Tuesday, June 12, 2007

From Richard Flint


Louis Reed on Sparks001, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Nice set of photos of Louis Reed yesterday morning. Here's an early photo
taken while Reed was on the Sparks show (therefore sometime in the
1910s or very early 1920s), perhaps at the Macon quarters if I were to
have some time to compare the building in the background. The back of
the photo also notes "Scott up." I remember visiting with his widow,
Adele Nelson Reed, in upstate New York in the early 1970s. She had
memories of growing up on the Ringling show in the 1890s and could
remember how Mr. Al Ringling would gather all the youngest kids at the
train each day and drive them in his carriage to the lot so they
wouldn't have to make the walk. She was a charming and tiny lady then
in her 80s.
Dick Flint
Baltimore

"I never saw this trick done on the ground before. If the elephants were up on pre-set tubs, they would always be the same distance from each other and less apt to pull apart as they are almost dong here." Buckles



Posted by Buckles at 6/12/2007 11:05:00 AM

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting that we have photos clearly taken at the same time! They would have been snapped between late 1919 and late 1923, or possibly in 1921 since my photo came grouped with pictures of the dead Mutt, a young male Asian killed in 1921. The building shown here is in Macon’s Central City Park where Sparks first wintered following the 1919 season (Sun Bros. was the previous Macon winter occupant until its 1918 close while Sparks had most often wintered in Salisbury, NC, during the teen years). Reed left Sparks to go over to Sells-Floto for the 1924 season to train their enlarged herd of 14 bulls. In the previous few seasons, S-F had strongly eschewed wild animal acts though they did carry eight elephants. This was the time when the Corporation shows (then only S-F, H-W, and JR) began to beef up their animal displays.
Dick Flint
Baltimore

12 June, 2007 23:04

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