Circus Days
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.
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The Ringling Brothers Circus and The Barnum and Bailey Circus joined forces in 1919.
This cartoon may have been made *BEFORE* that. (Or before news of the merger hit Briggsy. Or maybe it’s a cartoon that says “I remember when Barnum and Bailey was unsullied by those Ringling jerks”.)Report
Pretty sure it’s exactly that – a ‘back in my day’ quip, as “Days of Real Sport” are (I believe) all notionally set when Briggs was a kid in the 1880s. (per wikipedia P.T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey teamed up for the first time in 1881 to create “The Greatest Show on Earth”)Report
When it was reasonable to doubt a kid who said he went to the circus once.
Crazy.Report
Also pretty sure it’s less ‘you a saw circus’ and more ‘you, from a small town in Illinois saw the most famous circus in America when it was the hottest ticket in showbusiness*’?
i.e. not ‘you saw the Beatles’ but ‘you were in the theater when the Beatles played on Ed Sullivan?’
*also not sure so much about ‘hot ticket’ but that the circus circuit in the 1880s was limited to where the railroads ran back then because Barnum & Bailey’s innovation was using the logistics provided by trains to help create the spectacle (i.e. move the elephants)Report
There were more traveling circuses than just the big ones, and for quite a long time. Granted I am an old, but I remember the circus coming to Storm Lake, Iowa when I was in grade school there. Population was about 8,000 at the time. Significantly larger cities were at least 60 miles away. Watching the elephants pull up the poles and the big top was amazing. One ring. The big-time circuses hit much bigger cities. The only time I saw the Ringling-Barnum three-ring circus was in Denver around 1990.Report