SNAPSHOT:GIL GRAY CIRCUS 1950's
This is Shelby (Jack) Jackson, and this snapshot could be any where from the mid to late'50's. I know I had a chance to go on the Gray Show in '55, and work Aerial Bars with Shelby & Pablo Rodriguez, instead I went to Pollack Eastern for Harold Voise, which proved to be a mistake.This particular trick starts with the guy sitting in a chair with his feet propped up, reading a newspaper, one of the other membersof the act pulls the chair out and the result is what you see here.
posted by 24-HOUR-MAN | 12:52 PM
5 Comments:
When I was in the first grade of school they marched all the stucents 15 or 20 blocks,(I can see that happening today)to the Memorial Hall to see a One Ring Circus. I remember two things from that day, as we walked past the Soy Bean Mill, the fire Dept. had an aerial ladder extended to the top of one of the bldgs. I found out that evening my uncle had his leg caught in an elevator. The only other thing I remember was in one of the acts a guy sat reading a newspaper and another guy pulled the chair out, and the guy reading the paper didn't fall down. I don't remember another thing about that Circus, that act was The LaBlonde Trio, and 14 years later I was working in the act!!!!
That's Jack Jackson as in Jack and Babe from Louisville? I'll share a great anecdote about Jack and Babe, Dime and Connie, me and Jim Nordmark if anyone is listening!
When I was a small child I remember seeing an act on Rodgers Bros Circus in Salisbury, MD.
I was only 5 or 6 years old but I still remember that and the cat act!Dick Dykes, The Balloon Man
Ron,,,,,, I'm listening!!!!
Alrighty then, that's the same Jack, I guess. I was on the Jim Nordmark show in '71, when Jim was half the show, and me and Jack and Babe made up the other half. I bought Jack's Concord trailer from him, and followed him on jumps the last couple weeks before he retired and I took possession. On a lonely country road in the middle of nowhere, Alabama, they had a flat tire on the trailer, and flapping rubber smashed through to what turned out to be Babe's lingerie drawer, spreading her unmentionables a mile back the road before I could get him stopped. While Jack changed the tire I walked down the road picking up ladies underwear. As I stood up with an overflowing armfull of silken things, I saw a familiar green truck and Yosemite trailer coming towards me. Sure enough, it was Dime and Connie, who I hadn't seen since Hoxie the year before. They recognized me and stopped, but I guess they were a little puzzled to see me walking in the middle of Alabama with such a load! That was a story we laughed over for the next 20 years.
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