Tuesday, July 23, 2019

PARADE #3



6 comments:

Richard King said...

My dear friend Pat White and her liger Topaz. She was so tired and beat up by the end of the parade. Topaz was a lap cat. Between trying to climb in her lap and jumping on her and wanting to play, it was a tuff afternoon for her.

Charles Hanson said...

Are these parade photos from different years???

Richard King said...

Yes.

Richard King said...

1986

Charles Hanson said...

Thanks Richard....

Roger Smith said...

Mabel Stark followed this long-time tradition of having a trainer ride in an open wagon with cats. In a similar Barnes show parade, in Wyandotte, Michigan, in 1914, she was critically injured when the cats attacked her. A town boy rode his horse too close to the wagon. The horse spooked at the sight of the cats, fell, and slid under the wagon. The cats instantly lunged at the bars to go for the horse, and frustrated at the barrier, quickly spun their attack on Mabel. Obviously, she survived, but the event left her hospitalized for 3 weeks.

Mabel was in her 3rd year with Barnes by then, and as Generally Useful, she did whatever the Old Man told her. Some photos have trainers in a small separate compartment in these wagons, closed off from the cats. Mabel's wagon had one, but it was closed behind her, and she was in the open section, as we see Pat was in this photo. Since anything can provoke an attack by the animals without warning, any boss promoting this danger in a small wagon compels a risk that cannot be defended.

Mabel told me of this attack in more colorful detail than was reported in the October 3, 1914, issue of THE BILLBOARD, and as re-quoted in the March-April 2001 issue of BANDWAGON.