John Robinson Circus early 1920's #2

"High Steppin' Candy Butchers". Some things never changed, my job with the Cole Show in 1946-47 was to put up a menagerie stand exactly like this one while the other butchers were humpin' lumber in the big top. I was a big kid at 12 and could do it easily, once you got the counters set up with about a half dozen jacks, you were in business. Looks like the same type oil skin table cloth and I built up an identical display out of Cracker Jack boxes. The one thing I didn't like was I had to wipe the counter a lot when the elephants threw dirt on a dusty lot. Sometimes it even got into the bug juice. I'm sure a lot of people, even showfolks, didn't know that on a railroad show the daily routine for the elephants and baggage horses was just the opposite of everyone else. When the horses had finished loading the train at night they were loaded into the stock cars still wearing their harnesses so they could immediately return to work when unloaded in the morning. Once the show was up they had their own tent where the harnesses were removed, they were washed down and they spent the rest of the day eating and sleeping. The same applied to the elephants although they didn't have to do the amount of work the baggage stock was required to do, if you went into the menagerie between shows the whole herd would be down and asleep.