Friday, May 05, 2006

Tom Packs Elephans #1


This is Mac's third act, trained for the Tom Packs Circus the winter of 1948-49.
By chance these elephants arrived by ship into New Orleans during Thanksgiving week of the 1948 Shrine Circus which was on the Tom Packs route. By now my father was working Mac's second act, the Bailey Bros. Elephants (later belonging to Caren Cristiani) and was appearing on the bill at the date.
One day Jack Leontini comes to my dad explaining that the elephants had arrived and they had to be brought to the building, along with him was an Indian gentleman with a crisp British accent named Shondu-randivan who had been overseeing their voyage from India (my father later made the mistake of introducing him as a mahout and was immediately corrected with the explanation that he had received a College education and was by no means a "mahout" meaning someone who lived in the jungle with the elephants).
The elephants unloading and movement to the building by real mahouts, is another involved story but in short, it was done and now Mr. Leontini was looking for a trainer. Right away my dad recommended Mac but for some reason he had gotten away from elephants and was now operating a Wild Life Show. After considerable effort Mac was finally located and flown into New Orleans but after seeing the punks he almost turned around and went back, they were skin and bones, infested with lice and internal parasites and to make matters worse, the one later named "Mary" had one leg slightly shorter than the other three, managed to navigate OK but had a noticable limp.
Leontini and Mac finally made a deal but it was with the undersanding that the training be done in Florida. They ultimately decided on Capt. Hyer's place in Sarasota.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Buckles, are you going to the CHS for any of the stuff? I guess that a few of the gang is over there this weekend? Nice pictures today. Thanks, Annie

Buckles said...

Wild horses could't keep me away but I don't want to be underfoot.
John and I will be there Sunday with bells on and I understand there will be open house at the Club for all CHS members Saturday night which sounds great. I am open to suggestion for anything else.

Anonymous said...

Here is one to comment on spelling? ITs elephant Buckles.

Anonymous said...

Did Barbara ever do this mount? I know she does a beautiful head stand as she did in in her fathers hand as a child. I guess her beautiful head pieces would have made this a hard thing to do. I am glad she wore the head pieces. It set her apart from a lot of other fine Empresses. Made her the QUEEN.