THE BALLOON MAN

Rosie & Opal Go to Heaven

 

from:  wunderground.com
Posted by: shoreacres on November 12, 2012
For years I’d been side-stepping Hugo without a thought. Heading north from Houston toward the east side of Kansas City, my route never varied: Lufkin, Nacogdoches and Paris in Texas, a quick slide through Oklahoma on the Indian Nation and Will Rogers turnpikes, a swing around Joplin and an easy final leg up to Blue Springs.
Tucked into a bend in the road at the southern terminus of the Indian Nation, bereft of glitzy billboards or even a retro gas station at the intersection, Hugo is all but invisible from the four-lane. If you’re just passing through with no reason to take the business route into town, you could be excused for thinking Hugo resembles other hamlets clustered along the Texas-Oklahoma border - Powderville, Arthur City, Frogville.
I wasn’t sure what I’d find in Hugo, but I’d had my curiosity piqued and decided a visit was in order. After all, the Evergreen Cemetery in Paris may have Willet Babcock’s fancied-up tomb topped with a life-sized Jesus wearing cowboy boots, but Hugo’s Mt. Olivet boasts three world championship rodeo cowboys, the original Marlboro Man and William Edmond Ansley, one of twenty or so midgets who made a career of promoting “Buster Brown” shoes across the country.
Even more famous is the section of Mt. Olivet called “Showman’s Rest”. Filled with a multitude of memorials to clowns, trapeze artists, bareback riders and elephant trainers, it’s one of the primary year-round attractions of an Oklahoma town that likes to bill itself “Circus City, USA”.
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