Buckles Blog: Circus Vargas #9

Friday, December 06, 2013

Circus Vargas #9

8 comments:

John Herriott said...: This was the worst circus I was ever with in my career. Note the picket line outdoors. No stable tent. Poor horses stood out in all weather. When we just got fresh shavings under them for the night a huge rain would come up and wash it all away. During storms we would try to load them in terrible trailers and Cliff would have had them moved and parked around the tent with others as a "wind barrier" Concessions had X on the water faucet and we would have to wait on set up morn. until they filled the tanks. We had to Y in on the cosion trailer. The rings had cheap rolls of rubber stair tread thrown down and all thru the liberty it would get curled up and bull hand Chico was an expert to jump in and pull back somewhat. The tent was never laid out the same [whole lot included] and the back door was never in the same spot. No time keeper or duckie books. Hands would knock on my door for a draw and when I took the draw slips to the office they had already paid them. Payday was never the same day or time. Word would get around that {the eagle shit]. Cliff would go on wild screaming obscenity tandrums. No awnings out on trailers, lounge chairs or bar-B-ques. No sewage or gray water. You can imagine where we had to dump.
You will note the photo of the exotic animal act also picketed out doors and the elephants. Cliff had gotten rid of the side show mngrie because he wanted all animals on the midway so the people on the Mall would see them. This is only part of the show operations. I finally "blew" with my family in Chico, Calif. and had to drive clear to Sarasota [not very smart] with no work on the radar. Fortunately my friend Raul Parada contacted my with Atayde for the rest of the year. Next year I was back doing one day stands with Beatty Cole and it was a very organized circus run by knowledgeable circus people and I enjoyed being back with a treal circus. Later Cliff would come to our Showfolks club at times and be very nice to us.; 06 December, 2013 08:56
Chic Silber said...: What year was that John on Vargas; 06 December, 2013 11:26
Buckles said...: I don't think he want's to remember!; 06 December, 2013 12:26
John Herriott said...: I was with RBBB Circus World Haines City in about 77 and this disaster followed that. What an idiot I was to leave that place. It was the year following Cliffs open heart surgery and he had run Wally Naighten and Co. I think in later tyears Wally would get backin with Dale Longmire and The Varget girls from RBBB.Cliff had run his lover but he would return. It was like a vulgar "peyton Place".

I am sure there are stories in how Cliff liked to put onj the rgmster "drag" and announce the show with lack of proper grammatical enunciation and "high seat" the people. Its a classic.; 06 December, 2013 15:45
JC Hall said...: The worse circus you have ever been on ??????????
Boy the multitude of knowledge one can gain on this blog by past and present Master's of the trade.; 07 December, 2013 14:33
JC Hall said...: I sure enjoyed visiting the Vargas show AKA The Worst Circus!
In more recent years,I recall once visiting Rex and he said that the show was looking for another animal tent. He said it was a 120 by 60 top, and I was in negotiation with a local Church who had a top they used for their summer events. It was a light weight top and like new. A 120 by 60. Bagged it for $ 2500 for the show. I still recall that show's Bicentennial spec. It was awesome. Vargas show had a better reputation in Cali than any other show in its hay day . I have a two page news paper spread on Wait Paper that RBBB hung on the Vargas show back then. They too took notice of Mr.Vargas; 07 December, 2013 17:41
Bill Schreiber said...: Johnny, Years ago when I was starting out with Big John Strong, Don McLennon had trained a 4 pony drill and offered it to Vargas, who was not interested. Big John bought it, sent me to Don & Madylyn McLennon's place outside of Escondido, Calif., to learn how to work it. They were skeptical of my success as I was not a "horse person". But sometimes, like the credo from Orwell's novel 1984, "ignorance is strength". And so I somehow managed to learn to work them. And later went on to train a 3 pony drill for Roberts Bros. as well as a single pony for myself.

One thing I do remember was that after training some horses for Vargas, McLennan refused to train anymore for him because they suffered terribly from working on black top parking lots and they had to be retired with bad legs.

I never worked for Vargas, but my future wife did back in 1973 when she was with Ben DeWayne. The odd thing about all this is that I visited the lot at Devonshire Downs in the Los Angeles area when the show was still called Miller-Johnson, and I took some photos at the time. Little did I realize that I took some of my future wife up on an elephant going into spec!

Bill Schreiber; 08 December, 2013 11:53
Bill Schreiber said...: Johhny,

Years ago when I just starting out in the business working for Big John Strong, he bought a 4 pony drill from Don McLennon. Don had originally trained these b&w Shetland pintos for Vargas, but he didn't want them. So Don offered them to Big John who bought them. Strong then sent me to Don & Madylyn McLennan's place to learn how to work them. They were skeptical that I would succeed as I was not "a horse person." But sometimes, like the motto from Orwell's 1984 novel, "Ignorance is strength", and somehow or other I managed to handle them. I later went on to train a 3 pony drill for the Earls' Robert Bros. and a single pony for myself.

One thing I do remember about those years was that Don had trained a number of horses for Vargas, but he finally said that he would no longer do so because they suffered from playing on all those asphalt parking lots and after a few years had to be retired as their legs were so bad.

One odd coincidence about that show was that I visited it in 1973 when it played Devonshire Downs in the Los Angeles area when it was still called Miller Johnson. They had a huge tent and made much of that fact. I went there and took a lot of photos. Years later after I was married, my wife, Chris, and I were looking at them and there to both our surprise were a number of them of her up on an elephant for spec! She was with Ben DeWayne at the time. Little did I realize that I would be photographing my future wife at the time.; 08 December, 2013 12:02

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Powered by Blogger. DownRight Blogger Theme v1.4 created by (© 2007) Thur Broeders