Wednesday, June 29, 2005


I have always been fascinated by these 2-car shows. This is George Christy's early years with Christy Bros. Circus. You can see the end door on the end of the baggage car open and local livery wagons would be hired to gilly the equipment to the lot and back. After being loaded at night these two cars could be coupled onto the next train headed their direction. This picture was taken in Wallis, Tx. Dec. 22, 1919 and you will notice the lack of a title on the cars, this was done intentionally with hopes of preventing the townspeople from realizing the magnitude of the show visiting their fair city or the lack thereof. Buckles

Posted by Buckles at 6/29/2005 07:26:00 AM

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your fascination with the 2-car shows has been shared by others. My mentor in the business, Big John Strong, admired the 2-car shows of Elmer and J. Augustus Jones very much. He modeled his circus, albeit on trucks, on their model and when I knew him he had his show packed on to 2 semis and
a straight job pulling the concession trailer. I was on Roberts Bros. Circus at the end of my 2 decades in the business and I do believe Big John with his smaller show put on nearly as strong or stronger performance than the Roberts show. His elephant, Neena, now Nina with Kelly Miller, did a very good single elephant routine. The great thing about Strong was that he liked young people and he was always ready to give new performers a chance to develop and improve their acts.

Bill Schreiber

29 June, 2005 22:09

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)