Kansas City 1953

Orrin Davenport had two Fall dates before his regular tour started in in January, Wichita and Kansas City. In 1953 he booked the elephant acts from D.R. who sent Logan to Wichita (a one ring show) with the 5-act "Jenny", "Kay", "Hattie", "Barbara" and "Marie". However Kansas City  called for three acts and  for some reason he sent us up there "Anna May", "Fanny", and "Lydia" plus Ed Wiedaman,s  act "Zetta", "Peggy" and "Dorothy" working the other end. The arena was on the second floor in a building that was right down town and  there were  ramps on each end of the elephant picket line descending down to the streets below. The morning of opening day me, Bob Cline and John Carroll were sweeping up our area while they finished filling up the high dive water tank. All of a sudden we heard an explosion and this two foot wall of water came roaring out of the arena carrying props, chairs, band stand (including the bass drum) right thru the screaming elephants down both ramps to the city below. Needless to say I was scared shitless. We later learned that they were making a practice dive and on contact the tank exploded. Surprisingly no one was hurt.