Hugo Winter Qtrs./ "Hysterical America"

First thing in the morning before training started, everyone would gather in the office and cut up jackpots. Once my Dad talked about Robbins Bros. and that Fred Buchanan always closed the show with "Historical America". Cast members portraying Washington, Lincoln, etc., the cowboys dressed as Roosevelt's Rough Riders would thunder around the track and for the finale, a tall clown (Uncle Sam) and a lady (The Statue of Liberty) posed in the center ring while everyone else stationed throughout the tent waved American flags, Camel Dutch Narfski would then fire the cannon. On one occasion Dutch's boy overloaded the cannon and they blew the canvas out of the back end of the big top. After this story had been concluded and everyone was congratulating Dutch, D.R. mentioned that he knew a place that supplied Civil War costumes and weapons. Jimmy Rossi and I usually spent our free time terrorizing the Hugo damozels but on this occasion we decided the reasonable thing to do was to try on the uniforms that had just arrived.