Saturday, March 20, 2010

IN AN OKLAHOMA TOWN, LIFE IS A THREE RING CIRCUS

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 Ft-Worth Star-Telegram
Carson & Barnes will start its season at the Irving Mall on March 19.
It will be at La Gran Plaza in Fort Worth from April 1 to April 5.
Kelly Miller Circus will perform in White Settlement on March 16.
IN AN OKLAHOMA TOWN, LIFE IS A 3 RING CIRCUS
By STEVE CAMPBELL
sfcampbell@star-telegram.com
HUGO, Okla. -- The big top goes up and then down about 200 times a season as the Carson & Barnes Circus marches its menagerie in a nostalgic slow waltz across America.
Starting in Texas in mid-March, the traveling caravan of 24 semis, 18 RVs, elephants, roustabouts, high-wire artists, mechanics, animal trainers, clowns, a teacher and one extended family of more than 40 people will trek nearly all the way to the Canadian border in 60-mile increments.
In the fall, they follow the falling leaves back south. By mid-November, when owner Barbara Byrd starts to see smoke coming out of chimneys, she and her caravan of 130 or so circus people know it's time to take the elephants home.
At their winter quarters in Hugo, Okla., Santa Claus is waiting for a ride.
"In Hugo, Santa doesn't arrive on a sleigh -- he's elephant-powered," says Byrd, referring to the southeastern Oklahoma town's annual Christmas parade.
Since 1941, when a Hugo grocery store owner and avid circus fan persuaded Byrd's grandfather and father to move their winter headquarters from Mena, Ark., circuses have been an integral part of life in the town of about 5,000 just across the Red River from Paris. Two other tent-based circuses, the Kelly Miller Circus and the Culpepper & Merriweather Circus, also spend the off-season here.
In "Circus Town U.S.A.," big-top themes are everywhere, blazed across the water tower, painted on school walls and memorialized in bronze statues in the county library.

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