The Circus Fire (4 page)

The circus rebounded easily. It was sad, yes, but they were used to the fact that trouping was a hard and not always safe life and that accidents happened. Proof that it could happen to anyone was never far off. Walter McClain had pioneered the use of elephants in unloading flatcars and helping haul wagons from the runs to the lot. In November, as the show unloaded in the Jacksonville yards, he slipped and fell as he was trying to hop a moving baggage wagon. The front wheel crushed his skull, killing him. The circus mourned and carried on. That was circus life.

But while the razorbacks and canvas hands knew the dangers at the

runs and on the lot, everyone with the show also knew the risks were theirs alone. The audience was never in danger. It was with great pride that even after the Cleveland fire Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey could truthfully state that no spectator at any of their shows had ever been killed.

As terrible as the menagerie fire was, Thanksgiving of that year taught the public how bad a fire could really be. The Cocoanut Grove, a crowded nightclub in Boston, burned in seven minutes. Exits were few, some of them blocked by doors that opened inward, and 492 people died, most of them not from burns but by asphyxiation. The smoke from materials used to decorate the club proved to be toxic, poisoning hundreds. Many of the bodies seemed untouched, just sleeping. All 492 were identified.

The Boston press made much of the Grove's employees knowing the way out while customers groped blindly in the smoke. How the fire started was never firmly established, though a teenaged waiter, having lighted a match to see a lightbulb he was supposed to change, was tried in the papers. The courts cited the inflammable materials, lack of exits and well-past-capacity crowd as criminally negligent, and sentenced the club's absentee owner to prison. The courts also tried the city building inspector who had licensed the club, but while they found him derelict in his duties, he didn't see time.

Survivors of the dead sued, but the owner's pockets were not deep. Each claimant received as a death benefit only $160. Immediately, cities around the country changed and then began to strictly enforce their fire codes. Insurance companies clamped down. We would learn from the Cocoanut Grove, officials said.

July 4 , 1944

It was Christmas in July, a circus tradition, the one day the whole family of the Big Show threw themselves a party. In Providence they'd be celebrating, the cookhouse decked out with flags and crepe-paper streamers, the canvas wall segregating the workers from the performers and management taken down just this one day, everyone digging into fried chicken, with cake and ice cream for dessert and seconds for all who wanted them.

But no, the twenty-four-hour man was here in Hartford, ahead of the show, laying out the lot, telling the mowers how to do their job, ordering all the hay and grain and fuel and food the show would need during their stand and then making sure it would all be here by morning when the first section of the train pulled in. Rationing made his job that much harder, and forget about getting anything delivered the night of the Fourth.

His first concern was the lot. He knew it well; they'd played on the Barbour Street grounds for ten years now, moving over from Colt's Meadows in the early thirties. The city had bought the land back then, hoping to build a high school on it, but that didn't happen, and they turned it over to the Public Building Commission, who rented it to carnivals and circuses. The show had played here around this time every year since, only missing once, during the '38 strike season. Most of the year the land stood empty, a grassy meadow.

It was a long, rectangular lot stretching east from the street—the only real access. The ground was level enough, but dusty, the grass dry; it hadn't rained in days. To the right as he came in was the McGovern Granite Company who made tombstones, their long yard filled with blank, polished samples. Farther in on the same side a maroon snow fence protected a tract of victory gardens. Neighborhood kids used the middle of the lot as a ball field, and the twenty-four-hour man could see the ruts of the batter's box on both sides of home, the grass trampled between the dust pits of the bases. The left side and back end were lined with trees, and beyond the trees at the back, a dirt road rose over a gentle hillock and connected with Hampton Street, a square block empty save a plot of shade tobacco and the barracks and spotlights of an army antiaircraft unit.

From past years he knew where the tops were supposed to go, and he knew there wouldn't be room for the menagerie tent. It was just as well— they'd been late several stands, so short-handed, and anything that cut their set-up time was welcome.

Officially they had the lot from this evening till the morning of the 7th. The show's contracting agent had made the arrangements back in February, supplying the city with the circus's standard lease form and dropping off thirty or so passes with the superintendent of buildings. The rent was $500, to be paid by draft at the money wagon the day of the show. It was the standard deal.

And everything here on Barbour Street seemed fine to the twenty-four-hour man, business as usual. The advance men had done a good job of getting their bills up. Every mom-and-pop Italian grocery and barbershop and package store in the North End had a lithograph picturing the Panto's Paradise spec in its front window, the owners happy to have free passes in exchange for displaying the posters. The lot was in good shape. The weather was clear and expected to stay that way.

In Providence they were having Christmas dinner. Not the twenty-four-hour man; he had to order ice and fish and fresh bread, eggs and bacon and milk. It would be a long, hot day. When he left, the mowers were still working.

The show had hired John Sponzo to cut the grass and cover the sidewalk on the east side of Barbour Street with dirt so the trucks and wagons wouldn't break it up. Sponzo owned a brick company on Main and a fair amount of land by the corner of Cleveland and Hampton Streets, a section of which the circus would use for their horse top and cookhouse. Later he testified that he and one of his men were on the lot the 3rd and the 4th.

They had a pair of horses and a mowing machine and a one-horse rake. They had some trouble with cans and wire fouling their blades. Where the tent was, he said, the soil was sandy and the grass didn't grow much. They cut the lot and raked the grass, saving half for bedding and half to feed the horses.

Was enough dry grass left, in his opinion, to start a fire?

"I would say no," John Sponzo said, "because we did a fairly good job of it."

Principals

The Cook party,
Mr. Frank Golloto

Southampton, Mass.
Donald Gale, 10

Mrs. Mildred Cook
Caroline Brown, 8
Donald Cook, 9

Eleanor Cook, 8
The Smith party,

Edward Cook, 6
Vernon, Conn.

Mrs. Grace Smith

The Norris/Smith party,
Joan Smith, 12

Middletown, Conn.
Elliott Smith,
7

Mr. Michael and Mrs. Eva Norris

Agnes Norris, 6
The Epps/Goff party

Judy Norris, 6
Hartford, Conn.

Mrs. Mae Smith
Mrs. Mabel Epps (pregnant)

Barbara Smith, 12
William Epps,
7

Mary Kay Smith, 6
Richard Epps, 3

Mrs. Maurice Goff

The Kurneta / Erickson party,
Muriel Goff, 4
Middletown, Conn.

Mrs. Frances Kurneta
The Bocek/
Marcovicz party,

Mr. Stanley Kurneta
Hartford, Conn.

Miss Mary Kurneta Stella Marcovicz

Betsy Kurneta, 10
Francis Marcovicz, 4

Tony Kurneta
Dorothy Bocek, 13
Raymond Erickson Jr., 6

The LeVasseur party,

The Gale/Grant party, Bristol, Conn.

East Hartford, Conn.
Marion LeVasseur

Mrs. Hulda Grant
Jerry LeVasseur, 6

July 5,1944

They were late out of Providence and blew the matinee. They'd been late all season—in Bridgeport and Fitchburg and Manchester—but this was the first show they'd blown.

They blamed the trains. According to the front-page story in the
Hartford Times:
"There was a divergence of opinion between circus and railroad officials as to what occasioned the delay. A spokesman for the show said the 72-foot flatcars needed to transport the main tent were 'unable to negotiate sharp curves in the railroad' between Hartford and Willimantic. Railroad dispatchers (with the New York, New Haven & Hartford) said the train was never scheduled to go that way. 'It came up the main line via the Cedar Hill yards in New Haven on schedule.' "

It was a different show this year. John Ringling North was out, replaced by Robert Ringling, seemingly at the whim of his mother, Mrs. Edith Ringling, widow of Charles, one of the original five brothers.

The struggle for control of the show seesawed between two sets of heirs: John Ringling North and his brother Henry, who were nephews of John Ringling; and Mrs. Edith Ringling and her son Robert, joined by their ally Aubrey Ringling, widow of Richard (son of original brother Alf), and newly married to James Haley. The state of Florida also factored into the equation, since the childless John Ringling had left it his mansion, his art museum and 30 percent of the show. At first his will provided handsomely for the North boys and their mother—who along with her son John was named his executor—but when John Ringling had a falling out with them late in life, he signed a codicil taking away everything except $5,000 for their mother. The mistake John Ringling made was never removing the Norths as his executors. They took the will to court and in the meantime as trustees of the estate voted the 30 percent of the stock. To thwart John Ringling North's sometimes overwhelming ambition, Edith and Aubrey Ringling entered a pact known as the Ladies' Agreement; on all top-level matters they were legally bound to vote their shares together.

In this manner, Edith's son Robert—an opera singer with no circus

experience—came to replace the flamboyant John Ringling North. He pledged to return the show to its roots, doing away with North's blue four-poler and bringing back the pre-1939 six-pole white top. There was nothing as fabulous as Balanchine's elephant ballet during Robert's reign, but

the Broadway-style pageantry North favored remained, as did their problems with the Office of Defense Transportation, war rationing and a serious lack of manpower.

The war needed everyone; industry had even requisitioned some of the little people among the performers to work in tight spaces on aircraft assembly lines. In Providence, George W. Smith had 670 workingmen, well below the usual complement of 960, and it took three of these, he complained, to do the work of one good man. For the ushers and ticket sellers and concessionaires there was lots of "cherry pie," the circus term for the extra work of setting up the grandstand's wooden folding chairs. Troupers did double duty, helping tear down and set up, proving they were "with it and for it."