Traveling circus shows a colorful part of Sonoma County history

If the news about Ringling Brothers hasn’t been totally eclipsed, you are probably aware that The Greatest Show on Earth isn’t that great anymore and, in fact, has scheduled its final, forever, performances for this coming spring.

I don’t think we can blame this on politics. It’s been a long time coming. The public’s entertainment tastes have, shall we say, evolved.

When Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus lost its elephants to public opinion, it was clear that it was only a matter of time.

The media has covered this story pretty thoroughly, sandwiching it between stories of the bigger circus that threatens to overwhelm us.

And I am far from the first columnist to play the circus theme on my political calliope.

The New York Times’ Sam Roberts played the trump card last Sunday, evoking the obvious historical reference to the Roman poet Juvenal, in his belief that the “vox populi” could be quieted with “bread and circuses.”

Unlike Juvenal, I have no pat phrases for current events so I believe I will indulge in a bit of escapism - call it time travel.

Want to get away?

Let’s go to the circus.

...

In the summer of 1903, Ringling Brothers - still a decade or more away from its merger with the other great American circus, Barnum & Bailey - came to Santa Rosa for the first time.

It wasn’t the first circus in the county. Not by a long shot. Petaluma and Santa Rosa were newly organized towns in 1860 when Dan Rice’s “Great Show and Elephant Exhibition” set up in open fields.

Rice was a clown who offered trained mules named Pete and Barney and the “amazing performing elephants, Victoria and Albert,” as well as a “talking pony,” and offered $10 to anyone who could ride his mules three times around the ring.

There were several others in the years before the railroad, including Dan Castello, whose performers and menagerie would be the starting point for the legendary P.T. Barnum.

In 1869, “for positively one day only,” General Tom Thumb and his wife (presumably “Mrs. Thumb”), billed as “the world’s smallest midgets,” appeared at the courthouse.

Even after the rails came to town in 1870, circuses still came in wagons, sometimes one right after the other, all summer long, setting up in vacant lots.

In 1875, an enterprising Sonoma Democrat reporter caught up with eight small boys seated in the tent “like so many chickens on a fence, their mouths slightly opened, and their honest eyes protruding enough to be scraped off with a stick. … Most of them, without doubt, had performed unheard of tasks for three weeks to get taken to the circus.”

hhhhhh

Once Southern Pacific established a link with the transcontinental Central Pacific in 1888, the arrival of the “railroad circuses” was as exciting as the shows themselves.

The sound of the pre-dawn whistle at the North Street depot (definitely not a “quiet zone” despite the proximity of the town’s swankiest neighborhood) guaranteed a flock of youngsters to bear witness to the biggest event of the summer season.

The elephants, unloaded first, hauled poles and canvas for the Big Top to the College Lot - so called because it had been the first home for Pacific Methodist College before it moved north to a Humboldt Street site. (Today, it is the campus of Santa Rosa Junior High.)

In 1902, it was the site of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, with horses instead of elephants, war dances and a re-enactment of the Rough Riders’ charge up San Juan Hill. And then, in 1903, for the first time, Ringling Brothers.

hhhhhh

Journalistic enthusiasm was boundless, promising in advance stories “the most magnificent, sensationally varied and longest display ever organized.”

It would not be, The Press Democrat promised, the “usual circus parade of … weather stained chariots” and “unkempt costumes.” Rather, there would be “tableau floats … fairy carts, band chariots” and “ancient coaches of state.”

“Nothing in the created or creative world is too costly for this wonderful enterprise.”

Ringling Brothers, which would be an annual event in Santa Rosa for the next two decades, came in four separate trains, 81 cars in all. There were two dining cars, 13 coaches for the performers, 28 box and stock cars for elephants and livestock and 39 flatcars for wagons, cages and tents.

The newspaper described the “mass of humanity … in the windows, on the porches, and on the house tops, “as arriving “afoot, on horse and mule back and in every conceivable shape of vehicle, from the rubber-tired rig and trap, and up-to-date buggies of every design, down to the cart and wagon which were seemingly on their last wheels.”

The description doesn’t sound much different than today’s reports of the traffic jams on NASCAR day at Sonoma Raceway.

“The roads were blocked with vehicular traffic until it looked as if long processions were entering the city by every entrance. In the evening the excursion trains from the north and from Petaluma and other points along the California Northwestern Railroad, brought hundreds more (to the depot at the end of Fourth Street) until midnight and after …”

“Farmers from the surrounding towns and counties … with their entire families, crowded the streets with a good-natured, perspiring crowd prepared to be amused by anything.”

Think about that if you will. I’m just sorry I missed it. It may be a temporary escape, but it can’t hurt to dwell for a bit in our small-town American past.

hhhhhh

With the ease of transportation and the advent of post-Depression, post-war prosperity, Ringling Brothers took its shows to event centers in metropolitan areas.

The last three-ring performance I attended - with two pre-teen kids and a friend each - was at the Cow Palace in the ‘70s. And I think between the tickets and the “gotta haves,” it cost me about the same as my first car.

In the last half of the 20th century, the small-city circus gap was filled by a number of smaller, traveling shows, notably The James Brothers Circus and Circus Vargas, still in tents, usually at the fairgrounds, either in Santa Rosa or Petaluma.

The small family shows, like the Pickle Family Circus, came later. And there are still “travelers,” some Latino-themed, that pass this way. But the really big shows - the lion tamers and the sad clowns - are gone with the elephants, assigned to safe havens and memories.

I wonder if that movie, “The Greatest Show on Earth” - the one with Betty Hutton on the trapeze and Jimmy Stewart as the sad clown - is on Netflix?