You'll enjoy the show before the circus

The Culpepper & Merriweather Circus will be in town Saturday, June 8, and it's advertising two shows. But there will really be three shows.

The first show is the set-up, and you're invited to attend free. That will start around 9 a.m. and will include the lifting of the Big Top, a tent that is 120 feet long, 80 feet wide and 30 feet at the tallest point.

The set-up may not impress adults, but it should fascinate kids and children. It did my father and me when we had back-stage circus experiences 37 years apart.

Dad's was in Silver City, N.M., where he was born in 1915. He was seven when the circus came to town. It arrived on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.

Dad went to the train station to watch the unloading of wagons and walking animals. Everything, including the band, was organized into a parade formation and marched to the circus site.

"I got behind the circus and walked all of the way across town," dad said.

After the parade, dad found the wagon that had the "office" sign and walked in. He asked for a job, and the manager tried to turn him down.

Then, noting dad's determination, the manager gave in. Dad sold peanuts at the first show for 15 percent of his sales.

There was no second show for dad. He was way short - owed the company - when he returned to the manager to settle up. Patrons had stolen peanuts during the moments he stopped to watch the show.

"I was really disappointed," dad said. "I started to walk out. Then the manager handed me a quarter and told me to come back when I was older."

My own back-stage circus experience in 1959 didn't end as well. The police interviewed me about a fight I witnessed.

That circus was set up on the property adjacent to ours in Granger. My brothers and I went to the fence after the trucks arrived, and we were invited over by circus people.

Richard, 11 then, and I, 14, went. Bob, 8, didn't. He heard there was a python, and he wouldn't go near it.

Rich and I worked. We helped set up the Big Top. The work was hard, but the reward - free tickets - was fabulous.

There were other rewards. We witnessed the magnificent strength of elephants as they moved support poles. We saw a three-legged chicken. We watched a chicken dance.

And we saw the python in its glass cage. It had just eaten and had a big bulge behind the head.

"A chicken," the attendant said.

A chicken?

We had chickens in a coop along the fence. I still wonder if that was where they got the python's lunch.

A couple of hours after we started, a fight broke out between two men. Trying to even the odds, the small one picked up an elephant hook and struck the big one.

Realizing he'd erred, the small man took off, running eastward through the fields. While the hunt for him was on, police came to the house to ask what I saw.

I spent the next few hours wondering if the man with the hook would return to make sure I didn't talk. I finally relaxed when I heard he'd been caught.