kizarney (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Wilson Gray]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 10:56 AM, Darla Wells <lethe9 at gmail.com> wrote:
> In many places, people would
> come out year after year and we had _almost cult status_.

Absolutely, Darla!

When I was a child in Marshall, it was the coming of the Clyde Beatty
Circus every year. The railroad tracks were about a block away in
front of our house (in Marshall, the T&P RR track split the colored
part of town in two, instead of separating the colored part from the
white part; actually, it was a branch - as in "bourbon & branch-water"
- there; the RR merely followed its course; once a common railroading
practice, apparently; in the Boston area, an interurban-RR track runs
along the bottom of what was once a trout stream) and the passage of
the circus-train was a major event, only slightly less important than
Juneteenth and the Santa Claus Parade on Christmas Day. Or should that
be, "on Holiday Day"?

In Saint Louis, the local equivalent was the coming of The Royal
American Shows -  better-known amongst the local coloreds as "The
Carnival!"

--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

Once that we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity,
or evil intent, we can uncumber ourselves of the impossible burden of
trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition
that we could be in error, without necessarily deeming ourselves
idiotic or unworthy.
–Kathryn Schulz

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