Carson & Barnes 1972

Scan000010486, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. To conclude the story, I mentioned to Dorey that John Cuneo had flown me up Southwick's place outside Boston to check out an elephant he was interested in buying. He aksed if they had any more and I mentioned there was a small male available. Before long both elephants arrived at my place and I startred work on them right away. I named the female "Billie" and the male "Teddy". I was told they would send a truck down from Hugo to pick up the MGM bulls and I wouldn't be involved but to my surprise, one stormy, windy, rainy night there's a knock on my door and there sits the candy striped truck and John Carroll with the news that they had picked up another little male for me to train on the way down and he was on the fifth wheel behind "Happy", "Sally" and "Queen". Thus began one of the more memorable nights of my life. First I put a collar chain on "Anna May" so she could drag this new punk to the barn if need be but to my utter astonishment he was fine but the big elephants were terrified of him and would not let him pass by. Every time we tried they would drive him back up into the front of the truck. I had no choice but to unload three strange elephants in a driving rain and to make matters worse Fanning used too much chain and once outside the two with 15 feet of slack immediately proceeded to get tangled up, while the third was completely free. After unloading the punk we got him collared to "Anna May" and Barbara headed off toward the barn with them. Suddenly a thunderbolt struck nearby and the loose elephant was off to the races. Away we went, John and I hanging on to each side being drug in the general direction of downtown Tampa. We finally got her turned and after a trek thru the palmettos, tho bumped and bruised, we managed to get her back to the truck and loaded. Then began the struggle of getting the other two untangled. Finally got them all aboard just as it was beginning to clear up and as they drove away I said, "Farewell and may God go with you on your perilous trip." I named this little male "Kelly" and a short time later Dorey calls saying he has decided on a three-act and yet another punk will be arriving shortly. This last elephant, from Chase down in Miami, turned out to be very small, still on a bottle. So in summation, "Billie" and "Teddy" were trained to do quite a bit of stuff, "Kelly" just the basics due to time restraints and the last one (I think they finally named her "Tina") did little if anything. In fact I think she was eventually sold to John Cuneo who had MacDonald train her. In the picture above we see me with "Teddy", "Kelly" and "Tina" being dropped off on the Caraon & Barnes lot on our way to California.