THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602250036
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
Elephants lumbering down Redgate Avenue with tails entwined can mean only one thing.
The circus is in town.
I know, I know. I ought to be writing about how cruel the circus is to animals. But the sight of pachyderms in headdresses gives me a thrill. Maybe that's wrong, but there are certain feelings that are primal, born in childhood, that no protest can snuff out.
The circus coming to town is one for me.
My hometown version of the circus was the Toby and Susie Show. It was not the greatest show on Earth, only a small, persistent one that made a circuit of Midwestern towns every year.
The tent show arrived in the dead of night in a long caravan of trailers and trucks and megaphone-topped cars. My friend Ruth Cerretti and I would run across the street the next morning and help set up the rickety wooden chairs, banging them against our knobby knees as we dragged them from the truck as fast as we could. The boys in town pounded in tent stakes.
Our reward: free passes to the eagerly awaited Toby and Susie Show, a husband-and-wife vaudeville act that might as well have been Broadway for all we knew. We never noticed the off-key songs, never labeled the comedy slapstick, never questioned the predictable ending where Toby and Susie end up in each other's arms.
Toby, with his red hair and knee-slapping jokes, made us laugh until our sides hurt. And Susie, with her raven-black hair and sequined wardrobe, gave our sleepy little town its annual dose of glamour.
The show stoked many a fantasy for my friends and me. If only we could find a man as romantic as Toby. If only we could tease our hair into a cotton-candy mound like Susie did. If only we were so funny and happy and wonderful. I loved the romance of it all, even though I once heard Toby and Susie in a raucous argument in their travel trailer just before they ran on stage, arm in arm.
As I sat on the front row, I always felt the couple were directing their entire production at me. And that they somehow were seeing past my small-town ways to an inner greatness that would make me part of their circle.
I was always surprised after the show when my friends insisted Toby and Susie were, instead, looking right at them.
They were wrong.
Secretly I imagined Toby and Susie crossing the street one day to ask me to join their troupe. I would graciously accept, and become wildly famous.
I would have my own trailer with my name across the side.
I never stopped to wonder about all the miles Toby and Susie traveled, how all the little towns must have run together after a few decades. I never stopped to think about the yelling that came from the Toby and Susie trailer.
There's something about a tent show, the circus, the once-a-year production, that requires one to ignore what's behind the curtain in order to catch the thrill.
When I take my two daughters to the circus, they see acrobats flying through the air, and I see the guide wires. They see the death-defying acts, and I see the safety nets. They see the clown wave right at them, and I see the thousands of people waving back.
But when my children wave right along with them, I once again know the thrill of Toby and Susie looking right at me. by CNB