Monday, March 15, 2010

Kelly-Miller 1950 #14


Scan12630, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

This is one of three elephant trucks #45, #46 & #47.
This one carried the 5-act my had dad trained the previous winter
"Jenny", "Kay", "Hattie", "Barbara" and "Anna May".
My folks lived in the room over the fifth-wheel, quite a contrast from
Mr. Miller's palace car. Very Spartan quarters but nothing different
from any of other mud shows they had traveled with.
Having a home in Hot Springs made things more tolerable.
I lived in the candy butchers sleeper.
That's "Hattie" that we saw recently in Darlene's Vargas pictures, she would sometimes fight with other elephants and my dad would take her off the picket line and place her where he could keep an eye on her.
That box in the rear possum belly went the width of the truck and was
the trough they mixed the grain in. Done the same as in the recent Cole Show picture.

Posted by Buckles at 3/15/2010 06:00:00 AM

3 comments:

A Oldtymerr said...

Buckles: You must have a recommended grain mixture for working elephants; likewise what hays do you favor?

16 March, 2010 19:07
Buckles said...

Timothy hay is what I normally preferred plus sweet feed however the best for elephants is oat hay but is grown mostly in California.
Alfalfa is rarely used for performing elephants for fear of having a shittin' good act.

16 March, 2010 19:18
Roger Smith said...

We played Hastings, Nebraska, with Suesz, in '75, and I had my first and only inherited herd of 3 elephants, Mary, Sue, and Margie. I had not broken in on elephants, but knew from observing that hay is removed from in front of them long before showtime. But in Hastings, my new elephant assistant, Frenchie, noticed this and felt sorry for the trio. He gave them a generous spread of alfalfa while I was lining up the tiger act. I arrived to order the pile removed, but we were soon on and it was too late to start over crapping them out. The ring was filled to the brim with fresh, green streams of manure that wouldn't quit. The audience howled as the boys spent 20 minutes shoveling it out a wheelbarrow load at a time, with me making sure Frenchie had the busiest shovel.

18 March, 2010 03:47

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