Fascination With the Circus Stirs Boyhood Memories

We took our three younger grandchildren the other day to the Cirque du Soleil at the Santa Monica pier.

It is not the circus that played in every American city and hamlet for a century. There were no wild animals, no horses. There was no fat lady, no tattooed man, no Tom Thumb.

But the acrobats and the trapeze artists were absolutely amazing, and the clown, between the acts, reminded us that pantomime can be hilarious.

It is miraculous that the circus is alive at all today, with the competition of TV and big-time sports. The crowd sat on hard bleacher seats under a striped tent, but no one left early, and after the last act they roared for minutes, bringing the ensemble back for three curtain calls.

Perhaps I feel especially drawn to the circus because it might have been my calling. When I was 10 years old someone gave me a kids’ novel named “Andy the Acrobat” for my birthday. It was the first full-length book I had ever read. It was about a boy my age who left home and joined a traveling circus.

Naturally, the book had a great influence on me. I thought of running away from home and joining a circus myself. I was definitely drawn toward the life. But I was also fascinated that anyone could write so many words as the author of that book. Instead of joining a circus, I decided to be a writer. Perhaps my life has not been as exciting as it might have been, but if I had followed the circus I would never have lived in the same house for 40 years, as I have.

No event was greater in small-town America than the coming of the circus. It usually came by train, unloading all its animals and props on a siding at night. In the morning, it paraded through town--elephants, horses, acrobats, tigers--the whole glorious troupe. Meanwhile, roustabouts were pitching the big top on some vacant corner, and for two days the town was in thrall.

There were few boys who didn’t try to climb under the tent for a free show. Usually they were caught by the circus bulls. The punishment was slight. Sometimes a kid was allowed to work his way in by watering the elephants.

When I was a youth I worked for part of a summer as a bellhop in a hotel in Willows, in the Sacramento Valley. During my time there a circus came to town, and its people stayed in the hotel. I was thrilled to be in their service. I took ice to the rooms of those fabulous people--bandsmen, trapeze girls, clowns, acrobats, the ringmaster. They were all down-to-earth but exceedingly polite. There was no bad conduct. In fact, I do not remember every hearing of circus people committing crimes or disturbing the peace while visiting small towns.

Movies have been made about the circus life. Inevitably, there must be alliances and jealousies among such hard-working and dedicated people--people who have chosen to abandon home and stability for the road. This may be what makes them so fascinating to the rest of us.

One is transfixed as the trapeze girl leaves her swinging high ring, makes two somersaults and is caught at the wrists by the man who is swinging toward her on his ring. The timing is exquisite. The body control is breathtaking. One wonders whether the two are lovers, or whether she hates him, and whether it’s mutual.

During one such exercise their hands missed, and she fell into the safety net. Immediately she climbed to her high perch again and swung out once more to a mid-air rendezvous. This time he caught her and the crowd sighed. Was the miss deliberate? To heighten the crowd’s anxiety? I doubted it. The trick looked impossible to begin with. I couldn’t see how they did it.

One reason for the fascination of the circus, I imagine, is the wonder we feel that fellow human beings have developed such incredible control of their bodies. We wonder whether we could ever have done such things, if we had started down a different path.

We marvel at the skill of a third baseman scooping up a hard grounder and throwing out a batter at first base. But it’s child’s play compared with the skill of the girl on the high trapeze. (I hope I will be excused for calling her a girl. Trapeze woman just doesn’t sound right.)

There was also the young woman who lay on her back and twirled four parasols simultaneously, two with her feet and two with her hands. And the four exceedingly lissome young women who tied themselves in knots and formed a pyramid of living pretzels.

I doubt that I ever could have trained my body to work on the high trapeze, but, what the heck, I might have made it as a clown.

At least I could have watered the elephants.