My parents first took me to the Ringling Bros., Barnum And Bailey Circus, in the Spring of 1960, when I was just five years old. It was at the old Madison Square Garden. Then, when I was older, in the fourth grade, I went again. In the newer Garden! My last trip to the circus was in 1974, about ten years after. And that is now 43 years ago.
With the end of an era of American artistry in sight, David and I wanted to take it in, one final time. And we did, this past Friday, at Brooklyn's Barclay Center.
Personally, darlings, I just LOVED Cashmere, the tiger! A real trouper, that one! All the animals were! Which is why I liked them the best. But how the circus has changed. An inter galactic concept show? Ice skating? Speeding cycles inside a sphere? This seemed more like "Starlight Express" to me, instead of the circus, as I remembered it. I know times have changed, but does the circus have to be marred by this, too?????????????
Maybe that is why it is folding. The smell of popcorn and animals was gone, and so was the magical lure that made us all, in our younger day, Toby Tylers, who wanted to join the circus. Even I, while watching the aerialists, was reminded of the brief time when I wanted to do this.
Can you imagine? Now, I wouldn't make it down a slide in a children's park!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The circus was a touchstone in the lives of many of us, when children. Now, future generations will be deprived of this. Since they will have no basis of comparison, it may not be lost on them, but on the generations before them.
How sad, being reduced from touchstone to touch tone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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