Monday, August 31, 2015

James Bros. #12


One winter I talked Sid into allowing me to bring the elephants to Florida during the brief time off.
Here we see me and Hugo showing off new babies "Karen" and Shannon.

2 comments:

Chic Silber said...


Must have been early in

the Circus Williams era

Wade G. Burck said...

There was a period of my life, 1974-1975 that I refer to as " an ignorant first of may who missed a world class autograph opportunity." We were laying off for two weeks at Andrew Kirby's place (Tarzan Zerbini's winter quarters) in Sarasota with the tigers and elephants so I could practice and prepare for my performing debut in Atlanta, Georgia. One morning while practicing the elephants I noted a little short man standing under the tree's watching. Upon finishing and watering the elephants, the little short man walked up and asked, "how long have you been working elephants?" I couldn't hardly understand what he said but I replied, "I groomed them for a year and a half and that was my 4 rehearsal with them, and would you mind stepping back." He said, "you did a good job, keep up the good work," and walked away to meet Andrew coming out of his mobile home and walked out the gate. Andrew came out to the elephants and informed me that, "my friend Hugo said you did a real nice job with the elephants," to which I replied, "Who's Hugo, and what's does a little short bald man know about elephants," to which Andres replied, "Hugo Schmidt, that's who Hugo is. The elephant trainer on Ringling." It still didn't ring a bell, but a few months later when it did ring a bell, I sure wished I had asked him to sit down and have a coke, instead of asking him to step back from the elephants.................

Wade Burck