Saturday, January 07, 2017

Extra

From Eric Beheim.

Posted by Buckles at 1/07/2017 03:38:00 AM

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This was taken back in 1992 when Smokey came down for the big stream engine fair held annually up in Visa, CA. (Smokey like steam engines and even had a few toy steam engines that he found at flea markets.) Before we headed up to Visa, we stopped off at Jack White’s train & toy store in San Diego to check out the toy steam engines he had for sale. Jack was a local TV newsman and circus fan. Every year when the Ringling show came to town, he did news stories on the circus just about every day of the run. He would even take a camera crew to Phoenix or Tucson in advance of the show’s arrival to tape interviews with the performers that would air while the show was in San Diego. That day, Jack was doing some special promotion and was giving away free bags of popcorn. (He gave us some popcorn to take with us to Visa.) As we were driving back, Smokey told me he would be going in for an operation on his foot. I joked that he should be careful about putting himself into the hands of the “croakers.” Not long afterwards, I heard that he had suffered a stroke and that his sister had him in a nursing home. We sent him some videotapes with old amateur movie footage of the Ringling show from the 1950s, which his sister later said he enjoyed.

07 January, 2017 11:33
Roger Smith said...

There was a small piece in CIRCUS REPORT, along these lines, that family had Smokey in such a home, if memory serves, in Abilene, Texas. Someone please give us better details.

07 January, 2017 18:18

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