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Recollections of a Circus Pastor - Part 7 by the Rev. Don Brewer  Submitted by Member on   9/10/2004 Last Modified Mud shows in the east, 1963-1973 Part VII The D.B.Wharton Circus 1970-1972 By the Rev. Don Brewer (don.brewer@buckeye-express.com) Click Here to list entire series In 1969 we moved to Girard, Pennsylvania. Girard has a rich circus history, being the winter quarters of Dan Rice for thirty years. There are still elements of Dan Rice present there, the most immediately obvious is the Civil War memorial statue that sits literally in the middle of the main street. It was paid for by Dan himself, and sits in front of the property that was his home, now occupied by the municipal building. Remnants of the fence and several statues of the Dan Rice era remain. The grave of his infant daughter is prominent in the cemetery. Shortly after my arrival I got a phone call from a guy who had heard of my circus connection. His name was Luke Warner. Luke had traveled with the John Strong show in California in the fifties. At that time the show consisted of three people- John Strong, his wife, and Luke. Luke was a clown, did rolla bolla, and was a terrific juggler. The show had three trucks and three trailers. Red Lunsford also had a three person show in the south I think in the thirties. It consisted of himself, his wife, and another person. It was more of a wild west show. I mention these two because although I considered the D.B.Wharton Circus to be about as small a show as could be still called a circus, there are the above and probably lots more examples of traveling shows that were even smaller. One day we were playing in the Catskills and a group of young folks from a commune came to see the show. They were so fascinated that they got permission from Dave to make a film of the show. They interviewed everybody. When they were interviewing me I said something about the show being about as small as it could be, and the interviewer said, “Yeah, we figured we would call this film “Circus Minimus”. I got a kick out of that one, and just recently saw a show that actually has that name. These folks were particularly interested in the change that took place when Dave got into clown gear. Setting up the tent he was hell on wheels toward the town kids who were helping him set up. He was really nasty. When he got into his clown gear he was of course as nice as pie. The filmers told me that they were going to feature the contrast from one aspect to the other in their film, because they thought it so significant. We arrived on the show on an off day, so the next morning I got up to help with the set-up. Bob Stephens and his family were on the show, and Bob and his boys were in charge of the tent. As it lay out on the ground I could not help observe how small it was. I think it was about a thirty with two twenty foot middle pieces. I know there were three wooden cernterpoles. I think the seats were seven high. Despite is small size it took a long time to finish the set-up, and the main reason was that the sidewall had no ropes. Bob’s boys would scout the lot looking for pieces of rope, and tie it up with whatever they could find, even wire. Then when it came to teardown they would simply cut it down with pocketknives. After watching this for a couple days I couldn’t stand it any longer and told Dave that if he would spring for side wall rope I would go get it and put it on. He was making money, so he agreed and after that the set-up went a lot easier. He didn’t bother with ring curb. The show traveled on a car carrier, one of those structures that was built to carry five autos. It was an unusual rig for a circus, but as I recall some relative of Dave’s gave it to him. I think it was a dull yellow, and he had a red tractor to pull it. It carried everything,-the top, poles, seats, and stakes. He also had a long trailer that had concession windows at one end, but since he had no other tractor in 1970 he had to double back. Dave lived in the front of the concession trailer. He also had a guanaco and a burro that he displayed around his circus restaurant (see below). They did nothing, he simply tied them out for the public to see. It was his menagerie. The small stock truck that carried them pulled the concession trailer. The 1970 show consisted of Yvonne Steven’s dog act, Yvonne and daughter Lee Ann on ladder and web, and aerial leg perch. Several years later Lee Ann married Jeff Earl and he mother and father traveled with the Earl show (Roberts Bros.) after that. Another couple did aerial type acts but their rigging sat on the ground because the top was not strong enough to hang rigging. I don’t remember their names except that hers was Elena. That winter they were in Pittsburgh on a Shrine show when their rigging failed and she was seriously injured. We added our magic and balloon sculpturing acts and I did a chin balancing act for the two weeks or so we were on the show. Dave did announcing and clowning. The music was provided by a record player. He had only one small generator, and during the performance whenever the concessionaire would turn on the floss machine there was not enough power to run the record player and the music would slow down to a crawl until the floss machine was running, then go back to normal again. It certainly didn’t do anything for the quality of the performance. In 1971 Dave had a partner or two. He had a wonderful elephant named Jenny, who was about as nice an animal as could be. She had her own trailer, and all you had to do was say “Get in the house, Jenny,” and she would climb right in. She did a nice act. The Stevens family was on the show again, with the same acts they did the previous year. My wife Melody had learned a trapeze act that spring, which we added to our offerings. Dave had come up with a new top, a little larger, but the centerpoles were too short so it sagged a bit. Bob Stevens came up with the idea to have sleeves made to put on the top of the poles, which helped. We could rig the poles with a dead man to hang Melody’s aerial rigging. Joe Myers had retired from the police force in Albany, NY, so he was traveling with the show and doing the clowning. Also there was another couple with two daughters who did some clown type acts. On an off Sunday in Hallstead, PA the elephant was staked out on the lot and the crew was taking it easy. A car drove onto the lot and right up to Jenny’s trunk. It was a family just getting home from swimming. Jenny was curious as to what they had in the car, so she stuck her trunk in the open window and started to inspect everything she could find. She was rocking the car and there was a lot of screaming inside. Jenny found a swim towel that smelled pretty good, so she ate it. The father of the family took exception to that, and did a lot of complaining. We told him that he was the one who drove up to the elephant, which was a dumb thing to do. A little later another family came on the lot. It was a mother and father pushing a baby stroller. They got into a conversation with Joe Myers. Joe had picked up a couple of ripe cantaloupes, and he offered on to the couple. They took it and put it in the basket behind the stroller. They left Joe and walked over to Jenny, pushing the stroller right up to her trunk. Apparently the towel was not enough to satisfy Jenny’s appetite. She smelled the melon and stuck the end of her trunk around the stroller after it. Dad pulled the stroller back, but Jenny wasn’t about to let go. So here is the stroller complete with kid hanging four feet off the ground, Jenny pulling one way, dad pulling the other and mother and kid screaming. Joe was down the lot and came running yelling “Give her the melon, give her the melon!” Several of us got there about the same time and convinced Jenny to let go, and the couple did give her the melon. It’s amazing what people will do around an elephant. A related story from Dave Wharton. He owned a circus restaurant at his home in Maryland, around Baltimore, I think. He had some animal cages outside, including a bear. About this time there was a TV show called “Ben and Me”, about a tame bear. One day a man brought his granddaughter to see the bear. He reached inside the closed fence gate and unlocked it, brought the girl in, lifted her up and set her on the apron of the cage. The bear reached under, grabbed her feet, pulled her in up to her knees, and proceeded to chew on her. People see these “tame” animals on TV and think they are all like that. It cost Dave quite a bit, and I think he lost the restaurant as a result. A couple days after we joined the show the partner showed up with a flatbed trailer on which was a wheeled cage with two black bears. He had apparently just bought them somewhere. They were a male and a female, and supposedly did an act, but the new owner had no idea how to work them. So the rolling stock consisted of the car carrier, the concession trailer, the flatbed with the bears, and the semi trailer with the elephant. And two tractors. This of course meant that they had to do a lot of doubling back, which slowed things down. They finally decided to consolidate by putting the bear cage in the back of the elephant semi. They did not, however, consult Jenny on this arrangement. It was unacceptable to her. The evening after they had put the bears in the semi, Jenny refused to go in. It took a full two hours of beating on her before they finally got her in the truck. This repeated itself every night. Although we intended to come home after our usual two weeks, they had booked ten days at the Reading Fair and asked Melody to stay on through the fair. We made arrangements for me to take the bus home the day they were to jump to the fair, and leave my wife and kids with the circus for a while longer. Melody woke me up that morning to tell me that one of the bears was loose, and Joe and I and Joe’s nephew Terry were the only men on the lot, the rest having taken the first vehicles to the fairgrounds. Unwillingly I left the trailer to go see the situation. The female bear had managed to push the back door of the cage open enough to crawl out. The opening was not big enough for the big male to get out. We had sugar cubes and we had Ritz crackers. I kept the female busy with the sugar cubes while Terry fed Ritz crackers to the male at the front of the cage, keeping him busy so that Joe could reach through the chain link and grab the choker chain that was around the bear’s neck. He stuck a stake through the ring in the chain, which left the bear unable to move away from the front of the cage. That allowed us to open the back door of the cage and coax the female back in with the sugar cubes. We then closed the door and rechained it, released the male, and went back to our trailers to change our pants. It is my understanding that when they left Reading after the fair and were going down the highway to the next location Jenny got enough slack in her chain to push that bear cage right out the back door and onto the highway. That must have been exciting, too. For the 1972 season Dave hired my wife Melody for the summer. Shortly after school was over she loaded up our three daughters and joined him in Maryland. It was a really small show. It consisted of Dave as announcer and clown, Melody with trapeze, magic, and balloon sculpturing, and Jane Randall with dog act, pony act, and horse act. The lineup was: Melody trapeze Jane dogs Dave clown Melody magic Jane ponies Dave clown Melody balloon sculpturing Jane horse. Needless to say the show rarely ran an hour. And everybody had to be ready before they could start the show. One day Jane was late getting ready, and Melody was standing in the door waiting. All of a sudden the sleeve on the top of one of the poles slipped off, the pole came down between two sections of seats, and Melody’s aerial rigging crashed against the remaining pole. Had Jane been on time, Melody would have been on that rigging. And there was nobody standing in the place where the pole fell. Nobody hurt. Jane traveled with a bus and a truck. She and the dogs lived in the bus. She had big dogs, eight or nine of them, chows, keeshonds, and Norwegian elkhounds. Because her dogs were so big her equipment was big, also, and heavy. I understand that one time she was playing in a Shrine show and they asked her to leave because her equipment was just too big and heavy to manage. The stuff was built by her husband Vince. Vince lived in the cab of the truck, and the ponies and horse in the back. The horse was Jane’s pride and joy. It was a Morgan, a large horse. She claimed that she was in the circus only because it was the only way she could afford to own such a horse. She made her own costumes out of stuff she would buy at used clothing stores. She didn’t have much color sense, so as far as she was concerned if two pieces of clothing shared a color, they went together, never mind if one was striped and the other plaid. It made for some strange looking wardrobe. The show wasn’t very well booked. He did not used a booking agent. Dave had simply contacted past committees by phone during the winter and set up any route he could. The show played only two or three days a week. They were playing the Hallstead lot mentioned above on a Friday when the backlash from Hurricane Agnes hit. They finished the show in the rain. Fortunately a lot of the town folks stayed around after the show and helped them get off the lot. They spent the night at the edge of the road, in a torrent of rain and wind. The Saturday date was flooded out. The next date was Monday in Richfield Springs, NY. The lot was under water, so Dave had to tell them he couldn’t set up the tent. It was a relief to him, as on the way he had blown the engine and the rig was in the shop, anyway. I joined the show there and we played what we could in an ex-Methodist Church which was used as a community center. Dave informed us that he had no more dates for the week, and the next date was the following Monday, and he wasn’t even sure of that. It had been a shaky booking, and he had been getting road messages from the committee for several days. He didn’t get back to them because he figured they wanted to cancel and he didn’t want to know. We told him we would meet him there on Sunday. Now here is what I consider the prime example of how crazy this business is. I don’t remember whether it was Fred Bradna or Emmett Kelly who wrote something to the effect that circus people do not commit suicide, because suicide is an act of someone who has no hope, and life in the circus is so up and down circus people always think things will be better tomorrow. Or, as Dick Lunsford once told me, “I can’t wait to get up in the morning and see what this business is going to do to me next.” Here’s how it happened to us. We met the show the following Sunday afternoon. As we got to the lot Dave was setting up the tent singlehanded. He had actually managed to get it in the air all by himself. He told us that, as he suspected, the committee had cancelled the date and sent all the posters and tickets back to winterquarters. There was no publicity and no tickets had been sold. No one knew we were coming. He contacted the committee man and received this information, and the asked if he could go ahead and set up and do the shows anyway. The committeeman agreed to take the percentage of the door. So Dave was setting up the top hoping that folks driving by would see it and know something was doing on. I pitched in and we got the top up and sidewalled. I then took some blank posters, printed the info with liquid shoe polish, and went around town putting them up where I could. Showtime the next day was two o’clock. There were four paying customers, plus the committeeman and his family, an audience of eight. Playing to an audience of eight seemed ridiculous, so I asked Dave if we could just return their money and ask them to come back for the evening show. He replied that he was broke, and if he returned their money he wouldn’t have anything to eat on that day. So we did the show for eight. He had enough money to buy some bread and baloney for himself and the concessioner. The evening show had a few more people, enough to get us through the next day. Since Dave had nothing booked for the next day he got permission from the committeeman to stay an extra day. Tuesday’s receipts were enough for gas necessary to get us to the next town, eleven miles away. Now comes the big surprise. Wednesday’s committee had done a great job with publicity and had sold all their tickets. We had two full houses. Dave’s pockets were bulging. Next day’s town had a fancy buffet and Dave took us there to the most expensive dinner I had eaten up to that time. So proves the old circus ideal, “Tomorrow could be better”. I talked about Dave’s pockets bulging. Dave kept no financial records. He just stuffed money in his pockets. He claimed that reporting income taxes was only for those who were making money, and he wasn’t making any money, so he didn’t report it. I will say that he treated us right all the time. When he had money he paid Melody every day, and when he didn’t have it he made up the difference as soon as he could. I think he treated Jane the same way. Dave loved to eat. He must have tipped the scales close to 300 pounds. Since the show had no facilities for cooking, he ate off the lot when he could. He loved New York, because he could always find a fair or festival somewhere nearby. I regularly went with him to these events after we had put the show to bed, because I had a car and could drive. He could put away an enormous amount of food at these events. Melody stayed with him until school started for the kids. Dave though Melody was terrific because she could do so many acts, and several times made the observation that if I ever got tired of her he would gladly marry her. I understand that some time later he did find someone and got married. I never saw him again after that summer, but I hope he had a happy life. We had a lot of fun being on his show. Email This Resource   Copyright © 1999-2015 Circus Fans Association of America and Authors. For more information view our  Copyright Policy & Privacy Policy .

Most Viewed Hair hang Videos for Loan from the CFA Education Committee Tent 2 - Adam Forepaugh-Barry Lubin "Grandma" Adam Forepaugh (February 28, 1831-January 20, 1890) Throw your hat in the ring Last Viewed Recollections of a Circus Pastor - Part 7 by the Rev. Don Brewer Get on the band wagon! Tent 109 - George A. Hamid Cattle Guard Tent 41 - Emmett Kelly