The circus is in my blood. My great grandmother was Wilhelmina Ringling Pappenfort. Her middle name/maiden name provides the clue to my circus heritage. Her brother was the father of the Ringling Brothers. Her daughter was my grandmother Clara Pappenfort Maupin, who by the time I was born, had lived in Fallon, Nevada for four decades. As a girl, growing up in Missouri, she had spent a lot of time with her famous cousins, the Ringling Brothers, but by the time I knew her, distance had come between them. However, she had been fast girlhood friends with Ida Ringling, the sister of the circus brothers, and I grew up hearing the name, “Aunt Ida.” Ida married Henry North, and their son, John Ringling North, eventually took over the management of the circus. I never met the famous family, but my father traveled to Reno sometime in the 1940’s to see the Ringling Brothers circus and he met John Ringling North (who, according to my mother, looked a bit like my father). I still have a beautiful photo album of the brothers and their families, full of pictures taken in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where the circus had started and where it kept its winter headquarters. I plan to hand-deliver that historic album to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida and have spoken by telephone to the museum curator.
Well, so much for my circus genealogy. I was inspired to write about it when I read the Oral History of Orva Williams Smith (b.1903) held in the Churchill County Museum and Archives and available to read online at the Museum’s website. As the interview drew to a close, the interviewer asked Smith, “Do you recall anything else from your childhood [in Fallon, Nevada] that you would like to tell me about?
Smith: “Well, the circus tent blowing down. The circus came to Fallon in 1912 and they set up down on Maine Street about where either the junior high school or the museum is. Somewhere down in that area. It was kind of a funny day, overcast at times, and the animals were very very restless. They weren’t acting very well. The lion tamer was in the cage with the lions and a huge gust of wind came in and dirt was just rolling. It lifted the tent up, pulled the poles out of the ground and swung them around. The place was packed with people and everybody was screaming and trying to get out and the man with the tigers was begging to be let out. A pole had fallen against the door and they couldn’t get him out and he was just begging for them to do something, get him out of there. A lot of people went down through the seats and then some men took their pocketknives and sliced the tent, made openings. My cousin, Caire, was with us and she and I just looked at one another and down through the seats we went and out. We didn’t bother with anybody. My sister wouldn’t do anything but stand holding on to my mother and screaming. My brother was two years old and my father had him and he looked at my mother and nodded his head and down through the seats he went and took my bother and went outside. Then he came back to try to get my mother and I guess he met her coming out. He had turned my brother over to some woman. He had no idea who she was but he asked her to hold the baby and …so he went back, got the baby, and come and collected my mother and my sister.
…Then after the wind had hit so hard and destroyed everything, it stated to rain and it just poured for about ten, maybe fifteen minutes. But it settled the dust and right away the circus people loaded up and we watched from the window at my aunt’s [home on Maine Street]. Here came a man riding an ostrich down the street. He went right down Maine Street to the depot and another man came with an ostrich hitched to a little cart. He was riding in the cart and the ostrich was just prancing. Then came the elephants all in a row holding onto one another and the cage with the lions and the tigers and one thing and another. They left town immediately.”
In 1912, my father would have been 12 years old and living in Fallon. Given that the circus was in his blood, he most likely was part of the crowd under the big tent the day the wind blew it down.
Please, and I mean please, send a story to [email protected].
Comment
Comments