How a little town saved the circus
Bill Wundram The Quad-City Times
Bill Wundram The Quad-City Times
Posted: Sunday, August 28, 2011
Hey! Children of all ages, the circus comes to town this week. If you are from Cascade, Iowa - which is in the bluffs about 70 miles north of the Quad-Cities - you will get in free to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Citizens of Cascade need only to show their driver's licenses and they will be ushered to the best seats in the house when the Greatest Show on Earth plays the i wireless Center in Moline, Thursday through Sunday.
THE FREE SEATS promise represents a hundred year-plus commitment because little Cascade once reached out to save the circus when it was a tiny show, broke and struggling to get its wagons through the mud.
The show's gift is a little-known tale of the benevolence of a mammoth entertainment enterprise. If not for the big-hearted people of Cascade, the Greatest Show on Earth likely wouldn't exist.
There is a standing order at the box office in Moline that anyone from Cascade gets in free. This has held true for all the years the circus has played the Quad-Cities, because this is the closest venue to Cascade that the show plays.
It is a strange order, but executives of Feld Entertainment, which now owns the Ringling show, say it is time-honored. A Feld representative says, "It's a long, very old promise, and Ringling keeps its promises."
Read more: http://www.qctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/bill-wundram/how-a-little-town-saved-the-circus/article_b4a1cab6-d142-11e0-8f65-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1Wb4yIg2q
Hey! Children of all ages, the circus comes to town this week. If you are from Cascade, Iowa - which is in the bluffs about 70 miles north of the Quad-Cities - you will get in free to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Citizens of Cascade need only to show their driver's licenses and they will be ushered to the best seats in the house when the Greatest Show on Earth plays the i wireless Center in Moline, Thursday through Sunday.
THE FREE SEATS promise represents a hundred year-plus commitment because little Cascade once reached out to save the circus when it was a tiny show, broke and struggling to get its wagons through the mud.
The show's gift is a little-known tale of the benevolence of a mammoth entertainment enterprise. If not for the big-hearted people of Cascade, the Greatest Show on Earth likely wouldn't exist.
There is a standing order at the box office in Moline that anyone from Cascade gets in free. This has held true for all the years the circus has played the Quad-Cities, because this is the closest venue to Cascade that the show plays.
It is a strange order, but executives of Feld Entertainment, which now owns the Ringling show, say it is time-honored. A Feld representative says, "It's a long, very old promise, and Ringling keeps its promises."
Read more: http://www.qctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/bill-wundram/how-a-little-town-saved-the-circus/article_b4a1cab6-d142-11e0-8f65-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1Wb4yIg2q
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