The Greatest Shows on Earth

I was never much of a circus fan when I was a kid.  The Ringling Bros., Barnum and Bailey three-ring circus would come to the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena in Green Bay and my parents or one of the other neighborhood parents would take a group of kids to see it.

I think, part of the reason, I never really connected with the circus was because I never aspired to become a circus performer.  I read Claude Bottom’s fabulous autobiography, “Life of a Lion Tamer” but I never considered taking up the profession.  It wasn’t like when I walked into County Stadium in Milwaukee to see the Braves play and pictured myself on the mound in the seventh game of the World Series.  I just never saw myself as circus material.

Another reason I wasn’t a big fan was, at a relatively young age, I was offended by the hype and over the top exploitation of kids the circus people employed to separate parents from their money.  They would turn off the lights in the arena and walk down the aisles with all kinds of junk that lit up and sparkled driving the little consumers wild with desire for this over priced crap.  They didn’t just do this once, but over and over until the kids were crazy and the parents gave up. The stuff almost always broke on the way home in the car and ended up thrown in a toy box where it was eventually thrown out years later.  After all, Barnum was right in the circus’s title.

So it came as a surprise to me that when I was in my early 20’s and traveling around Latin America that I would become a big fan of the little circuses that would travel from small town to small town and entertain the local populace.

I think there were two reasons these circuses appealed to me.  First, and this remains true to this day, this is purely local entertainment.  It is seldom you run into tourists at these venues.  They are all single ring, small tent affairs and I find it interesting to see what the people enjoy on their nights out.

The second reason I became a fan was that you never knew what you were going to see and sometimes the acts were truly whacked-out crazy.  The larger first world circuses were pretty predictable stuff but these small budget Latin American circuses had to get creative in the entertainment they presented and it was practically guaranteed that you would see something unexpected before the night was over.

In the early and mid seventies the circuses didn’t travel with much in the way of animals.  There may be a dog act that consisted of a couple of dogs doing the same tricks your cousin taught his dog to do when you were a kid.  There might be a pony thrown in once in a while but animals were expensive and these were shoestring operations.  So they had to rely on humans to carry the show.  The tents were small and the bleachers were often skinny boards lashed together with rope.  If there was a trapeze artist, his back would literally hit the top of the tent on the backswing and his feet would hit it as he swung forward.  Every seat was right on top of the action.

To give you a flavor of what these shows were like let me (try to stop me) describe a circus I saw in Ecuador in the mid seventies.  The first act was perhaps my favorite.  A middle-aged woman came out and paraded around the ring wearing what can best be described as a drum majorette’s costume from the 50”s.  It had been washed so often that the colors were just a hint of what they had once been.  She was also wearing a pair of tattered fishnet stockings.

While she walked around the ring throwing here arms in the air, an assistant brought out a wooden table and placed it in the center of the ring.  While the assistant waited, the woman finished her circuit and laid belly down on the table.  The artist brought her legs up like a teenage girl lying on her bed, and the assistant lit a cigarette and placed it between the artist’s big and second toes.  She then proceeded to arch her leg in such a way that she was able to smoke the cigarette with her foot.  She calmly smoked the heater and when she was done, so was her act.  Spectacular!

For years now, I have speculated about her act.  How was it developed?  Was she from a branch of the famous Wallenda family that disputed what specialty the family should pursue resulting in one branch flying and the other foot smoking?  Or, was this woman identified at an early age as someone, who had the God given talent to some day, if she worked hard, become a foot smoker?  Unfortunately, these questions will never be answered and I am left to wonder.

The next performer, admittedly, had a tough act to follow.  As he entered the ring wearing what can only described as an old pair of Festus Hagen’s long handles, the assistant brought two wooden straight back chairs into the ring.  Furniture played a big part in this circus.  The artist then placed his heels on the edge of one chair and the back of his head on the other chair.  The assistant placed a big rock on the performer’s stomach and brought out a sledgehammer.  He proceeded to whack the rock with the hammer until it finally broke.  Ta Da!  It was a noble effort, but I still had to give the nod to the foot smoker for pure entertainment.

The final act was an acrobat who used all of the furniture that had been used in the previous two acts.  I bet they ate their post show meal on that very same furniture.  This guy’s specialty was balancing on top of a combination of beer bottles and furniture.  At that time in Ecuador, they sold beer in 22 oz. bottles.  The deposit on the bottles was actually worth more than the beer in the bottles.  It was these 22 ouncers he was using in his act.  As it turned out, it was a pretty amazing act as he balanced one leg of a chair on one beer bottle and then balanced himself on the back of the chair.  In this way he built a pyramid of sorts consisting of chairs and beer bottles, and eventually the foot smoker’s table, all the while balancing on the top of the pile.  This guy had talent and deserved a lot of credit for putting together an act out of next to nothing.  His act was the finale and fitting finish to a great show.

All of this cost about 30 cents.  Where else could you get that type of entertainment value?  The crowd had cheered throughout and left happy.  I was hooked.

Through the years, we have seldom passed up the opportunity to see one of these circuses.  And so it was, Pat and I found ourselves in line to get into “The Circus of Peking China” the other night in Zihuatanejo.  These guys must have been on the road so long that they were unaware that Peking was now called Beijing.  Once again, we were the sole gringos in attendance.  But the entertainment bar has been raised in Mexico.

Through the years the circus has slowly but surely followed the same path as TV and become more sophisticated.  I remember watching a game show in a small tienda in Mexico nearly 40 years ago.  At the end of the telecast, the winner was established and her prize was a metal cooking pot -- just a pot.  The winner hugged that pot like Honey Boo Boo’s mother hugs a pork chop.  She was genuinely excited to have won a cooking pot.  Those days are long gone.  Watching Mexican TV isn’t all that much different now than watching U.S. TV.  The soaps are more dramatic and romantic but the production values have pretty much caught up with the U.S.  And the most important part of TV, the advertising, is as slick as the stuff that bombards us every hour of every day.  Also, those Mexicans who have cable get a lot of programming from the U.S.  As a result, people’s tastes and expectations have changed.

The Circus of Peking China reflected these changes.  There was still one ring but the tent was larger and the seats were molded plastic with backs.  The show featured a troop of actual Chinese acrobats who were very talented and professional.  There was a Mexican juggler who was also very good.  He finished his act by getting on his back and having a metal cylinder placed on his feet.  His young son and daughter attached them selves to either end of the cylinder and he proceeded to spin them around at crazy speeds.  His kids are either going to be the first Mexican astronauts or have their brains turned to jelly by the time they reach the age of twelve.

The biggest change was probably the animals.  This circus was travelling around with ten Bengal tigers, camels (one and two humpers), zebras, horses, a Clydesdale, a miniature horse, and giraffes.  Putting aside the whole issue of animals in the circus, I have to say that these animals looked as if they were well taken care of and those that performed were lively and well trained.

One of the best moments of the circus was when three young women led three giraffes into the ring.  Kids were recruited from the audience and were formed into three lines, one in front of each giraffe.  The kids had a rectangular cracker of some sort put into their mouths and then one by one were brought forth to stand in front of the huge beasts.  The giraffe would bend its long graceful neck down to the kid’s face and snatch the cracker.  Sometimes the kid got his face washed and their reactions ranged from excited to appalled. In case you were wondering, giraffes eating crackers generate a lot of saliva. During the intermission, families, for a price, could come down and have their pictures taken with a giraffe.  I guess the cracker trick was about the only thing you could train a giraffe to do in a circus but that seemed to be enough for the crowd.

All in all, it was a very different circus from the ones we used to see years ago.  The talent was better and the show was grander.  The price was also higher ($7.75) to support the larger tent, the more expensive human talent and the travelling menagerie.  It was a fun night, but I can’t tell you I enjoyed it quite as much as I did years ago when anything could be and was marched out into the ring for our amazement and entertainment.  I am holding out hope that foot smoking will once again become in vogue, but I guess I’m just being nostalgic.