From Dick Flint

Buckles,Here is an early photo of the Mother Goose float as it appeared onBarnum & London with its original set of wheels. The Goose was one offive pony-drawn fairy tale floats built between 1886-88, joining thenow-lost Santa Claus and the surviving Old Woman in the Shoe, bothbuilt in 1883. These seven joined a dragon float that dated from the1871 Howes Great London, a show that James Bailey acquired in late1878. In addition to the eight Barnum show pony floats, Ringling,John Robinson, Sells, and Forepaugh all had groups of such fairylandfloats and a few other individual floats appeared on some showsSometime before the European tour of 1898-1902, the original 12-spokesunbursts shown in this photo were replaced with 16-spoke wheels. Andyet a different set of sixteen-spoke wheels with sunbursts were on thethree Barnum floats that survived to troupe on the Adkins-Terrell Coleshow. Of these three, Cinderella went to Terrell Jacobs after thedifficult 1938 Cole show tour and he equipped it with early spokedrubber-tired automobile wheels. The Cole show, meanwhile, bought ahuge number of solid-tire truck wheels when they played Los Angeles in1940 and carried these back to their Louisville quarters to refit theentire show for 1941. The Shoe and Goose were unfortunately sohonored, part of the show world's response to the disdain cities hadfor the old iron-rimmed wheels that tore at paved streets.I've also carefully checked the background to see if there are anystake pullers, flywheels, or laundry lines and, to my disappointmentand those of several of your dedicated bloggers, I regret that I failto find such earnest discussion features!To Buckles and all your contributors, keep up the good work! Dick Flint