Elephants are the most beautiful animals...

So, Thursday afternoon, Todd and I went to visit our few remaining friends on the Ringling Blue unit (the circus is here in Pittsburgh this week). We saw Stashik (that's a nickname for Stanislaw that he goes by and I don't think anyone knows how to spell it), who's the Floor Boss. He's the same as ever. We hadn't seen him in four years - the last time the blue unit was in town he was out having shoulder surgery. We also saw Gene and Kathleen. Gene has been the trainmaster for about 5 years and Kathleen has filled in a number of different jobs on the show. They told us that they will be leaving the show after St Louis (that's 2 weeks from now) to go live in Las Vegas near their daughter, Janene, who was on the road with the blue unit for quite a while. She was Todd's Assistant Lighting Director (unofficially) and took over his job when he left. She also married the general Manager, Jeff. Anyway, we also saw a lot of the floor crew guys that are STILL out there. And we visited for a few minutes with Troy, who is the head of the elephant department on the unit. He took us to see the newest addition to the show, Sarah, a baby elephant who's about 4 or 5 years old. She was born at the CEC while I was on the show and named after Sarah Houcke, who was the tiger act presenter at the time. Sarah (the elephant) was with the other "babies" in the elephant tent, the ones who were with the show when I started. I couldn't believe how much the others (Bonnie, Juliette, and Kelly Ann) have grown. I guess that's what happend to kids. Sarah is about the size Kelly Ann was when I started and she's just CUTE. Seeing elephants every day and getting to pet them and say hi to them is what I miss most about the circus. The way things are going with people leaving, that could have been my last chance to be near an elephant up close and pet her and have her check out my shoes with her trunk..... That makes me sad.

Okay, so that's enough about the current circus fun. Back to my chronicles of when I worked there. Sorry Katie, but I promised Providence, so I'm writing about Providence. Stories of train life later.

Providence, RI, April 2000

So, Steve and I pulled into the parking lot at the Providence Civic Arena at some ridiculously early hour. Steve parked my trailer for me and took the truck, his dog, and Stashik to the show hotel to get a little sleep before we all had to start working. Just a few hours later, I remember getting woken up by radio chatter. I can't remember what it was about, but I know it woke me up. That was to be my plight for the next year and a half - sleeping with the radio on and my cell phone nearby and being woken by one or the other far too often.

Honestly, I remember very little about the actual events that occurred in Providence. I can picture the lot where my trailer was parked and the elephant tent set up perfectly. I can picture the backstage area of the arena pretty well too and I can even picture the building operations guy. I couldn't tell you his name, but he looked like a hit man :) I do have a few specific memories about that week. First, I remember there was some sort of problem with the water meter we had (or maybe didn't have) on the fire hydrant. The water for the animal lot and any trailers parked at the building usually came from a fire hydrant nearby and the circus carried LOTS of fire hose to run that water as far as it needed to go. However, we usually had to have a meter on the hydrant, provided by the city, so that they could bill the show for the water used. I don't remember exactly what happened in Providence, but there was something - either we didn't have a meter and someone came and inspected the setup and told us we had to get one, or we had one that wasn't working or was leaking..... Aha - writing about it makes it all come back. I think what happened was that we were told that we couldn't have our lines hooked to the hydrant for the whole week - there had to be access if there was actually a fire. Usually this can be done with a Y splitter, but either we didn't have one at the time or it was the wrong size or something. So we ended up having to disconnect the water at night, which was truly a pain in the butt. Fortunately for those of us living in trailers on the lot, Jon Weiss (the clown who got shot out of the cannon) had found a water hookup on the side of the arena the size of a regular garden hose hookup, so we were able to run water for the trailers from there.

During the load-in (probably that Tuesday), Steve asked me to park some of the show vehicles once they had been fully unloaded. The first one he asked me to park was the 450 (Ford F450 dually with a high-walled bed which we used to transport the lot power equipment; also, it was a manual transmission vehicle). Unfortunately for me, the parking spaces available for the show vehicles all required parallel parking. I'm not too bad at the parallel parking .... in my little Geo Prism. However, the F450 is about 3 times larger and it had been several months to a year since I had driven a stick shift. Parking that truck took me at least 30 minutes.

Later in the week, we started getting inquiries from the locals about job openings. My first glimpse into the hiring on the show was a bit startling. Steve hired two guys that week (probably on Thursday or Friday) - one for floor crew and one for ring curb crew (explanation of those crews later). They were not the most savory looking people you ever saw and certainly not the most well-educated either. But, I guess you can't expect much more when you're offering $230/week. Anyway, he hired them and one of us (or maybe both of us - I was tending to just follow Steve around everywhere to learn what was going on) took them to get uniforms and meet their department heads. Steve assigned them to train rooms and told the head porter, Mitko, which rooms to give them when they got back to the train. They were working right along for the few days in Providence, and then, when the train pulled out on Sunday, they weren't on it. That's really what startled me most. We had spent a good deal of time and resources on getting them hired, plus we had given them uniforms, and then they just left with no notice 4 days after being hired. That didn't happen very often, but it was always a bit startling and really annoying that we would then have to go ahead and hire some more people to replace them in the next town.

The last specific thing I remember was that on my first real Saturday of work (the Saturday that I was in Philly was really spent filling out paperwork and not knowing what was going on), I showed up at 10am-ish since our first show was at 11:30 and the doors would open at 10:30. At about 10:15, Xan, our Production Manager, called on the radio for Dave, the GM. When he got no answer, he called for Steve. I replied that neither was there and I wasn't sure if I could help him, but what did he need? It turned out not to be an urgent call, but I was by myself in the office for the whole first show, basically the highest-ranked person on site until 1pm-ish. That was a bit scary for me, but I got through it and figured out a lot of how things worked that morning.

What's really sad is that I was going to say which city I'd be telling about next, but I no longer remember the order of the cities on the tour I was on. Fortunately for me, one of the clowns kept an online diary during that whole tour and I will just check his site for it. You should check out his site too - he's one of the most talented clowns I know! http://www.ontheroadwithdavid.com/OnTheRoad/Home.htm
and his online diary is at http://www.ringling.com/explore/backstage/clowndiaryarchive.aspx on the Ringling website. I hope they keep that there for a while longer.