Join the Circus

I recall my dad saying, when things got stressful in our house of four boys, he was going to run away and join the circus. It always got a laugh. Having a couple grandkids around for a week can be stressful as well as exhausting. So when the circus came to our town this week, it seemed like the solution to several problems. (Older folks have problems; young folks have issues.)
It was an old-style circus—mud shows they used to call them. The smell of the animals. One-night stands. It was an opportunity to see how life was years ago in America. I thought it might be a challenge to convince the kids they should get up in the middle of the night, well, 7 a.m., to watch people work. Not so. They were actually excited at the opportunity to do something different—not that going to special gardens, kiddie parks and hikes in the National Park are everyday things for them.
When we got to the place where the circus was to be, there was nothing but an open field. We did notice some small yellow flags set in what was a huge circle. Colorfully painted trucks started arriving, along with RVs and trailers. It became obvious that the trucks did not park at random. A man in a bright yellow shirt with “logistics” emblazoned on the back waved and pointed until the trucks formed a huge ring outside the ring of flags. With uncanny precision and skill, the men attacked the trucks, unrolled the Big Top, drove stakes with a portable pile-driver, laced the overlapping layers of the tent material and managed to joke with each other in some foreign language.
The Kelly Miller Circus travels on a fleet of 25 vehicles as it has since 1938. It requires an area of some 90,000 square feet to set up. The Big Top, imported from Italy, has a seating capacity of 1,500 and is made of waterproof vinyl. The tent is 120 feet by 130 feet and is 40 feet high. It’s supported by more than a quarter of a mile of heavy gauge aluminum tubing as well as several miles of rope, steel cable and chain.
About 100 or so folks joined us to watch the tent emerge from where a few yellow flags had been only two hours before. Then, a fellow who looked a lot like Buffalo Bill Cody, appeared. He told us the history of the Kelly Miller Circus and how many hundreds of performances they do every year.
He asked us to join the tent master inside the sagging big top. As we entered, an enormous Asian elephant, Lisa by name, joined us. She was in harness. The tent crew fastened her harness to the pole rigging—the king pole. On command, showing virtually no effort, the 10,000 pound pachyderm took a few steps forward and the tent began to unfold like a giant piece of origami. We all stood there in awe as Lisa did her trick with three more huge poles. And the big top was—big—just as it has been for 200 years.