Monday, January 08, 2007

From Wayne Jackson #1



G’day Buckles,
I took the attached photos during my ’93 tour of Southeast Asia while staying with a friend of mine and his family in Bangkok, Thailand. In the fall of ’94 I showed my trip photos to Smokey and he told me that he had never seen this act before?

Happy Days
Wayne Posted by Picasa

Posted by Buckles at 1/08/2007 05:57:00 AM

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Buckles. In my Dan Rice book, though I noted your doubt that his elephant Lalla Rookh really did walk a tightrope, I decided to treat the claim as accurate, because not even Rice's enemies denied it in the 1850s.

However, I confess that your opinion had me second-guessing my decision. But Fred Dahlinger (who also was dubious) later sent me an early 1900s photo of a rope-walking elephant, and now there's this Asian picture.

Maybe every few generations, the right circumstances and elephant make it possible.

08 January, 2007 09:31
Anonymous said...

Its called "walking the plank".

08 January, 2007 09:44
Buckles said...

I never doubted that an elephant could walk on two cables, that's the easy part.
It's the logistics I question. If Mr. Rice could manage to haul two huge boulders from town to town to anchor this contraption, why not?
Later in one of the books I am showing pictures from, you will see another elephant doing the same thing but in a building where with the aid of ratchets or come alongs, it's quite simple.

08 January, 2007 10:17
Buckles said...

I never doubted that an elephant could walk on two cables, that's the easy part.
It's the logistics I question. If Mr. Rice could manage to haul two huge boulders from town to town to anchor this contraption, why not?
Later in one of the books I am showing pictures from, you will see another elephant doing the same thing but in a building where with the aid of ratchets or come alongs, it's quite simple.

08 January, 2007 10:24
Anonymous said...

Perhaps the boulders are actually made of rubber and air inflated?

08 January, 2007 10:33
Anonymous said...

my blow up makes it look like 2 cables
this was done on circus Knie some years ago
please excuse my comment on next photo I was viewing backwards

08 January, 2007 10:40
Anonymous said...

Buckles, I gotta wear my glasses more. I didn't see that it's a double cable.

Also, I misunderstood your long-ago comments on Rice's elephant. I did understand your doubt about the logistics (the same doubt Dahlinger had) but I also thought you believed that an elephant would shy from the inevitable wobble of a rope/cable and not be able to learn the trick.

08 January, 2007 11:39
Anonymous said...

As I've mentioned before, Buckles, I don't question your judgment or Dahlinger's on the logistics. As for elephants, you've forgotten more than I'll ever know.

But I couldn't ignore the historical evidence: Hundreds of thousands saw Rice's elephant and not a single account called the claim of rope-walking a humbug. Sitting 20 feet away, they would have seen a plank or a double cable. And with all the critics Rice had, and all the people he fought and feuded with, SOMEONE would have complained if it even SEEMED like a fake, but no one did.

That leaves the logistical problem, and I have no answer. Either someone someday will dig up claims of humbug that I didn't find, or figure out an ingenious rigging to support a small elephant's few hundred pounds that none of us have thought of.

08 January, 2007 14:55

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