He was Santa Rosa's top lawman by day, top scallywag by night: Around the turn of the last century, Charlie Holmes was both Town Marshal and leader of the Squeedunks. It's as if Bruce Wayne split his time between Batman and performing Monty Python skits.
This is the fourth and final chapter in the story of Charles H. Holmes Jr., who was surely among the most...colorful people to come from Santa Rosa. While this article is centered on his Squeedunkery, here we also find how all those loose threads introduced earlier were resolved during the 1910s, when Charlie was in his fifties.
Charlie always craved attention and as a kid he saw the Squeedunk's Fourth of July antics were the biggest hit at the town's celebrations. Having an audience with everyone you ever knew laughing and cheering because of a silly speech seemed an easy route to popularity, and for him it was. The first newspaper item about him appeared in 1894, when the 30 year-old Charlie stood on the corner Fifth and Mendocino streets and yapped about politics and bugs. In keeping with the spirit of nonsense, the editor commented "thunderous applause greeted his apostrophes" and joked he didn't shut up until someone "brought the muzzle of a six-shooter on a level with his open mouth."
Now flash forward six years to 1900. Charles Holmes is a Spanish-American War vet (although his National Guard company never left the Bay Area), elected and then reelected as marshal, a popular afterdinner speaker and comic entertainer, and not the least of it, chairman of the "Ancient Order of Squeeduncks."
The Press Democrat - which adored the Squeedunks and Charlie in equal measure - devoted much coverage to their planning sessions for the upcoming Fourth of July. The meetings were held at City Hall (probably in his marshal's office) and mainly concerned which of the guys would be elected Squeedunk Queen. Dressing in women's clothing was always a major part of the Squeedunk shtick, and that's enough said about that. The most interesting element in those articles is that about two dozen members were named, revealing both how large the group was and how it cut across divisions by age and social status.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com. - Jeff Elliott
Everyone in Santa Rosa knew him; Charlie Holmes had lived here since he was a small boy, and it's safe to say he was the most popular guy in town at the turn of the century. When his first term as City Marshal expired in 1900 he ran for reelection, and at the local Democratic Party convention he was given their support by unanimous vote.
He was in great demand as a toastmaster and speaker at banquets and such because he had a gift for telling funny stories and reciting comic verse. Following him in the PD is like taking a Grand Tour through the halls of fraternal social clubs, all pungent with the odor of 5¢ cigars. Not only did he entertain at events held by well-known groups such as the Elks, Druids and Native Sons, but he did humorous recitations at a Pumpkin Pie Social for the Woodmen of the World and a smoker hosted by the Knights of the Maccabees. He surely held the town record for the person treated to the most free meals.
The chummy, good ol' boy tenor of those gatherings was quite different than the sides of Santa Rosa he saw as City Marshal (which was the same as being Chief of Police - see part I).
Holmes and his four-man police force were busy, making 225 arrests in the first three months of 1900 alone. That seems like a lot considering the population was smaller than Cotati has today but little of it was serious law-breaking, at least if you went by what appeared in the newspapers. Offenders riding a bike on the sidewalk were subject to arrest; so were curfew violators (anyone 18 or younger out after 8:30PM "without any lawful business"). Boys with air guns were shooting at chickens. Laundry burglaries were a thing, which presumably was stealing off clotheslines. In 1901 they thought there was a serial laundry thief, but Holmes tracked the culprit down - it was a "big dog" dragging away coats, shoes and rugs to gnaw on. It sometimes seemed Marshal Holmes and Santa Rosa must be down the road a piece from Sheriff Andy and Mayberry.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com. - Jeff Elliott
William Cox was having lunch at home when he heard the whistle of his train. “Toot, toot,” it blew as the locomotive left Sebastopol bound for Santa Rosa.
As William was the train's engineer and he was clearly not aboard it, he assumed Eugene, who kept the engine stoked with wood, had received an urgent order from the California Northwestern railway station in Santa Rosa to bring the train there.
But Eugene Ellison was not in the cab either. The man with his hand on the throttle was Will Thompson, who everybody called "Brick." He was 31 years old and had never driven a train before. He was also insane.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com. - Jeff Elliott
It took Santa Rosa awhile to realize it was under attack, but a no-holds-barred war was being waged against it by the man in the mansion on the grand boulevard.
You could say the conflict began in May 1893, when voters approved a bond to build a water plant. At the time Santa Rosa was getting its water from a private company owned by Mark L. McDonald; the water came from Lake Ralphine, which the Board of Health said was so fetid that his company was “criminally negligent and indifferent to our welfare as a city.” McDonald offered to sell his waterworks to the city at such a ridiculously inflated price it would be cheaper to start from scratch, even though it meant laying another set of water mains beneath every street. All of those doings were covered in "THE McDONALDS vs SANTA ROSA."
Stepping up to buy Santa Rosa's bonds was Robert Effey, a modest investor who happened to be mayor of Santa Cruz. While deciding whether to put the water bond on the ballot, Santa Rosa's mayor and city attorney had visited that town's very successful municipal water plant and met him. He offered to buy our bond for $161,000, being the lowest of only two bidders.
A few days later, a lawsuit seeking to block Santa Rosa from making a deal with Effey was filed by a retired farmer named John D. Cooper. Most unusual about the case was that besides the city, he also sued the City Council as individuals plus the city clerk.
Another suit to stop the city's deal with Effey followed a couple of weeks later. This time a retired rancher named John M. Jones was upset because construction plans had been updated since the bond measure passed. Mr. Jones likewise sued the city and Council members personally.
That was hardly the end of the anti-waterworks lawyering. Less than a month later, William Guisbert Skinner went after the city, the Council, the assessor, treasurer and tax collector along with Robert Effey. His gripe was the terms of the bond had been slightly changed, and the city was increasing property taxes by 25¢ per $100 to pay for the bonds - although they hadn't actually been yet sold. (As further explained below, the bond sale was delayed by both these lawsuits and the nation's economic problems.)
Three different lawsuits over about six weeks is a lot of suin' for little Santa Rosa. Who were these guys who were so upset about construction of a water plant they wanted to drag everyone into court? It appeared they must be well off, as their attorneys were some of the top legal talent in the county: A.B. Ware, Calvin S. Farquar and the infamous Gil P. Hall.
But Cooper, Jones and Skinner were hardly wealthy Sonoma County movers and shakers; one has to scour the old newspapers to find any mention of them at all, and then it was almost always for some small scale real estate transaction. There can be little doubt, however, they were acting as part of a coordinated attack on building the waterworks by the "Tax Payers’ Protective Union."
The supposed grassroots organization was formed at the time of the Cooper suit and few members were ever named (just A. P. Overton, H. W. Byington and A. B. Ware). The Democrat wrote only it was "composed of well-known and reputable citizens of Santa Rosa" and "members comprise many of the heaviest taxpayers in this city." Judging from signatures on a later petition, my guess is there were about three dozen members, split between the investor class and elderly anti-tax cranks like our litigious trio. Skinner, by the way, didn't even own property in Santa Rosa, although his suit was the one to complain about the increase in property taxes.
The Taxpayers’ placed an ad in the Democrat to trumpet their manifesto, which is a Thing to Read. It painted the City Council as recklessly draining the city treasury on "official extravagance" such as testing the safety of well water and buying a rock-crusher for street gravel, the Council meanwhile conspiring with Effey to screw over taxpayers because there was no intention to actually sell bonds or build the waterworks. Nice to know (I guess) a faction of our ancestors could be as paranoid and irrational as some wacky loudmouths today.
A later item in the Democrat reprinted a Taxpayers’ resolution revealing the group's single real objective - demanding the city buy McDonald's water company. Among their points was that "a water system supplied by gravitation" (meaning a source of surface water such as Lake Ralphine) is always better than using water pumped from the ground. Also, the city was to be blamed for "factional strife and expensive litigation" because they hadn't made a deal with McDonald to take over his service and pay for long overdue upgrades and maintenance. Some brain-busting logic, there.
At this point Gentle Reader might be pondering whether Mark McDonald had something to do with the Taxpayers’ Union - and could he also be paying the lawyers in those many lawsuits?
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
The eyewitness heard the first shot and turned to look up the side street. He saw the doctor standing on the sidewalk and pointing his pistol at a man across a backyard fence as more shots were fired in rapid succession. The victim slumped to the ground while the doctor pocketed the gun and headed downtown. Someone who passed him thought he was whistling.
This unfortunate event happened on a cool April evening in 1900, near the corner of (modern day) Seventh and Mendocino. The shooter was Dr. Samuel S. Bogle, a 32 year-old physician who had been in Santa Rosa less than two years. The victim was James M. Miller, a Civil War veteran aged 60 who owned a paint and wallpaper store across from the courthouse.
Neighbors who heard the shots rushed to help Miller, carrying him into his house. "I'm done for, I'm done for," Miller said. "Why should a man treat me like that after what I've done for him? If I get up out of this I'll fix him."
By this time, the eyewitness had reached the office of Dr. Jesse a couple of blocks away. When the doctor was told the shooting involved Bogle and Miller he presumed it was Bogle who had been shot - Miller had blabbing all over town that he was going to "fix" Bogle for not paying a bill.
Meanwhile, Bogle had arrived at the sheriff's office, where he went to surrender and turn over his gun. No deputies were present at the time so he gave himself up to the county jail's cook. He also visited his lawyer (a former state senator) and by the end of the evening was arraigned and freed on $10,000 bail.
On the advice of his attorney Bogle didn't speak to reporters, but the Press Democrat still cobbled together a story which was summarized by the San Francisco papers and wire services.
The PD wrote that Bogle passed Miller's sideyard as he was walking downtown after supper. (Bogle and Miller were next door neighbors, a coincidence which had nothing to do with the bad blood between them.) Miller was outside and saw him. Insults were passed and Miller rushed toward the gate with a knife in his hand. Bogle pulled his gun and fired, striking Miller twice.
Dr. Jesse told the paper Miller was expected to survive. He had a flesh wound on a forearm and the other bullet hit the middle of his left hip, passing between the tail bone and top of the femur before exiting the other side above his groin.
But Dr. Jesse was wrong. Miller died three days later of peritonitis, the bullet having punctured his intestines. Bogle was rearrested and charged with murder.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
There's a tale Bill Soberanes loved to tell in his Argus-Courier columns that went something like this:
During Prohibition a lawyer was defending a man accused of bootlegging. When the prosecutor introduced a bottle of the moonshine as evidence the lawyer picked it up, put it to his lips and drank it dry. "That wasn't whiskey," he told the court. Case dismissed for lack of evidence.
Odds of that story being true are probably nil (or at least, I can't find anything close to it in the newspapers of the day) but it's the kind of thing people liked to say about Gil P. Hall. Most often he was called some riff on being "a colorful character" and people meant that in a nice way. During the 1910s and 1920s he was the top defense attorney in Sonoma county and rarely lost in court, particularly if it involved a jury trial. He was such a legal hotshot that courtrooms were packed when he defended a high-profile case. "There was only one Gil Hall, and I don't think there will ever be another like him," said the last surviving pre-Prohibition Petaluma bar owner in 1967. "Some of his cases would make Perry Mason look very tame."
In the 1920s Hall defended so many liquor scofflaws that he had a reputation as being the bootlegger's lawyer, but that's not really fair - it seems he took on any and all. While he's best known for high-profile cases his bread and butter was mundane legal work - representing people seeking a divorce, handling probate paperwork, and arguing a farmer had a right to dig a culvert under a county road.
He won an acquittal for Fannie Brown, who was charged with running a "house of ill-fame" at First and C streets in Petaluma. In the murder trial of two doctors charged with the death of a woman from an abortion ("the illegal operation") the courtroom spectators burst into prolonged applause when the jury found them innocent. Even when he lost he usually managed to salvage some kind of victory. The owner of Speedway Hotel in Cotati was caught red-handed selling 72 proof jackass brandy ("with a trace of fuel oil") and had to pay a fine, but Hall blocked the government from shutting down his business - which continued to be busted for selling hootch year after year.
A man who knew him, Petaluma Justice of the Peace Rolland Webb, said "he won most of his cases by outsmarting the young lawyers who came up against him," so it's a pity the newspapers didn't write up some of his Perry Mason-y courtroom arguments. The one sample we have comes from an unusual case - the county election of 1926.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
The "Diablo Winds" are apparently a Regular Thing now, with the high, dry northeasterly gales ripping through the North Bay and too often creating firestorms. But how common were these damned winds historically?
Start with our three examples that caused major fires: The 2017 Tubbs Fire, the forgotten Great Fire of 1870 and the 1964 Hanly Fire. Beyond those incidents, however, it's hard to say with much certainty.
First, "Diablo Winds" is a modern term, invented in 1991 (Wikipedia has a good explanation of the meteorology), so looking for that name in the old newspapers is a non-starter. A century ago and more they may have sometimes called it “Boreas,” although that was the classical name for a cold north wind often accompanied by rains. But the bigger problem is that our ancestors didn't care much about recording wind speeds; while they diligently kept records of rainfall down to the hundredth of an inch, apparently no one in Sonoma County had an anemometer in the old days.
Searches of the Santa Rosa and Healdsburg newspapers turned up surprisingly few historic windstorms that match the Diablo pattern with certainty (I limited my research to autumn and early winter storms with no rain mentioned). If I find more I'll add it here and flag the update in the title of this article. Sources of all newspaper items are transcribed below. But I think it's safe to presume these big winds weren't very common.
The most surprising discovery was 1871, the year following the Great Fire. Once again there were "large fires were seen in the direction of Napa and Sonoma, and it is feared serious damage was done in those localities."
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
Planning a time trip to witness the 1906 Santa Rosa earthquake? Be careful where you'll pop up; anywhere downtown will be dangerous as all of the brick buildings collapse. Surprisingly, the safest place while the earth is shaking will be inside a massive stone building - St. Rose catholic church, on B street, built in 1900-1901.
It was (to state the obvious) an extraordinarily strong building.
"With the exception of a few stones from a cornice, St. Rose came through the dreadful ordeal unscathed," wrote historian Tom Gregory in his Sonoma County history five years later. A photo of the church apparently taken right after the earthquake shows a sawhorse next to the portico, where a a chunk of the corner appears missing. There was also some repair work needed on the steeple, but the whole job was already finished before downtown rebuilding began in earnest. The whole cost was reportedly $200; to raise funds the "ladies of St. Rose's Church" threw a dance at Grace Brothers' Park, illuminated by "many electric globes."
The expert masonry was done by a crew led by Peter Maroni, one of the skilled Italian-American stone cutters in Sonoma county. Gaye Lebaron has written often about these gentlemen from Tuscany and I have nothing further about them to offer. The basalt came from the Titania Quarry between Highway 12 and Montgomery Drive, where Santa Rosa Creek and Brush Creek join (the remains of the quarry are still there and can be visited).
All of that is fairly well-trod history but there's a whopper of a believe-it-or-not! twist to the St. Rose story: It's a forgotten design by a famous architect.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com. - Jeff Elliott
Hours before dawn, the boys were gathering at the depot waiting for the circus train. They would be playing hooky that day but wouldn't get into much trouble for it; after all, their fathers did the same thing (and maybe grandfathers, too) and they had heard their elders speak wistfully about the pleasure of it, waiting in the dark with a swarm of kids and grown men for the trainload of marvels speeding their way on the rails.
From the 1916 Argus-Courier: "A monster train of red cars, loaded to the guards with circus paraphernalia and equipment of the John Robinson ten big combined shows, the oldest circus in the world, reached Petaluma Thursday morning, a little late but all safe and sound. There was a good sized reception committee on hand to welcome the showmen. Some were there who declared they had not missed seeing a circus 'come in' in twenty years. A few even remembered the last time the John Robinson circus visited California 35 years ago. Some small boys were at the depot as early as 3 a. m. although the circus did not arrive until 8:30."
Setup in Santa Rosa was easier than many towns, where the fairgrounds were usually outside city limits and far from the depot. Here the show lot was nearly in the center of town - the former grounds of the old Pacific Methodist College (now the location of Santa Rosa Middle School, between E street and Brookwood Ave). Once the college buildings were removed around 1892, the nine acre vacant lot became the temporary home of every show rolling through.
This is the second item about the circuses that came to Santa Rosa and Petaluma as viewed through our local newspapers. Part one, "WHEN THE CIRCUS WAGONS CAME TO TOWN," looked at the shows before the railroads arrived in the 1870s. With trains available the bigger and more famous circus companies began to come here and by the early 1900s, Santa Rosa could expect a visit from a world-class circus every year. The shows discussed below are only a small sample. (CLICK or TAP any image to enlarge, or see the complete collection on Pinterest)
A big attraction for the 1883 John Robinson's Circus was the electric light "as bright as the noon-day sun." For advance PR they sent newspapers a humor column about "Uncle Jerry Peckum" complaining the "sarkis" tent being too close to his chicken farm: "It's lit up so brite thet every last one o' them tarnal fool chickins thinks it's daylite again', an' got up an' gone to layin.'" The column ended with Jerry deciding to go to the circus because "I've heern so much about this 'lectricity light--an' we may never hev a chance to see one agin." The promo piece ran in the Petaluma Argus, naturally, because chicken.
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| 1883 John Robinson's Circus |
The 1886 Sells Brothers Circus was the first mega-show to visit Sonoma County. While both Petaluma and Santa Rosa newspapers raved about its quality, the Petaluma Argus was outraged admission at the gate was $1.10 instead of the traditional buck.
Speaking of ripoffs: Earlier the Santa Rosa Daily Democrat ran an amusing reprint from a New York paper describing the predator/prey relationship between a circus "candy butcher" (food vendor) and the locals: "...The candy butchers in a circus never work the bottom row of seats. Country bumpkins who easily become their prey always get up on the top benches. They do this because they are afraid of the 'butchers' and want to hide from them. The latter move around on the top seats, and when they find a verdant fellow they fill his girl's lap with oranges, candy, popcorn and fans. If the girl says she doesn’t want them they ask her why she took them, and make the young man pay thirteen or fourteen prices for the rubbish..." The piece continued by describing the pink in a circus' trademark pink lemonade was a red dye added to conceal how little lemon actually was in the drink: "Strawberry lemonade men make two barrels of the delicious beverage which they sell of ten cents worth of tartaric acid and five cents worth of aniline and two lemons. They make fifty dollars a day each..."
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| 1886 Sells Brothers Circus |
I'm sure it lived up to its claim of being the "greatest show on earth," but when the Ringling Brothers Circus made four visits during the 1900s we were flooded each time with the greatest hype on earth, as the Press Democrat seemingly printed every scrap of PR flackery the advance promoters churned out as "news" articles. "The aerial features of Ringling Brothers shows by far surpass anything of a similar nature ever exhibited in the United States. The civilized countries of the world have been thoroughly searched for the newest and most thrilling acts." (1903) "Their Acts in Ringling Brothers’ Circus Almost Surpasses the Possible." (1904) The low point was probably the 1907 article, "Interesting Facts Regarding the Expense of Advertising and Maintaining a Great Circus," which was neither very interesting nor very factual: "An elephant without plenty of feed is as dangerous as a healthy stick of dynamite." Yowp!
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| 1900 Ringling Brothers Circus |
Santa Rosa schools were dismissed at 11AM on the Thursday morning when Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show came to town, which was a pragmatic surrender of any hope for keeping the kids at their desks once the parade started marching down Fourth street.
There was no Big Top for this show, just a horseshoe-shaped grandstand that could seat 16,000. The audience was apparently immense; the PD reported, "afternoon and evening the vast seating accommodations was occupied with a sea of humanity."
These 1902 performances were not Buffalo Bill's "last and only" shows in Santa Rosa. He was back again in 1910 for his "farewell tour," and also in 1914, after he lost the legal use of the “Buffalo Bill” name and had to perform with the Sells-Floto Circus. For more, see "BUFFALO BILL STOPS BY TO SAY GOODBYE."
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| 1902 Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show |
"Early in the day farmers from far and near came driving to town with their entire families while special trains brought crowds from points as far away as Ukiah," reported the Press Democrat in 1904 about the third appearance here by the Ringling Brothers Circus. "By 11 o'clock the streets were thronged with a good natured perspiring crowd prepared to be amused at any thing."
Unfortunately, Santa Rosa was suffering through a heat wave that September morning: "The Court House proved a very attractive place as it was so cool and refreshing within its walls while outside the thermometer ranged from 100 upward from 10 o’clock. Many of the windows were filled with the families and friends of the county officials, while the steps and shady portions of the grounds were packed with outside visitors. All along the line of march all available windows and other points of vantage were packed, while great throngs moved restlessly up and down the principal streets, and crowded the stores."
The description of the circus parade was probably rewrite of PR copy, but it's still fun to imagine a sight like this coming down Fourth street: "Never before in the history of Santa Rosa has there been such a parade as Ringling Bros, gave Thursday. Floats and chariots, half a dozen bands, numerous companies of horseback riders representing various nationalities, both men and women, a drove of thirteen camels, twenty-six elephants and many open cages of wild animals. Altogether there were over 375 horses in the parade. They were ridden, driven two and three tandem, in teams of two,. four, six, eight and twenty-four horses each. One of the most pleasing sights to the younger people were the twenty-four horse team on the band wagon and the twenty-four Shetland pony team on a float."
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| 1905 Press Democrat cartoon: "In Town for the Circus" |
Norris & Rowe's Circus was a Santa Rosa favorite in the first decade of the Twentieth Century, and not just because they reliably showed up every April. "On account of the fact that it is a California show," explained the Press Democrat in 1905, "the people of this state are naturally interested in its success from year to year, and the enterprise of Norris & Rowe in having advanced in a few years from a small dog and pony show to the growing circus that they now possess, has been highly commended."
Alas, the show had no end of problems, well symbolized by the photo below showing their 1905 "Grand Gold Glittering Street Parade" in Santa Rosa taking place during a downpour. Their last appearance here in 1909 shocked some by offering "several gambling schemes" and a racy sideshow “for men only.” The circus went bankrupt and closed in 1910. For more see: "BROKE DOWN CIRCUS."
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| Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library |
The Barnum and Bailey Circus made its second stop here in 1908, and the show was the biggest, best, blah, blah, blah. This trip was notable for an acrobatic act which sounds genuinely risky; the odd-but-colorful description that appeared in the Press Democrat is transcribed below (and was undoubtedly circus PR) but from other papers we can piece together what really went on.
The main performer was 20 year-old Yvone La Raque, who was seated in an "automobile" at the top of a narrow ramp near the top of the tent, about 65 feet in the air. (I can find no claim the little vehicle actually had an engine.) When her cart was released it dropped down the ramp and flew off with enough speed to somehow execute a somersault. She and the little car landed on a separate spring-cushioned ramp several feet away. The entire business took only 4-5 seconds.
Now, Gentle Reader might not think this such a great challenge; all she had to do was keep the wheels absolutely straight and do whatever weight-shifting physics needed to perform the loop-de-loop. But that was in 1907-1908, an age when steering wheels regularly fell off because gearboxes were still an experimental thing and even the best new tires sometimes burst under stress. And, of course, success depended upon workers quickly setting up the landing ramp with absolute precision while circus craziness was underway.
That was 1907 when Yvone was a solo act with a different circus; when she joined Barnum and Bailey her sister (name unknown) was added to the act, following her immediately down the ramp in an identical car and flying across to the landing ramp while Yvone looped above her. By all accounts the crowds went nuts.
I researched them with dread, certain I would discover one or both were killed or horribly mangled, but apparently they retired uninjured at the close of the 1908 season.
| The start of this awful act is made from the dome of the tent. The cars ride on the same platform, one behind the other, being released simultaneously. One car is red and the other blue that their separate flights may be followed by the eye that dares to look. The leading auto arches gracefully across a wide gap, being encircled as it does so by the rear car. They land at the same instant. From the time the cars are released at the top of the incline to the landing below on the platform, Just four seconds elapse. Those who have seen the act say it amounts to four years when you figure the suspense, the worry and the awful jolting of the nerves. “You feel like a murderer waiting for the verdict,” says some one who saw the act while the circus was it New York City. “The suspense is awful. You look back over your past life. You regret as many of your sins as you can it four seconds. You want to close your eyes, but you can’t. My, what a relief when they land safely! That’s the jury bringing in a verdict of not guilty. Then you rise with a yell of joy as the young women alight without a scratch. Everybody else yells. Oh, it’s great!” |
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| 1908 Barnum and Bailey Circus |
And finally we come to the Al G. Barnes Circus. The ad below is from 1921, but his show first appeared in Santa Rosa ten years earlier. I deeply regret having not found much about him beyond a few anecdotes - he clearly was gifted with a rare magnetic personality and both people and animals were drawn to him instinctively. His friend and attorney Wallace Ware tells the story of seeing Barnes throw meat to a fox in a forest, then approaching the wild animal and petting it as if it were tamed. He trained performing animals with food rewards but also by talking to them with genuine sincerity as if they could understand everything he said. Ware's memoir, "The Unforgettables," has a section on Al worth reading if you'd like to know more.
(RIGHT: Chevrolet and bear at the Al G. Barnes Zoo, Culver City, 1926. Courtesy of the USC Digital Library)Barnes also had a private zoo near Los Angeles where he kept animals too old or too wild to be in the circus. It must have been enormously expensive to maintain - supposedly it numbered around 4,000 animals - but kudos to him for not destroying the unprofitable animals or selling them off to carnivals where they likely would suffer great abuses. That was the 1920s, remember; there were no animal sanctuaries for former circus animals, tame or no, and trade newspapers like Billboard and the New York Clipper regularly had want ads of circus animals for sale.
The Press Democrat treated him like a hometown boy although he was from Canada and lived in Southern California when he wasn't touring. The PD reprinted news items about his circus, his illnesses and reported his marriage on the front page. When he died in 1931 the PD wrote its own obit: "When Al G. Barnes rode into the ring, swept off his hat, bowed and welcomed the crowd, you knew who was running the show...his death will be generally regretted, not only in a personal way but because it marks the passing of a picturesque character, one well known in the west--one of the last of the kind."
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| 1921 Al G. Barnes Circus |