The Big Top Comes to Town
Sketches and Essay | Maureen O’Hara Pesta
Brownstown, Indiana, May 1978. It’s early in the morning. I’ve gathered my sketchbook and pens and driven to the county fairgrounds, past the edge of town, to watch the circus elephants raise the Big Top.
You might not expect to see an elephant in tiny Brownstown. But once upon a time the circus really did come to town.
Here are sketches from that day. I found them recently in a forgotten drawer.
But it was more than mere curiosity that brought me to the fairgrounds that day. It was a deep seated urge — a childhood memory. The memory of my father’s desire to see the elephants.
When I was little, I remember Dad rousting us kids out of bed in the early morning darkness to watch the elephants raise the circus tents in Toledo, Ohio, where I grew up. Dad was always up for an adventure. He had a sense of wonder, of curiosity.
Had he been replaying his own childhood? Had his parents taken him to see the circus elephants when he was a boy?
So there I was in 1978, sketching and remembering and wondering.
As I think about that morning, drawing the gentle giants, I can hear a handler warning me, “They can turn on you and kill you in an instant.” Then he proceeded to tell me stories about people who were horribly maimed.
My description of that morning, reproduced below, was published along with these sketches in The Brownstown Banner in 1978.
I saw the hard life the circus elephants endured. Raising huge tents. Pushing trucks out of the mud with their heads.
So let’s imagine that they ended their days somewhere more pleasant, maybe in Florida, grazing on fruit buffets and basking in the sun. No more chains. Life is good.
These sketches and the essay below were published June 10, 1978, in The Brownstown Banner:Circus Tent
The Fairgrounds, Thursday morning, May 18 … the early sun beating down, the grass steamy and vivid after weeks of rain. Sells & Gray circus trucks are rolling in. Shouts and waving arms signal each member of the caravan into position.
The crew unrolls a canvas tent along the steamy ground … a man sits in the center, stitching.
A large truck whines, rocking in the mud.
“Hey, get Bessie, she’s got herself stuck … that elephant Bessie, she’s okay, but Topsy, now, you got to look out for that one. Chased a guy around the truck. Yeah, it’d pick a guy up an’ squeeze.”
Bessie’s chain jerks tight as she strains, pulling the helpless vehicle.
Again, “Hey, Bessie,” and she butts her massive head against a tailgate … umph … a second truck is freed.
A man leans on the roof of his truck cab, peering through binoculars. “9:25,” he announces. He can see all the way to the Courthouse clock.
Workers tug at tent ropes, stretching the canvas, placing stakes. Commands sound urgent. Still, when one man races to obey, “Hey, what’s the hurry, buddy?”
A woman ties some horses to a fence, where they graze.
“Say, be alright if we rode them horses to town for some cold beer …?”
A pickup with a stake driver on its bed maneuvers carefully around the tent.
“Where was we yesterday? … Lessee, ’bout a hundred miles from here, it began with an ‘S’ … can’t remember. All’s I know we put up the Big Top for lessen 50 people … what a waste.”
The men prop up several poles at one end of the tent to form an opening. Bessie waits, her trunk a perfect circus poster coil, mouth agape. Obligingly, the trainer pours a Coke down her throat.
Then he guides Bessie to the tent opening … “Steady, get on … Push it way … High … High.” The bulky figure burrows through the canvas until one inside pole is up, another leans across her back …
* * *
Many years ago, my Dad, how he woke us up … we shivered with anticipation as we dressed in morning darkness. Matching shorts, striped t-shirts, and sweaters to protect us from the morning chill. A vacant lot … the shadowy crew that battered tent stakes … whistling figures in the ghostly dawn …
