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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Today’s commentary is not about politics, it’s about how times and tastes change.
Saturday was the annual circus parade in Baraboo. The circus museum’s classic wagons were paraded through the streets, led by fancy horses and clowns.
The circus, as you probably know, is dead. It’s fallen victim to changing tastes in entertainment. Lion tamers and elephants and acrobats no longer fire our imaginations. Maybe it’s because we see so much on screens today. In older times, you’d see dozens of things you’d never seen before in one circus performance. We’ve seen it all on Youtube or tick toc now.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the circus. Bridgeport, Connecticut, where I’d worked for many years was PT Barnum’s hometown. He was a former mayor there. He was a Bridgeport real estate developer, and the founder and chairman of Bridgeport Hospital. Went Field, a city park, is where the elephants lived when Barnum’s circus wasn’t on tour.
The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus no longer performed under the big top when I was a kid. They played indoor arenas only. And in 2003, Bridgeport built a new indoor hockey arena. Barnum’s circus would play his hometown for the first time in 50 years. It was the most enjoyable, light-hearted news story I’d ever worked on. I was invited to tour the circus train. And at 2am, I was there with my daughter Danielle as the elephants were off loaded from the train and paraded through the streets to the arena.
The following day I met Bello The Clown, who had a remarkable knowledge for circus history. He met his wife, a circus acrobat, while performing with Ringling Brothers. They had a son who lived with them on the circus train. Bello gave me this tip about juggling: juggling three things of equal weight, like tennis balls, was easy. Juggling things of different weights was hard. He juggled a golf ball, a bowling pin, and a chain saw. He also performed as a human cannon ball… shot across the arena as the show’s finale. His wife would light the fuse.
The circus is no more. When Ringling Brothers retired their elephants, ticket sales plummeted. Circuses with only human acrobats are small affairs. Only Cirque du Soleil makes money. A generation from now, young people who attend the Baraboo parade will wonder “what is this”, or more likely “what was this”? I’m glad that a small part of our circus heritage lives in Wisconsin. I suspect that soon it will vanish forever.
Chris Conley
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