From Roger Smith #2

The Article: Click ONCE again, for enhancement of the text. The notation that the act with Ace and Blaszak did not work at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles is inaccurate to a point. I visited there, and both Ada and Klaus appeared, she with her group, he with Ace. Whispers in the dressing rooms had the Blaszaks in fits of artistic and political pique with the Polish Director, who had threatened them with a forced return to Poland and likely imprisonment. Klaus and Ace were dropped from the program, and Klaus made frantic calls to Jungleland. We all heard he was coming with a lion in a car. As colorful as was our Compound history, nothing like this was beyond possibility, and we met them on the parking lot. We got them around back, and Klaus walked Ace into the cageline. Then, Klaus vanished. Days went by, and we figured the Polish agents had deep-sixed him in the Pacific. Back down at the Sports Arena, I spotted Klaus excitedly cornering a very reluctant Ada, fearfully glancing over his shoulders. Then they disappeared into the building. With Ace safe at Jungleland, Ada finally abandoned her state-owned lion act, defected, and turned up with Klaus in Thousand Oaks. Everyone at the Compound took strides to accommodate them, make them welcome, and reassure them that we were proud to secure them away from their former oppressive life under the Polish Director and his eager cooperatives on the Ringling staff. Within days, we regretted it. Ada said little, but Klaus, Klaudiusz, Klaudnor--whatever his name, once he knew he was relatively safe, became aggressively offensive. He showed pointed contempt for America, and everything American. All we shared he disdained as American inadequacy, useless, and substandard. He tried day after day to heel out of shows, and insisted that he never attend his cage work. Some American should clean the cages. Our disgust for him grew until real heat began arising payroll wide. He had instructed Bruno, then 3 years old, when we said "Good morning" to him, to reply with, "F--- your mouth." The child hardly understood English, but his father, who lied about his own fluency, taught him this. Ada had been counseled to keep her distance from Mabel Stark. At once, Mabel saw Ada as her dreaded "handwriting on the wall", a recognition that proved cruelly true. Ada was instructed to leave Mabel alone, as in his own good time, Roy Kabat would get rid of her. He let Mable's anxiety continue until the day he called her in to announce her dismissal, enlisting Parley Baer to soften the blow. When Mabel and I took care of her tigers on the last day of her career, Friday, November 10, 1967, Klaus and Ada were observed in celebration. When Mabel died by suicide, the following April 20th, the Blaszaks, made a show of cold indifference. Since this era, Ada has addressed circus fan audiences with claims of having "worked with" Mabel Stark. This is entirely false. There was no contact. Ada had no association with Mabel Stark whatsoever. In point of fact, as I bear witness, the two women never spoke. In our duplexes in Old Town, I lived at 2883-A Crescent Way. The Blaszaks lived at 2883-B. During one show, I had just seated the lions. Klaus came down to the Stage with a wheelbarrow full of meat, and began forking it in to the cats adjacent to the Arena. It took all I knew of lions to hold them seated. I ran them out and charged into five Jungleland guys who held me back from Klaus until someone got him off the lot. When they finally accompanied me home, two of them went around to find the Blaszak's door left standing open. From that night on, no one was home at 2883-B. If others have memories of their own associations with the Blaszaks, some of us are still around who knew them from the beginning. From Roger Smith