The Circus Animal Walk

I'd never seen it before, but the tradition was hundreds of years old. It was the Circus Animal Walk. A line of trainers, elephants, and horses were escorted by the Columbus Police from the parked Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus train in the small historic Grandview Railroad Yard at the end of the Piqua Line.

Very near Downtown Columbus, the walk proceeded along three miles of streets eastward to Nationwide Arena and nearby circus housing. If we spectators were lucky, we thought might take a few clear photos. However, it was dreadfully cold and rainy for many folks to venture to the tiny parade's planned route. One onlooker appeared in a full bright-yellow rain suit with hood.

You can see a photo of the sunny day's Circus Animal Walk in Grandview during 2008 here.

Enough vacant lots and Arena space existed near the Ringling Bros. Zing-Zang-Zoom magic-themed show site to provide large animals and their trainers with safe housing for six days. On the final Sunday night after the afternoon performance, the animals walked back to their train along the same route -- Sometimes it's more fun to watch the Circus Animal Walk and imagine 139 years of Ringling Bros. history than it is to attend the show..

Cirque du Soleil inhabits those same vacant lots when they come to town, with their striking blue and yellow tents. But today, we saw elephants and horses walking to work in their traditional manner. They were protected by the police cruisers, equestrian patrols, and the animal keepers along the three miles of Dreams Come True for children and those of us that wish we could have been around just once in the 1930s, when the circus came to town. It was a full parade then, with jobs offered the local youth to tend elephants and raise tents.

...and you are as likely as not to read a story about circuses, autumn sideshows, comedians, magic, and a little horror. These have been his favored topics since experiences with early films and the circus as a child circa Depression Era America. He has been able to combine his topics again and again, sometimes with a thrilling outer space backdrop.

In Something Wicked This Way Come, Mr. Bradbury does an exquisite job of painting 1930s boyhood images of the arriving circus train. It stops outside town by the edge of a field of crops, where the rail line runs silently in the dark, except for the late-night train whistlings. It is magic and children and youth feel anticipatory electricity in the air.

The Bradbury animal walk next day is a grand costumed parade from the rail line through the main portion of town. Two boys secure temporary jobs with the circus for the weekend performances, and witness strange sideshow denizens. One of these is a beautiful woman curiously encased in a long block of ice. It's a largely genuine picture of the circus in the Midwest around 1890 - 1940. In Cambridge, Ohio the youth and men were given jobs pitching tents, feeding animals, and watering the elephants and my father was one of the lucky boys for a few years.

I suppose that the circuses of the 1950s were a shadow of those of the Depression Era, when they were huge, grand, with many rings and even female lion trainers. A Shine Circus in the 1980s was a little different, emphasizing prolonged trinket sales between the acts. Another, much smaller, traveling circus came to town one summer during the 1990s and it had the most skillful "human statues" acrobats I've ever seen.

The local State Fair also included a small French traveling circus for several years. Each circus was different. However, none of these interesting shows were like the 1930s photos I've seen or Mr. Bradbury's word pictures, the old TV series Circus Boy, or the film Trapeze (Big Top on local programming) with Burt Lancaster.

A large Russian Circus appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s and it was fun to watch, but it did not include an animal walk or a circus parade - likely because of the Cold War political climate. Protesters were feared to be planning possible attacks on the Russian people and animals. In a reverse scene, the film Moscow On The Hudson portrays Russian circus performers attempting to defect in the USA.

A circus is full of stories of the human condition. Walking with its elephants is like walking through time - still fascinating on a cold, rainy spring morning.

The Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus operates two circus troups that travel different performance routes around America simultaneously. Their scedules are quite full, but allow time for the animals and people to rest between performances. The Red and Blue Trous fnction under a different theme an dname each year, as do the more recent Cirque du Soleil troups.

The Eastern US troupe is the Red Tour that sweeps through parts of lower New England across to the west across the MIssissippi River, into East Texas, and down to the Gulf of Mexico, including New Orleans.

The Blue Tour begins in Eastern Pennsylvania and cuts across the Midwest, the Southwest, and includes Seattle WA and Portland OR. Many sites in California are visited as well.

A new GOLD TOUR is centered in Louisiana and lower Texas. Called Illuscination, it is presented in Baton Rouge, Austin, and Hidalgo.

How would it be to travel with any of these three tours across the USA? For some, it is a very hard life, but for many, it is a long and rewarding career.