Tag Archives: Barnum & Bailey

Column Reader Is A Real Clown

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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To extend the metaphor from this space a week ago, my email inbox spilled over with responses about my column headlined “Having a laugh over spilled milk.”

Before proceeding with one note in particular that tickled my funny bone, let me backtrack and quote that column’s meandering opening sentence to set the stage for what will then follow:

“Imagine a tiny car in a circus where clown after clown after clown climbs out, a veritable boxcar’s worth of clowns emerging in all, and you get an idea of what happened when I carelessly knocked over a tall drinking glass while reaching for the breakfast menu and a tsunami of iced tea, a gallon wave impossibly squeezed inside a 16-ounce plastic tumbler, washed over the entire tabletop before cascading onto my lap and vinyl booth seats and tile floor.”

Tim Torkildson, who lives in Provo, Utah, came across my words after Googling the keyword “circus” as he routinely does, and kindly responded: “Dear Mr. Woodburn, I congratulate you on your colorful and whimsical comparison of a clown car with a tall glass of cascading iced tea. It summons up a fetching image that I enjoyed. So thanks for that.”

Here is where his letter, and fine storytelling, made my cup runneth over with mirth…

“As a garrulous retired professional circus clown I cannot help sharing the briefest of memories with you of the real clown car. The one I was stuffed, crammed, and pummeled into at Ringling Brothers some fifty years ago.

“It was a Gremlin hatchback, and after stripping the interior we managed to fit fifteen clowns into it. As one of the tallest buffoons in clown alley, I was assigned the very bottom-most tier. With fourteen other bodies piled on top of me.

“It was a mobile Black Hole of Calcutta. Those above me wriggled, sweated, belched, and farted. Since I was the first one in, I was naturally the last one out. And believe me, when my turn came at last I shot out of that benighted Gremlin like a bat out of purgatory. Gasping and panting, I was knocked on the head with a foam rubber truncheon by the whiteface constable and then smacked in the kisser with a shaving cream pie.

“It was a cramped and messy entr’acte, repeated twice a day and three times on Saturday. The day I left Ringling Brothers to join an international pantomime troupe in Mexico I hooted out loud like a maniac loon at the thought of no more buttocks thrust willy-nilly into my mug.

“And now, a half-century later, with bad knees and a bad back, as I recline in my Barcalounger, I kinda miss it…”

I further learned that Torkildson, aka Dusty the Clown, is the son of a bartender; grew up in Minneapolis; and in high school, during his senior year, was accepted to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.

After his Ringling Brothers heyday and Mexico nights, Dusty says he performed as a “merry andrew”—a person who amuses others by ridiculous behavior—at countless venues, from schools and prisons to Disneyland and even played Ronald McDonald, “to keep bread on the table and the wolf from getting too far inside the door.”

Just as the happier image of a Gremlin door forced shut with 15 big-shoed clowns shoehorned inside made me laugh, Dusty’s lovely closing to his note made my heart spill over with nostalgia as I felt 8 years old again and under the Big Top for the first time: “May all your days be circus days.”

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Add Circus to Memory Lane

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Add the Circus to Our Memory Lane

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! BOYS AND GIRLS OF ALL AGES! WELCOME TO TODAY’S ‘GREATEST COLUMN ON EARTH!’ I AM YOUR RINGMASTER, WOODY. LET THE READING BEGIN!”

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that, after a 146-year run as “The Greatest Show on Earth,” it is folding up its big-top tents for good in May.

Another piece of Americana bite the sawdust, but the wistful handwriting was on the wall when the pachyderms packed up their trunks a couple years ago and moved off to retirement villages. Some people are angry at animal rights groups for breaking up the band, so to speak, but I applaud the efforts of PETA and others.1elephant

As a wide-eyed young boy going to the circus, I marveled at the trapeze acts and the flying man shot from a canon and the lion tamer, but I was most mesmerized by the elephants. However, as a man taking my own children – once, and only once – I felt deep remorse at the servitude of these grand animals for our amusement.

Without elephants on the marquee, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus pretty much became “The OK-est Show on Earth.” Replacing the majestic march of elephants with sequined performers riding a caravan of camels was like replacing a tour of the Giant Sequoias in Yosemite National Park with a visit to a Christmas tree farm in Somis.

It is joyless to say goodbye after nearly 150 years of memory-making history, and yet it seems well past time to do so. Sure, the trapeze artists can still provide a thrill, but let’s be honest – you can witness more thrilling gravity-defying acts at any local skateboard park or parkour gathering.

Lion tamers? Again, the once death-defying act has lost its adrenaline rush as the big cats have become more lethargic than an aerophobic passenger made calm by Quaaludes. A more energetic example of animal training is to watch dogs in an agility contest where they jump through hoops, walk across seesaws, and zig-zag through slalom poles.

On and on, all the acts of the famous three rings can be found outside the big top – often in even more exciting forms.

As for the clowns, we still have Washington, D.C.

1clownAll that said, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was a national treasure and to have it close shop brings a sense of loss. And if the biggest of the big tops folds up, it is hard to imagine the smaller circus companies surviving much longer either.

This pending extinction of the circus brought to my mind some other heirlooms of my youth that now exist only in memories and attics. It is strange to imagine that the circus joining these artifacts, not to be experienced by future generations. Things like:

Wood baseball bats, wood tennis rackets, wood drivers.

Manual typewriters and the pleasing feeling striking the keys with a little oomph.

Rotary phones. What I most remember is how long it took a “0” to rotate back when you dialed it, and of course a “9” nearly as long, and how frustrating it was when your finger would slip out prematurely when dialing one of these numbers and you had hang up and start anew.

LP records and 45s; 8-tracks and cassettes; movie projectors and VHS tapes.

Filling station attendants who cleaned the windshield and checked the oil.

Glass soda bottles that you could return to the store and get back a 5-cent deposit. And using a “church key” to open a can of pop.

The milkman, who left your regular order in an insulated milk box on your doorstep. And if you wanted something different, you tucked a rolled-up note halfway in the top of an empty milk bottle.

Three TV channels. And the “remote control” was the youngest sibling in the room. And rabbit ears.

Newspapers delivered by boys, and sometimes girls, tossing strikes while riding bikes.

“NOW SAY GOODBYE TO THE CIRCUS, BOYS AND GIRLS! AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, DRIVE HOME SAFELY.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

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