More comments on RBBB 1955 (From Richard Reynolds)

SAVE1955, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Richard Reynolds adds (at some length!) - - I visited the 1955 show in Atlanta on Friday Nov. 11, 1955. A total of 52 elephants came to Atlanta but two of them were in advance of the show. They were ## 39 and 40 on Buckles’ list - -Cass and Mo. On Thursday night (Nov. 10) before the show arrived the next day, they appeared live in the studio of WSB-TV on its 11 PM news. Bull man Vernon Duffy was with them. The TV anchor (only men in those days) asked some questions which Duffy answered, and there was an appeal for everyone to go down to Lakewood Park to see the show on the 11th and 12th. At dawn next morning I was on the South side of town at Southern RR’s Henderson crossing to await the arrival of the show trains. They were coming from Birmingham, only some 150 miles to the West. Hours went by - -no circus trains. Finally, the first section pulled into the siding at 9:15 AM. That was way late causing them to blow the matinee that day. The show was really struggling operationally at the time, foretelling the disaster to come the next year. The Atlanta showgrounds were at Lakewood Park some 1.5 miles south of Henderson’s crossing. Lakewood was then home to an amusement park, stockcar race track (dirt), and the site of the annual (but now long extinct) Southeastern Fair. It also offered something new to Atlantans – an ice skating rink which, as it so happened, opened the very weekend of RBBB’s 1955 date there. The rink was installed in one of the old SE Fair exhibition buildings. On the lot, I went to the office wagon, introduced myself to RBBB Executive Director Michael Burke who was really running the show at the time. I found him to be a most amiable chap. I told him I would like a pass to go around the lot, into the menagerie etc. At the time the show was reaching out to CFA members, of whom I was one, and we had been invited to get passes for backyard access etc. Burke summoned Ted Sato, his press representative on the lot. Sato signed a Press Working Pass for me and my party (I’ve still got it). I was then off to the menagerie. My Father (a big circus fan) was with me as was Lee Kendrick an old high school chum (both long dead). The menagerie was still being set up when we went inside. That was the first and only time I ever witnessed that. It was quite a thrill, particularly seeing how the giraffes were unloaded. The elephant herd had just been brought in and the guys were busy setting up the picket line. I made careful notes that day and recorded them in Vol. 2 of my Circus Journal. My notes show there were 20 full grown elephants, 17 in the small to medium category and 13 baby Asians for a total of 50. So, 52 elephants came to Atlanta, 2 in advance and 50 with the show itself. At the time the young male African Louie (later Diamond) was really quite small when I saw him that day. What a monster he became at Knoxville zoo. When I saw him there in 1979, he stood about 11 ft. at the shoulder, the largest living elephant I’ve ever seen. It also bears mentioning that it was in Atlanta that year that Emmett Kelly got to talk (allegedly for the first time) to his wife Evie (nee Elvira Gebhardt) who had given birth on Nov. 6th in Sarasota to a baby girl, Stasia. A photographer took a picture of him in makeup in a phone booth at Lakewood Park. The photo was widely circulated. The daughter, Stasia Kelly, lived and worked in Atlanta in recent years. The show’s late arrival really put me in a quandary. The Friday matinee was the only performance I could work into my schedule that weekend. I was ticketed to fly via Eastern Air Lines early that evening from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham for a big weekend of college fun at Duke and the Univ. of North Carolina. [It was my first ever trip by air.] I was then in my first year of law at Emory University here in Atlanta. My best friend there, fellow law student Barclay Bryan, was just out of Duke and had fixed me up with a date for the entire weekend. He had gotten us tickets to the Notre Dame-UNC football game (ND’s big star was the Golden Boy Paul Hornung - -ND won 27-7) Added to that were two nights of dance/concerts at Duke’s famed Cameron Indoor Stadium to the incomparable music of Count Basie with his star vocalist, Big Joe Williams, singing “April in Paris” (among many other great hits). Barclay and an entourage turned out to meet my flight at Raleigh that Friday night. The party included my weekend date, Duke co-ed Sally Hodges (a very nice and attractive girl from Asheville, NC ). All were perplexed, amused actually, by my having to fly because of the circus. So, I missed RBBB’s 1955 performance. As it turned out, that was the last time it pitched its big top in Atlanta. But I did get one more glance at it before it folded its tops forever. That happened on Sunday, November 13, 1955 as Barclay and I were driving back to Atlanta in his car from North Carolina. We were running on two-lane US 74 parallel to the Seaboard Air Line RR in the vicinity of Wadesboro and Rockingham, NC. Suddenly we spied a section of the RBBB train coming toward us [I think it was the 2nd section.] It was en route from Atlanta for the stand in Raleigh on Monday (14th). Alas our highway curved away from the tracks just as we saw it approaching. If I had known then what the future held, I would have insisted that we turn around and try to pace it. Whatever, that was the last time I ever saw the RBBB of old! 07 June, 2007 17:25 Delete