North America's Leading Circus Fan Organization - Founded 1926
News Events Photos Resources About Us

Join
Renew Online
Circus 4 Youth Website
Grassroots.CircusFans.Org
 
wcs2015.com

WCS2015
Souvenir Merchandise!

Back Issues
Conventions
External Links
ShowFolks
AYCO
Circus Model Builders
Witte Museum
Windjammers Circus Music
Circus Historical Society
OABA Logo
FEEDBACK
Click HERE to e-mail your comments about our web site
 

Recollections of a Circus Pastor - Part 3 by The Rev. Don Brewer 

Submitted by Editor on   5/20/2004
Last Modified

Mud shows in the east, 1963-1973

The Robert G. Earl Circus 1965

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

Click Here to list entire series

There were two significant additions to the Earl show of 1965: a new top and an elephant. The top was brand new, gleaming white. I believe it was a 60 foot round with two twenty foot middles. They used the same Ringling quarter poles as their center poles, but the sidepoles were new and taller. That may be a bit confusing, considering I told you that the old top sagged with six foot sidepoles. The difference is that the pitch of the new top was less than the old top. It’s a matter of geometry. The old top had been retired, but the rest of the canvas was the same, as was the rolling stock, except that the concessionaires, Bob’s brother Gene and his wife, had bought a new concession trailer, which meant that they didn’t have to set up a tent and lug the equipment. The show looked much better than the previous year.

The elephant was owned by Roy (Red) Lunsford, the father of Dick Lunsford, and so with the mother the whole Lunsford family was on the show. The elephant’s name was Boo. She was ten years old, and they had acquired her as a baby. The name came from a game they played with her when she was small, where they would yell “BOO” and they would chase her around the farmyard in a game of tag. She loved to play the game, and the name Boo stuck.

The show played Smithton on the same date, and in fact that date became a standard in that town for several years. Several weeks later Bob Earl called me and asked if I could help them out. They had five dates in New York booked, but for whatever reason they no longer had a billposter. Could I take a few days to do their billposting? I had some experience billposting. In 1962 the Beatty show had played Springfield, Ohio, where I was going to school. No show had played Springfield for quite a few years, so the town was fresh. In fact, the show had two straw houses, and I think they even gave a third performance. It was a huge day. Word got around and the next year in addition to Beatty the Christiani Wallace show and the Kelly Miller show booked the town. The Christiani Wallace show was first, and did a lot of billing. I happened to run into the Beatty show billposter as he was hitting town, and since I had finished school and was waiting around for my wife to finish hers, I had time to help him out. He was assigned to spend an entire week making sure that the Beatty show’s prior rights were protected, and I spent every day with him. I learned to paste sheets on fences and use sticks to hang paper in windows, and how to fold cards so that they would stand up straight. I also learned how to approach people to get permission to hang the paper.

I wasn’t sure I could handle doing five towns by myself, so I recruited another circus fan, Wylie Irwin, to help. He was a schoolteacher and had the summer off. I picked Wylie up and we met the show someplace in Western Pennsylvania to pick up the paper. There were two problems. One was that the Earls didn’t have much money, so we were going to have to do this on the cheap. The other was that the town with the closest date had just been booked and there had been no time to get the paper printed. Bob gave us a batch of undated Enquirer posters, and several bottles of rub-on shoe polish. We would have to make our own dates using the show polish. This was in the day before magic markers. Also we were to see the committeeman there and get the contract signed. My recollection is that the town was Salamanca. We got the contract signed, checked the lot, made the posters, hung them, and took off for the next town. We got that town papered, and went on. We stayed one night in a fleabag hotel for six bucks, and ended up papering all five towns in two days.

Dick Lunsford had a wife at the time named Carol, who did a unicycle act. Carol also styled for Dick’s pony act, but they had a constant disagreement about how she did it. She would stand with one hand on her hip, and extend the other hand toward the act. He extended hand was palm up. He would holler at her “Turn your hand over, honey, you look like you’re begging”.

Other additions to the personnel were a Mr. Eastman, who was the announcer. He was a somewhat older gentleman who sat in a lawnchair while announcing the show. There was also a family of clowns, and a new side show operator, and a boss canvassman.

The father of the family of clowns told me that he had been a Roman Catholic priest who’s bishop had pitched him out for some serious infraction that wasn’t his fault. Interestingly enough, I found that there were quite a few men in the circus world who at one time or another had been clergy, but had left the church. Anyway, this man had recently married a woman who had three or four kids. They lived in a converted school bus. The family often got into yelling fights. One day I was visiting the show, and they got into it. Everyone else decided that since I was the pastor I was to go in there and help them work it out. I was pretty inexperienced with that kind of thing, but I went in and spent about an hour listening to everybody’s story. I came out with my head spinning, unable to come up with any idea what to suggest to them. Dick Lunsford was the first person I ran into, and I shared with him my frustration. “Don’t worry about it,” he counseled me. “I figure as long as they are married to each other, they are giving two other people a rest”. You know, that bit of philosophy helped me throughout my ministry more than a lot of the stuff I learned in seminary

The sideshow operator was a man named Peanuts. Peanuts was a sword swallower and fire eater. He also owned a standard side show blade box. While we were with the show I worked the sideshow as magician. Peanuts lived in a superannuated Plymouth sedan with his dog. The entire back seat of the car was full to the windows with stuff, and the blade box lying on top of the pile about window level. That meant that Peanut’s living space was the front seat, shared with the dog. Obviously Peanuts was short several of the essential amenities of life, and he looked it. He was always unkempt. After many years of traveling without washing facilities, the dirt had ground into him and his skin was swarthy, to say the least. One day the performance was delayed, and he was standing around near Bob. Bob turned to him and said, “Since we have a little time to waste here, Peanuts, why don’t you take the opportunity to wash up”. Peanuts, so he claimed, had indeed just washed up and took a bit of umbrage at Bob’s suggestion. In all the years that he had been a fire eater he had burned out all his taste buds. When he came to the dining top he would sit down and start pulling out of his pockets all kinds of bottles of hot sauce, which he would pour liberally on the food, just so he could taste something.

The boss canvasman and his wife got into it often, also, but with a little more dangerous twist. It is common for boss canvasmen to keep a revolver in the trailer as part of his tools. During a rain, sometimes pockets of water would form in the top. Too many of them would cause a strain on the ropes, and could bring the top down. Pockets closer to the ground could be poked with the spike of a sidepole, but that would usually result in a large tear, and pockets in a large top would be too high to reach. Shooting a bullet into the pocket would make a nice neat round hole that would drain the water, cause no tear, and could easily be patched the next morning on the ground. When the boss canvasman’s wife had too much to drink, they would get into an argument and she would go get the revolver, come outside the trailer, and yell that she was going to shoot him. Sometimes she would fire into the air just to get her point across. Everybody could hear them argue, of course, and about the time she came out of the trailer everybody would run for cover.

The clown contingent was often augmented by guest clowns, especially Rod and Pat Wainwright from Erin, NY, who joined us often as we were playing dates in their vicinity in New York. They later retired and traveled with the show full time in the nineties. Another clown pair, Bob-o and Bobino joined the show, and they were sent ahead as an advance team to visit schools and drum up anticipation for the coming show.

The Earls had made the acquaintance of an old railroad showman who live in Mt. Pleasant, PA. He was quite a savvy showbusiness person and I think helped them out a lot in understanding the business. He was one of those oldfashioned showmen who always wore a suit and tie and hat. He visited them often when they were around Western Pennsylvania. Whenever he visited the show, he would take the Earls out to dinner for, he claimed, in all the years he had traveled with the circus, he had never eaten in a cookhouse. I always thought the Earl cookhouse was very good, and enjoyed eating there, not only because of the food but also because of the fellowship of being with the rest of the crew.

While we were with them in New York we played Herkimer (or was it Homer?) on a Monday, so we were on the lot on Sunday. A Circus Model Builder named Milo Smith came and invited us to his house to see his models. Milo lived in an old and ramshackled farmhouse that had been the old family home. He lived alone, as his wife left him because of his circus models. Homer modeled one inch, which means that his seventy foot boxcars, flats, and sleepers were six feet long! The stuff was huge, and literally filled the living area of the house. There was no room for his wife, anyway. His modeling was amazingly good, but the sheer size of it was overwhelming. I understand that when he died his wife made a big pile of it and had a bonfire, a tragic ending to an impressive model circus. I have since seen a display of the carved ring acts, which were somehow saved and now in the collection of Jon Abbott, I believe. Let this be a lesson to you, you CMBers. You have to make arrangements for the preservation of your stuff. And be kind to your wife. Remember, they are not referred to as “dragshoes” because they hold us back, but because they keep us from going downhill too fast.

Gus Lindemann, Roy Lunsford, Mr. Eastman, and the boss canvasman had a daily poker game, which was played in the big top using a piece of performing equipment for a table. When they played Smithton they asked me to join them, and then when we met up with the show to spend our vacation they insisted that I play every day. I have nothing against a friendly game of low stakes poker, so I joined them. These guys were terrible poker players. I was winning all the time. I wasn’t taking in more than five or ten bucks a day, but I felt guilty because they were such bad players and I was taking their money. Yet they wouldn’t let me beg off. I had arranged for another Lutheran pastor to spend a week with his fourteen year old son. He came to me the second day and said that they had invited him to play, and did I mind. I said, “No, I’m glad you can take my place because I’d rather not play them.” He came back from his first game and asked if I had been winning. When I told him I had, he also affirmed that they were bad players and he had won too easily. We then took turns, and tried not to beat them too badly.

This pastor’s name was Jim Lumadue. It was his custom to spend a week each summer doing something different with his son. He had heard of me, and early in the spring he called to inquire if I could arrange for them to spend a week with a circus. I invited him to join the Earl show while we were on it, and agreed that he would rent a trailer and meet us in a town in New York. When he got there, he drove onto the lot in a rented car. He explained that he was not going to be traveling with us. The previous week his brother, a pilot with the Blue Angels, had been killed in a crash during a performance, the first to die so. As a result, Jim was lower than a snake’s belly and simply couldn’t carry out his plans. To say he was depressed would be putting it mildly. But he had told his son they would be on a circus, so he had flown his plane up near the date, rented a car, planned to spend a few hours on the show, then fly home. Showtime came, and the Earls were shorthanded, as always. I asked Jim if he would be willing to butcher in the seats during the performance. He held his head down and stated that he just didn’t have the energy and couldn’t do it. I said “Jim, these folks really need the money. They are in short straits and need all the help they can get”. He finally agreed that he would work the show. He started working the seats and the energy from the show brought him out of his depression and after the show he was so excited that he really wanted to stay the week. That was great, but he had no trailer. As it turned out, he and his son stayed with us in our little pop-up pulled by a Volkswagen beetle for the week. He drove the stock truck, and he and his son had a great time. It’s an interesting example of the power of the circus to make people happy.

The daily poker game got me into trouble with my wife. Doris Earl was teaching my wife the swinging ladder act. Melody came into the top one afternoon, wanting to practice the act. She needed me to swing her, but I was playing poker and I was winning, and protocol demands that the winner cannot leave the game. I tried to explain that to her, but she didn’t buy it and we had quite a chilly rest of the day. Several days later she was ready, and two ladders were hung for Melody and Doris to do a coordinated act. My wife was quite pleased when, at Doris’ arrangement, they were introduced as “The Melody Sisters”.

The booking agent is the most important person on the show. The Earls ran a good circus, but they didn’t have a consistent advance. They spent several weeks in Ripley, NY at a family farm, waiting to get booked. They finished the season, but didn’t go home with a lot of money. The payments on the big top were burdensome, and they had to give it up. It was bought by a sort of combination rep show/stage circus.

Another big factor was the legal consequences of a terrible occurrence. They were playing dates in New Jersey, and had hired a couple with a leopard act. The leopards were worked on leashes, not in a cage. During one of the performances one of the leopards was leashed to and sitting on a pedestal on the bleacher side. Although the announcer had asked that everybody in the audience must stay in their seats, a little boy left his seat and was walking by the pedestal, The leopard leaped on the boy, and taking the boy’s hear in his mouth, dragged him under the pedestal. It was a fatal attack. The couple with the leopards loaded their stuff and left before the authorities could stop them. The legal battle was to torpedo the name of the Robert G. Earl Circus. When Bob and Doris first decided to start a circus, several people suggested that they choose a neutral name, but Bob wanted to run a good family show and wanted to show good faith by using his own name. In the aftermath of the legal battle, he was never able to do that again.

By February of 1966 it was obvious they would not go out that season. Bob and Doris were determined that they were going to get back out, but in the meantime they had to take a break. They spent several years with Sells and Gray and King. Doris did aerial work and Bob was the “Chanty”, the electrical guy. Bob’s family in Ripley, NY have several electrical companies, so this came natural for him. I’m not sure what year they got their own show back on the road, but when they did the title was Robert’s Brothers Circus. By that time their sons, Bobbie and Jeff, were grown and an important part of the show. It was fortunate that they were there, because Bob Earl died rather suddenly of lung cancer, I’m not sure of the year. The boys took over and ran the show until about the year 2000. I think Doris died about 2001. We loved them dearly and remember them often.

Email This Resource



 


Copyright © 1999-2015 Circus Fans Association of America and Authors.
For more information view our  Copyright Policy & Privacy Policy .