Sunday, July 10, 2011

A look behind the scenes at the circus


People lined the streets as circus animals and performers paraded through Raleigh near the end of the 19th century.

from: Raleigh, NC News & Observer

July 10.2011

N&O researcher Teresa Leonard looks at yesteryear in the Triangle and North Carolina on the blog Past Times.
One of the highlights of the circus coming to town is seeing the animals and acts unload from the train. The photo at right shows the spectacle of a circus parade around 1898. A note on the back of the photo says the parade is "going west down Morgan and turning S onto Fayetteville" and that the photographer was "sitting in the window of the YMCA."
A visitor to Raleigh's 1937 circus described the life the circus took on after the audience had gone home.
They missed the drama of the circus. They didn't go back of the scenes, the "backyard" to showmen, where cook shop, hospital tent, dressing tents, dining tent and animal tent formed a little city of circus people. ...
Only in the "backyard" can the observer find this confused array of humanity that goes into a circus and sustains the life drama of circus people. In the mammoth tent of the cook shop, those 1,500 individuals eat three meals a day - 4,500 sets of dishes to be brought out, served, washed and stacked for movement each day.Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/07/10/1330904/a-look-behind-the-scenes-at-the.html#ixzz1RhQ5hhjX

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