Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus

Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus Read Online Free PDF

Book: Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus Read Online Free PDF
Author: Bruce Feiler
Tags: nonfiction, Biography, Personal Memoir, v.5
is furled the world’s largest big top.
    “Come along, don’t be afraid. You won’t hurt it. After this you can say that along with the owner you were the first person to set foot on the new tent.”
    Johnny Pugh put his arm around me just after 8 A.M. and led me onto the striped sea of blue-and-white canvas. In truth it wasn’t canvas at all, but vinyl—a dense twenty-two ounces per square yard, dielectrically heat-sealed by radio frequencies to avoid unnecessary sewing. Manufactured at a cost of $158,000 by Anchor Industries of Evansville, Indiana, the new tent was flame-water-, and wind-retardant up to sixty-five miles per hour. It was also, quite plainly, a sight to behold. Lying on the ground in two separate sections parallel to the center line, the tent looked like two enormous blueberry-and-whipped-cream-rolled pancakes, with splotches of strawberry red and an occasional triangle of butter yellow from fifty five-point stars.
    “The spool is always the most dangerous part,” Johnny said of the hydraulic truck specially designed by a shrimp-boat manufacturer in New Bedford, Massachusetts. “When the tent is folded and wound onto the truck, the abrasion from the spools often damages it. Any pinholes, that’s where they’ll develop.”
    Once the tent was stretched onto the ground, the workers gathered to unfurl it. Standing at a distance of one person every six feet, the fifty or so men all grabbed the tent and on command—“Ready, pull!”—unfolded the top layer of vinyl and dragged it away from the center poles. After easing their grip, they walked across the spread and hauled the next fold toward the center. The third pull was to the outside, the fourth toward the middle. Some of the workers used two hands, others one. Some faced forward, others backward. It was a curious rhythm in which each individual note was separate and discordant but together they made a striking chord. With the fifth pull the men reached the end of the vinyl, and with that Johnny ushered me onto the tent. It was 283 feet 4 inches long and, coupled with the other half, 146 feet 8 1/2 inches wide. It looked like an overgrown sail.
    “When you designate the size of a big top,” he said, “it’s the width that matters. Other tents may be longer, but none is wider. That’s why we’re the largest tented circus in the world.”
    Rubbing his hands together in childish delight, Johnny, who has been married to a former showgirl for over twenty years but never had children, led me to the line of center poles and proceeded to explain with paternal pride the modern-day physics of this age-old institution. The new tent, which he had personally designed over a period of four years, had a nylon webbing system imported from Germany to hold it together horizontally, an advanced steel cable infrastructure invented in Sweden to support it vertically, and—Johnny’s personal pride and joy—a system of state-of-the-art lightweight shackles made from a secret NASA alloy to hook the tent onto the four bail rings that carried it to the top of the center poles. Before the poles themselves were raised, however, one final touch was needed. At 8:21 in the morning Johnny personally slid a five-by-eight-foot flag onto the top of each pole: Old Glory on pole one, closest to the front door; CLYDE BEATTY on pole two; COLE BROS . on pole three; and CIRCUS on pole four.
    “We are the only show that uses what we call House Flags,” he said as he stepped his way down the line. “A company called Betsy Ross in New Jersey makes them. It’s a nostalgia thing for us. They used to cost twenty-five dollars apiece, now they’re a hundred twenty-five dollars. At the end of the year we will pick out someone special and give them this season’s flags. Ironically, I’m the only one who doesn’t have a set. I want a new set, and I want to be buried with them.”
    With the flags in place and the poles lifted into the air, the tent was ready to be raised. The outer
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Hunte

Rie Warren

Congo

David Van Reybrouck

Hero Worship

Christopher E. Long

Taken

Chris Jordan

Sinfully Summer

Aimee Duffy

Escaped the Night

Jennifer Blyth

Reparations

T. A. Hernandez

Jenny and Barnum

Roderick Thorp