ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 30, 1996 TAG: 9610020003
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN GRIESSMAYER STAFF WRITER
Amy Mariani might just be the luckiest 7-year-old girl on Earth.
She doesn't have to go to school, she gets to go to the circus every day and her best friend is an 8-ton elephant named Lisa.
Amy can even call her parents clowns and get away with it.
Sound like a fun life? Well, it is. But there's a lot of work to do, too. Amy, if you didn't already guess, is a circus performer. She's part of the animal show and her parents are both clowns. They work for Roberts Bros. Circus, which came to town recently.
Every night - and sometimes twice a night - Amy rides Lisa the elephant around the circus ring, amazing the audience.
"It's pretty cool riding the elephant," Amy said. "It's really a lot of fun."
Depending on what commands the animal trainer shouts, Lisa might pick Amy up in her trunk or squat down on all four huge gray knees or parade Amy around for everyone under the big top to see.
Sometimes, Lisa will lay down right on top of Amy. "It doesn't hurt at all, if you do it right," Amy said. Because Amy is so small and the ground is so soft, Amy never gets squashed. And when she gets back up, the crowd cheers louder than ever.
For Amy and other circus kids, hearing the cheers and laughter from the audience is the reward for the hours of really hard work they do to help make the circus run.
Alan Davis, one of Amy's friends, is just 9 years old, but his job is just as important as the ringmaster or the animal trainer. Alan is in charge of setting up the elephant show and taking tickets for the snake display.
"I usually work from early in the morning when we get to a new town until about noon," he said. "Once I finish my jobs, I'll go around and see if anyone else needs help."
Alan also spends a few hours every day on school work. Like the other kids who work with the circus, his mom teaches him math, spelling, reading and other subjects. They learn a lot about geography and history because they travel around to so many different parts of the country.
"School's not very different for us," said Stacy Earl, a fifth-grader who runs the giant inflatable Starwalk trampoline. "I have to do school work every single day, except for Saturdays and Sundays. And we get a summer break like other kids."
Not many other kids do their studying - and their eating and sleeping - in camping trailers or recreational vehicles, though. Stacy, Alan and Amy call these giant campers home, but they're definitely not roughing it.
Inside their houses on wheels, they have most of the things you have at your house: a kitchen, bathroom, shower and beds. There's even a television with a VCR and a Sega video game system!
Besides watching movies and playing video games, circus kids do plenty of other things for fun. "I like to play outside with the other kids," Alan said. "It's cool if we're staying in a park that has a playground or a swimming pool or a place to RollerBlade."
Stacy said she likes to play with the animals when she's done with her work. And there's plenty of them - dogs, ponies, horses, goats and, of course, the elephant - who need attention.
There's usually not much time for play, though. On days when they've got a show to do, which is almost every day, they have to eat dinner and start getting ready by about 4 in the afternoon. Then, they usually have a show at 5:30 and another one at 7:30.
Afterward, when all the people have gone home, it's time to "tear down." That means they have to take apart all the tents and trailers and pack them up on the trucks to drive them to the next town.
It's a lot of hard work, and the traveling makes it really hard to make new friends, but Stacy said it's worth it.
"I get to go to different states and I get to spend a lot of time with the animals," she said.
Alan also likes seeing all the sights as he travels around the country. "Each day, at each place we stop, I climb way up on top of the elephant trailer and just look all around," he said. "Then I usually write about what I see."
And Amy, who is traveling with the circus for the first time, hopes to come back next year. "I've had a lot of fun. As long as it's not raining, I like it."
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER/Staff. 1. Amy Mariani, 7, pets Lisa theby CNBelephant, whom she performs with in the Roberts Bros. Circus. color.
2. Amy Mariani works on her math while her mother, Mary Reichel, and
her little sister, Caitlin, 2 1/2, relax in the family motor home.