual web and ladder acts.

The ringmaster was a student from New Orleans named Jeb Burgoyne. He wrote in his resume that he would do a trapeze act. It turned out that he had only ever hung his trapeze in the doorway of his apartment. When we got it rigged up in the circus tent it was about fifteen feet high. He went white when he saw how high it was, and was scared to death his first few times, but eventually got used to it and put out a creditable performance.

I expected lots of inquiries from college students who were magicians, but we actually got none that first year. Nevertheless we put an act together, and it was presented the first year by a young man named Bob Hyman. It was an illusion act and used several of the girls on the show. Although Bob was not a magician he was able to present the act in acceptable fashion. The following year Tom Ogden came on the show. He was an experienced magician and did a fine job professionalizing the act. After two years Tom went on the work sideshow in the corporation shows and became a lecturer at many magic conventions. He wrote the standard encyclopedia of circus, and was interviewed as a circus history expert in the TV documentary “200 years of the circus in America.”

There was a side show, but the only acts I can think of in it was Tom Ogden as the magician, a sword box I had made for Boas Bros. the previous year, and a young man doing human blockhead. There was also a great snake show. Charlie knew a biology teacher from Boyertown, who had a wonderful collection of reptiles. He spent at least two summers with the show. On his first day he unloaded and set up an area surrounded by stockade fence. He set up his individual cages inside the fence. It was a very effective looking snake show, but lugging all those stockade fencing sections was just too much work. We showed him how he could leave his cages in the truck, and build a stairs so people could get up into it. He did away with a large percentage of this stockade fence, and made life a lot easier on himself.

One of his snake cages had a little sign that said, “Drop a silver coin into the cage and see what the snake does”. Of course the snake did nothing at all, but he never said it would, did he? He bought his truck used from the Boyertown Casket Company. Although the letters had been removed, the name was still very evident on the sides of the truck. That really bugged Charlie, particularly when he returned the second year and he still hadn’t painted the truck.

It was interesting working with this group of thirty college kids the first month. They were intelligent, which was a switch from the general population of working men around the circus. You only had to show them how to do something once, and they had it. And they solved problems themselves. For instance, there was no need for a sidewall ladder on the show. Several guys would hoist a girl on their shoulders, then walk the sidewall, handing the rope up to the girl, who would thread it through the grommet and hand it down to the guy who would tie it off. The girls always wore shorts and the guys loved it.

I remember once visiting the Christiani Wallace show. They backed a flatbed truck into the tent loaded with wooden chairs ganged in threes. I watched as a workman on the truck picked up the gang of chairs, threw them on the ground, and a workman on the ground picked them up and carried them off. A supervisor came along and stopped them, told the guy on top to hand the chairs to the guy on the ground, so that the chairs wouldn’t be damaged and the guy on the ground wouldn’t have to stoop over and pick them up. When the supervisor left one guy said to another “Why didn’t we think of that?”

The other replied, “We don’t get paid to think. He does”

Although it was refreshing to see these intelligent kids putting up and taking down, there was one negative side to them – we couldn’t get them to put anything away. Whatever props they carried out of the tent got thrown down in the performers’ entrance and it just lay there. Stuff was strewn all over the lot, so it all had to be gathered up the next morning. One good axiom of the circus is “Don’t lay it down”.

The kids did work well together, though. One off evening during the first month we had a gripe session, suggested by and refereed by the chaplain, a young man just out of seminary. The kids really tore each other up, and the adults as well. The next morning I found Charlie totally frantic. He had not worked with teens before, and was not familiar with this kind of group encounter. He had not slept all night, thinking that it was all over; these kids would not work together now that they had been so abusive to each other. He was ready to pack it up and take it home. I had to explain to him that it was the way kids did things, and that the gripe session actually would prove to be of benefit. I got him out of his trailer and indeed he found that everything was okay.

The worst day I experienced with the show was caused by a storm. The first show went okay, but it was windy. During dinner it got really dark, and the wind kicked up really bad. Looking at the empty big top flapping in the wind Charlie said, “It’s going to go down!” We ran to it and started tightening it up. The quarter poles were swinging free as no one had tied them down. I’m surprised someone didn’t get hit. Once we got the tent secure, Charlie order all vehicles off the lot. We drove them to a road beside the lot. Then the rain came and it came in buckets. No one came to the show. The lot was a lake. We had to take it all down, and carry every piece to the trucks. The last piece of course was the big top, which we folded into a long roll, shoved sidepoles under it, and using every person we carried it to the trailer. Needless to say it was a long teardown and everyone was exhausted.

I was contracted to travel with it for its first month, and then once in awhile after that I spent time on the show. As I mentioned in the previous section Pastor Jim Percy and family were on it for a year or two. After 1972 I lost contact with it. I understand that it did indeed go out as a normal circus. It also led to several of the youth continuing in a life with the circus.

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