Chapter IX: “the Circus Man’s Best Friend”

A long time ago, when I was a yellow-haired boy—I’m bald and a bit old now—the Wild West Show of Buffalo Bill came to town, and I was one of those lucky persons who could set the alarm clock, and then, in answer to its call, watch the circus arrive without even budging out of bed. For I lived near the “show lot” where all the big circuses gave their exhibits, and I felt that life held something more for me than for the ordinary boy.

I say I _could_ watch the show without leaving bed. But I didn’t. No boy does. And it happened that during the course of the morning, wandering about, I came upon a canvas man bending over a ripped portion of the circus tent where it lay stretched on the ground, striving aimlessly to sew the rent with a broken needle.

“Hello, kid!” he greeted me. “Run home and get me a good needle, will you?”

“Gi’ me a ticket to the show?” I asked in reply.

“No—I can’t. They don’t let us working fellows give tickets away.”

Just the same, I got the needle, and on my return, the canvas man looked up with a grin.

“You kids are the best friends we’ve got!” he announced, and I ran home to tell the news,—that a circus man had said that boys were the best—

But there came a sniff from my sister.

“He only said that because he wanted the needle,” was her caustic comment. “I notice he didn’t give you a ticket.”

Twenty years later, I stood on the steps of my private car, and strangely enough it was one of the managerial cars of the show of which Buffalo Bill formed the chief feature. Things had changed a bit since the olden days when I salvaged the needle. Now I counted Buffalo Bill as my friend and comrade, the destinies of six hundred people and two great trains of circus paraphernalia were under my partial control and—

“Kid,” I said, as a boy passed and I leaned out from the vestibule, “run over to the circus lot and ask the boss canvas man if he’s going to be able to get the tent up on time for the afternoon show. We got in here late, you know.”

“Yes, sir!” and the boy was gone. Five minutes later, he returned, panting. “He’s going to get it up all right.”

“Thanks,” I said, and grinned. “You kids are the best friends we’ve got.”

Then something crossed my mind,—a picture of twenty years before. I reached into a pocket for my pad of reserved seat passes.

“Guess you’ve got a friend?” I asked, and the boy nodded. A moment later, he was running away shouting,—and clasping tight at tickets for two grand-stand seats.

Nor was it all memory that prompted the gift of three dollars’ worth of seats for a ten-cent errand. It was the general knowledge that I had spoken the truth, and that this boy represented other boys,—boys who not a week before had saved the whole circus, who had made it possible for the doors to open, and the thronging mass of people, representing thousands and thousands of dollars, to crowd through the main gates and in to the performance. More, were it not for the boys of the United States, the boys who cluster about the long circus trains in the gray of morning, who rally to the call of the boss canvas man and stay by him through thick and thin until the last stringer is laid and the last duty done,—the big circuses of the country would not be able to run at all! Therefore, is it any wonder that we call them our buddies?

The boys, collectively, and that includes youngsters from twelve to eighteen years of age, are counted upon by the circus as a part of their equipment, in just as important a sense as the railroad cars themselves, or the tents or the performers and executive staff. And for this reason:

The present-day circus is too gigantic a thing to be handled by its creators alone, where the matter of manual labor is concerned. The tremendous spread of canvas, the vast amount of “hand work”, the intricate details, the necessity for hundreds, yes, even thousands of hands ready to grasp this piece of trapping or that bit of rope, these things are too numerous and great in expanse to be coped with by the ordinary amount of labor which can be carried on the long trains. Often, too, it is impossible to procure that labor. The inroads of harvest time in Kansas, the lure of high wages at the various mines when the shows strike the metal belts, the constant drift and flow of men make it next to impossible at times to procure the necessary number of laborers needed to daily erect the numberless tents which cluster about the “big top”, and to put into place the tier upon tier of seats needed for the influx of the matinée and night crowds. But the show cannot stop for that. It is an inexorable rule of circusdom that the show must go on—on—in spite of rain, in spite of fire and flood, in spite of wrecks, of illness or death.

Therefore, the shortage or absence of workmen cannot and must not stop the circus. Nor does it; for there is always one element that can be depended upon, always one group of persons who will not fail,—the boys. And it is to them that the circus looks for aid in all times and for salvation in the hour of need.

What do they do? Theirs are the willing tasks that can be achieved better by youthful hands than by stronger ones; theirs the enthusiasm that even the loyal “roughneck”—and those coarse men of the circus _are_ loyal—cannot fulfill in as good a measure. On every circus, at the time the regular admission tickets are printed and the gilded passes put into their pads and apportioned to the various agents and members of the executive staff, great piles of square, white tickets are also given out to the bosses of the working crews. And these tickets—passes in truth—are labelled with something fraught with meaning:

“BOY’S TICKET.”

They are the tickets that some day during the long season, some gloomy hour in the progress of the big show, may save the circus! But first to the ordinary dependence upon the best friend that the circus possesses, the boy:

You’ll hear the call early in the morning, even before the switch engines have ceased clanging, and the steel runs have been shoved to the ground by the cook house crew and razorbacks, that the cook house and range wagons may be run from the flat cars and transported to the circus lot for the preparation of breakfast. You’ll hear it from the leather lungs of the boss canvas man and his assistant, busy in the rounding up of the “big top” crew in the semi-darkness; from the lips of the head menagerie men down at the big cars which convey the elephants or “bulls”, the horses or “ring stock”, and the smaller, hay-eating animals of the menagerie, known as the “led stock.” You’ll hear it echoing all along the lengthy sections of the circus train, the same message voiced in different tongues:

“Hey, boys! Step lively there! Want to go to the circus?”

And the call is always answered. As the long pole and “stringer” wagons pull away from the circus train, drawn by their broad-backed draught stock of from eight to twelve horses, you’ll find perched upon those wagons the inevitable clusters of town urchins, beginning their work of the day. As the “led stock” starts on its tramp to the lot, you’ll find the leaders to be the youngsters who have arisen long before daybreak “to see the circus come in.” As the canvas wagons depart, they too will have their apportionment of youthful workers, and more than once, standing beside the boss canvas man on some gloomy, drizzling morning, I’ve seen him nod his head and heard the cheery remark that all circus men yearn for:

“Oh, we’ll get up in good time to-day! The lot’s a little sandy, and it’s a long haul, but we’ll make it. There are plenty of boys!”

In that last sentence lies the explanation. It means that the difficulties which the weather has placed upon the circus have been overcome by an outside influence, that the obstacles in the path of the show have been met and conquered through an ever ready ally,—the boys.

How willing they are! When the big top, or main tent, is stretched, preparatory to the raising, boys are side by side with the regular workmen of the circus, pulling and tugging away at the heavy sheets of tenting, so that they may be laced into place about the bale-rings of the center poles. When the “stringer” and “jack” and “plank wagons”, carrying the various portions of the seating arrangements, pull into position, it is the boys who drag the loads from the pile into which they are tossed and lug them into place under the canvas. When there is straw to be sprinkled over wet or muddy ground, you’ll find there long strings of youngsters hurrying along at a “double”, their arms full of straw, an endless chain of activity, all working toward the end that the circus grounds may be inviting for the circus throngs, all imbued within a moment, it seems, with that rule of circusdom: “The show must go on!”

The morning is the rush time of the circus. In only a few hours, the big show must be unloaded from the trains which have brought it from the last town and hauled to the circus grounds, a distance varying from a quarter of a mile to three miles. From twelve to fifteen tents must be laid out and raised, the cook house, the horse tents, the blacksmith shop, the menagerie tents, the side show, the dressing “top”, the “juice joints” or lemonade stands, and the “big top” itself, covering alone a space ranging from three to five hundred feet long, and from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty feet wide. Into this big top must be placed seating arrangements for from five thousand to fifteen thousand persons. And did you ever stop to consider what a tremendous throng fifteen thousand persons really is? It means that enough seats must be put into place to accommodate a whole village; that the people themselves, if placed in a single line, and each one occupying a foot of space, would stretch for nearly three miles!

Seats for three miles of humanity! And all raised within a few hours, at a time when every section of the lot is clamoring for aid. The parade must be made ready. The wagons must be washed and cleansed, if they have been in mud the day before. The cages of the cat animals must be cleaned, food must be brought for the greedy elephants, the rough spots of the hippodrome track must be cleared away with hoe and grub hook, lest a hummock bring death to some rider, or break an axle of the plunging chariots, with the attendant injury to horse, driver, and even the spectators. Everything is happening at once; for every hand there is a double burden. And it is then that the boy is more than welcomed.

The seats are placed in position mainly through his aid. The quarter poles, which support that part of the tent leading from the ridge to the eaves, are raised by him. The outer poles, supporting the canvas at the spots where the guy ropes leave the eaves to be connected to the stakes, stand staunch and true to their duty through the exertion of youthful muscle. The thousand errands of the circus lot are run, the hay and straw are distributed through the menagerie, the ponies are cared for, and—

But there is one thing that is not done! No water is carried for the elephants! That is a relic of a bygone day. In these times, the big circus is too efficient, too jealous of every possible moment of time saved, to allow boys to carry water for elephants. That is taken care of by a special water trough which is carried by the show, and which is unloaded at the nearest fire hydrant, and to which the elephants are led. There are too many other duties for the boys to permit them to waste time and effort watering elephants!

It is a fight against time, every moment, every second. Downtown the bands are blaring and the crowds watching the various samples of tinsel and spangle which the show puts on view to lure the throngs to the circus lot. Minutes are passing. By one o’clock, everything must be ready. Barking shouts sound from the bosses around the lot, but by a staunch rule of the circus, there is little swearing. For a reason of business efficiency, to say nothing of the moral side. If there is swearing and coarseness, parents may refuse to allow their boys to help “put up the show.” And without those boys, there may be disaster. One o’clock drawing nearer, nearer. Then the gates must be opened and the waiting crowds allowed to enter. It seems impossible, yet it is done. I have seen the circus in many a tight place. And I have seen it pulled out of that tight place—by boys!

For instance, Astoria, Oregon. If you never have been there, let it be known that Astoria is a town built upon stilts. Owing to the tides which back up the Columbia, it was necessary, in building the town, to raise it above the seepage and creeping influx of the water, with the result that there is not a vacant lot in the whole city that is on a level with the streets. More, the one lot which could be reached by the circus—it was the Sells Floto-Buffalo Bill Show in 1916—was nearly a foot deep in sand.

The menagerie was left on the sort of bridge-viaduct which formed the main street of the town. The show lot was twenty feet below this level, with not a single runway or incline by which the wagons could be taken on the lot itself. Every bit of canvas, every stringer, every piece of paraphernalia, every pole, every chandelier, absolutely everything which went into the making of that circus, must be placed on that lot by hand and carried through the shifting sand from fifty to five hundred feet!

It was almost impossible to unload. The elephants, used in pulling and pushing the heavy wagons from the trains, broke through the boarding of the causeways, and squealing, retreated, for an elephant is afraid of an unsound footing. The horses were nearly useless. An hour passed, two—three. The owner of the show, traveling along with it for a few weeks, sought out Bill Curtis, the boss canvas man.

“We’re not going to be able to make it!” he announced.

Bill smiled. “Yes, we will!”

“How?”

“I’ve got Shorty and Fullhouse out in town, rounding up every boy they can find. They’ll pull us through.”

And they did! Back came Shorty. Back came Fullhouse, both of them looking like modern editions of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, followed by throngs of boys, ranging from youngsters of eight and nine to youths of nineteen and twenty. Here and there the groups were placed. Sharp orders were shouted; a military preciseness and crispness of command seemed to have come into the air. Among the waiting volunteers walked Bill Curtis, eyes narrowed, lips grim.

“It’s up to you, Boys!” he announced, time after time. “We can’t make it—we’re stuck. Are you going to save the show?”

The answer was the usual one that a boy would give under such circumstances. Clambering, hurrying forms rushed about the wagons. Skids were placed. A thousand hands helped to shunt the big center poles to the lot and then carry them to place. The stringers, the jacks, the canvas itself,—one by one the parts of the big circus went into place; and at two o’clock, only an hour late, the show opened its doors to a crowd that, up to that time, had been the biggest in all its history!

And this is the story of the boy in more places than one during the journey of the circus. When the wreck comes and the battered trains pull into town hours late, the boys are the ones who help to drag it to the lot and to raise it into place that the show may go on. When storm strikes it and the tents are flattened, again it is the boy who helps to pull the big show out of the hole. Always happy, always willing, always loyal even to the extent of sore muscles and blistered hands, he is ready for any task and any duty. And let it be said, to the credit of the circus, that it does not forget and that it does not fail in its part of the promise. The minute the task is done, each straw boss hurries to the superintendent with his list of names, to return a moment later with the reward of faithful duty, the ticket to the show which had been promised in the beginning.

Nor is the actual putting up of the show the only manner in which the friendship of the boy is counted upon in the circus world. It is to him that the circus looks to spread the news of its coming, coincident with the placing of the first glaring bills. Upon him devolves the real enthusiasm of the parade; for what is a clown band or a clown policeman without his throng of boys trailing along in the rear? Is the calliope really worth while if it does not have its crowd of youthful attendants? Hardly! The boy and his love of the circus have the real job of making a parade enjoyable. For by their interest is gauged the interest of the crowds which line the curbings to watch.

More, the boy is counted upon every step of the way. Long before the circus comes to town, he often has done his duty and earned his pass, in helping the billposters with their tasks, or by distributing the thousands of heralds, or advertising leaflets, by which the show makes its house-to-house canvas.

As for the performance—

The circus has its reasons for everything. If it is a good circus—and most of them try to be good—it will have a performance which is worth while, the best that its status in the show world can afford. And you’ll notice that if you’ve ever been a boy, the ticket you’ve earned to the circus has admitted you to the afternoon performance! The reasons were many.

In the first place, the circus has been grateful. It wants to pay its debt, and no boy likes to wait from noon until night for his reward. In the second place, it is the enthusiasm of the boy which makes or unmakes the circus performance. The howls of joy, the shouts of laughter when the clowns come tumbling in, are infectious. They spread from the youngsters to the older folks; they travel here and there about the high-piled tiers of seats. The adult grin spreads and develops into a chuckle,—and the chuckle to an uproarious laugh. The enjoyment invades everything, and when the performance is over, the thousands troop out with a smile lingering upon their features, with enjoyment in their hearts; and a part of it, at least, was due to that first outbreak of happiness from the boys themselves.

So, with all this on their side of the ledger, with story after story in the annals of circusdom where boys have saved the show with the performance dependent in a way upon them, and with their aid and alliance relied upon every step of the way, is it any wonder that the modern circus, marvel of efficiency that it is, looks upon the boys as a necessary ingredient, to be treated fairly, honorably and truthfully, and to be referred to, as one circusman talks to another, in terms of affection? Indeed, it is not; for they’re our buddies!