Gene Garner #1

On the way back East from California with Polack Bros. Circus we would usually show Harlengen. Texas down in the Valley. One year either 1965 or '66 Gene appeared on the lot one morning, Circo Bells was showing in Monterrey and he had come up to the border to check out an elephant that had been stranded there. He brought me a program from the show where a few of these pictures came from. I was surprised to see that he was now Jim Bells, I think he had married into the family. Later in the day we both went out to see the elephant and it turned out to be "Betty" from the Diano herd who had a bad reputation. It seems that both she and "Katy" had been sold to Mexico but in usual Diano fashion, having already been paid, he simply had his man Charlie drive them down from Canton and left it up to the Mexicans to figure out how to unload them. Streamline (Francis Frizzel) managed to get involved and was promptly knocked down and kicked around by "Betty" so she was abandoned. Somehow she was moved to a sale barn nearby and was chained in a stock pen. I have a couple of poor polaroid pictures someone took of us cleaning out her pen and Gene swapping her leg chains around. I later heard that before Gene could get the red tape sorted out "Betty" had either injured or killed someone and had been shot.