Friday, August 27, 2010

From Bill Powell #1


schell bros 1935 books012, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Buckles,

I found this interesting note while going thru my mom's archives this past weekend.

It is especially poignant given what our country is experiencing with the current recession and I wanted to share it with the blog.

This letter summarizes the financial state of George Engesser and Schell Bros. Circus in 1935 during the lowest point of the great depression.

To my knowledge George hung on to the show a couple more years but it appears that he was upside down about 4 grand after the 1935 season.

The summation is brief and to the point even listing his dependents and a perceived valuation of the animals that had died during the year.

The picture of Tiger McCue doing the head carry with Ruth the elephant somehow frames up the entire state of affairs.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Buckles - I always wondered - IN 2DAYS dollars what ( if at all poss) would a ele sell for ?
At 1250 - seems crazy !

If MJ - had one - I guess any crazy thing could happen !

So what was it when u got out as well as in today's dollars u think ?
Timmy

Buckles said...

Today she's worth a million dollars if she behaves, worthless if she doesn't.

Chic Silber said...

Could also be said about a wife

(took me 3 to get it right)

Stephen Simmons said...

I love the site.

I found an old circus photo online last year, that I can no longer find it's location. I am an artist living in Nashville, Tn and was wanting to contact it's owner about possibly using it in a album design.

I've gone through a pretty exhaustive search online....wondered if anyone here had any other ideas of where to look.

Thanks,

Stephen

Frank Ferrante said...

Stephen -

A great place to start is on Buckles' Favorite Links on his home page. Those links have favorite links, and so on and so on.

Good luck to you! ~frank