Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anyone ever been to a circus?

Or Afghanistan……

“How was it, Lambchop?” “Not baaaad!”

Loved to go to the circus. Probably my favorite part was the elephants.

Shrine Circus used to come to Sioux City. We've got some double-exposed pictures that place it in our living room. Got to ride an elephant at a small circus one time.

When I was a kid Barnum & Bailey would walk the elephants and other animals down Palm Beach Lakes Blvd to the West Palm Beach auditorium. We'd have a picnic on the tail gate and hoot and hollar at them. Last time I was down there it's a jungle full of baboons and apes.

I, as a child, went to the Ringling Bros Circus. It was a real 3 ring circus. I remember the folks using the elephants to help put up the tents. I have fond memories of the events. I liked it all. The trapeze artists, a bunch of clowns piled up in a Crosby car, Emmit Kelly the clown had a trained squirrel that would run up and down his double barreled shotgun barells, I saw the gun get shot out of the cannon, the lions and tigers
with the trainer with the whip and a blank firing revolver. Hell, I’d never stick my head in a lion’s mouth. I saw the Wheel of Death with 2 motorcycles going round and round without a collision. They bound to have been 2 strokes cos they smoked a lot. I wish I could have bounced on the safety net cos they didn’t have trampolines. It was cool how the trapeze artist and human cannonball would bounce to the edge of the net , grab it and flip over to lower themselves down to the ground. I had never seen elephants, camels or zebras ( my younger brother called them sport model mules). At one, we saw a guy get into a cardboard box and set off dynamite next to it. I know his hearing was shot. Never forgot the smells of the freeway- cotton candy, caramel corn, regular popcorn cos we couldn’t afford it. Just remembered that Clyde Beatty was the name of the lion and tiger trainer.

This is like 24hr Campfire click bait…and I’m
all over it

Fried Dough, a few monkeys, some trapeze, fastpitch at lead milk bottles, a dose of triptophan via Turkey Leg, maybe an Eddie Rabbit cover band & I’m in heaven.

Lol.

Went once as a kid.
Wasnt a fan before, or after.

In the 70s my brother went to the circus. One of the clowns dropped to the ground and started rolling around in mud. Everyone was laughing until they realized he was having a heart attack.

The end...

LMAO!

Did he survive?

My folks took me and mon frére to the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey circus at the Boston Garden in maybe '74 or so. It was all fun and games until the drunken dude sitting behind us spilled his beer on Wee Muther's head. As the old man objected to this affront, the drunk proceeded to try to apologize and help dry WM off. In the process he leaned over from the row behind and somehow burned my brother's face with the cherry of his cheroot he had clenched in his teeth. It was a memorable evening, that's for sure. I don't recall my folks ever taking us back to the circus.

I have some seriously crazy stories from a summer stint in the 80s as a P/T teenaged carny (I was the substitute slush guy), but those tales only get told around a campfire. Horrifying and simultaneously glorious in their own right.

Circus Vargas every year as a kid during the 70's.

Ringing Brothers three or four times and most of those with my own kids.

knew a guy who was trying to impress his girlfriend by trying to push a carny around. Carny beat him down good and embarrassed him