Monday, April 21, 2008

H.W. Freed Show 1912


Scan000011116, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

This is my favorite. The complete layout of a classic American overland show.

Brings to mind the days with the Cole Show when we were showing in a residential area. My mother would gather up the laundry and head off the lot in search of a house with a washing machine. She always offered to pay but more often than not some house wife would do it for nothing and offer coffee and chat about the circus.
She would sometimes return with cookies or even a piece of cake and all the news from the surrounding neighborhood.

Posted by Buckles at 4/21/2008 06:01:00 AM

5 comments:

Mike Naughton said...

Chat about the circus?
Dirty laundry?
News from the surrounding neighborhood?

Sounds like Showfolks Club to me.

21 April, 2008 06:40
Anonymous said...

H.W. Freed Shows Huh? Could this have been some distant relative of the infamous elephant groom, HEAD DOWN HARRY?

21 April, 2008 07:26
Anonymous said...

Buckles: Surrounded by stacks and stacks of research as I write the latest episode on Norma Davenport Cristiani and her adventures on Dailey Bros. for Bandwagon, I am increasingly impressed by the sense of community among showfolks in the 1930s and 40s in the era before air conditioned train cars and trailers and TVs and satellite dishes.

I'm certain the towns-women with whom your mother shared circus stories must have told some fascinating stories to their families about what was happening on the circus lot.

Though I was raised a towner in Oklahoma, where I called all my mother's close friends "aunt," I have gained a small sense of the close-knit traveling neighborhood that existed in the old tented circus--thanks to stories like yours, Norma, Ward Hall, Johnny Herriott any many others that you have shared with us so generously. Thank you

Lane Talburt

21 April, 2008 07:29
Anonymous said...

Beautiful picture.

21 April, 2008 11:52
Anonymous said...

I was doing that same thing in mexico in 94 however they always accepted the pesos and no galletas.

21 April, 2008 12:03

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