Circus circus

It's so nice to have friends with little kids, so I can tag along when they go to the circus! I think I was more excited to take Giana to the circus on Saturday than Rebeka was.

I've always loooved the Circus. When The Greatest Show on Earth would come to DC when we were little, mom would take us down to see them unload the train cars and walk the elephants over to the Armory. I used to love Gunther Goebel Williams - he was flashy and fun, and was an expert at making the tigers do exactly what he wanted!

We even skipped class one day, senior year in high school, to go down to the DC Armory to see the circus - we got hopelessly lost along the way, but made it in time to see Gunther. It was his farewell tour -- here's the program that I had kept *forever* -- I think I might have gotten rid of it when I moved to TX. (Drat! might have been worth something!)

Summer of '87, we went to Milwaukee, WI for the APIC National Convention (see previous post about APIC). Mom piled us into the car and we drove to Baraboo, to the Circus World Museum, which displays the artifacts, old train cars, and other historical materials in the place where Ringling Bros. started. Somewhere, I have pictures of me and Bryan and the beautiful antique circus wagons, and even inside a train car with a (fake) gorrilla!

In those days, there were two "versions" of the Ringling Bros shows - the red tour and the blue tour. Now, apparently there are three - red, blue and yellow. The Red tour, the "Bellobration" is what we got in Austin this week. It's all about a clown named Bello... though he's actually much more than a clown - he's a heck of an acrobat, too!

Giana and Nicole were riveted by the whole spectacle, but both admitted that they liked the performing dogs the best. Somehow, the three rings seemed so much larger when I was little. Hmmm. (Here they are goofing off during the intermission) :)

I am interested to learn that Ringling Bros now funds the Center for Elephant Conservation. Good for them.

Comments

allyn fratkin said…
we saw the red tour last year and enjoyed it very much. the gold tour we had this year wasn't quite as good.
12:35 AM
allyn fratkin said…
oops, i mean we had the blue tour this year.
12:37 AM
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