1954 RBBB Mailer #1 (From Eric Beheim)

1954 RBBB Mailer-1, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Earlier, Buckles posted scans of the 16-page mailers that Art Concello used in 1952 and 1953 to help advertise the Ringling show. Although Concello was no longer with the show in 1954, a mailer was used that year, too. The 1954 mailer has special meaning for me since one of them was mailed to my grandparents, who lived in Avon Lake, Ohio just west of Cleveland. (It was probably advertising the show’s August 9-11 appearance in Cleveland.) It just happened that, the day this mailer arrived, I was visiting my grandparents. Even though I was only 8 at the time, it struck a responsive chord and I decided that I had to have it. Well aware of what would happen to it if my younger cousins ever got hold of it, I secretly took it home with me that night. Some of the pages later ended up in a scrapbook on horses that I assembled while in the Cub Scouts. A few years ago, this same mailer turned up on eBay and I was able to reacquire it. (The chances of this copy being preserved intact are infinitely more likely than was the case of the copy that I had in 1954!) As side note, just a few miles to the east of my grandparents’ house, in the neighboring community of Bay Village, was another house that, during the summer of 1954, was the focus of much media attention. It’s even quite possible that this same mailer was delivered there, too, although I doubt that the owner was giving much thought to attending the circus. That house belonged to the infamous Dr. Sam Sheppard.