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Pittsburg, TX today. Shows at 12:45 & 3:45. Some housekeeping on the blog. You may now enlarge the photos.
Because this is the 70th anniversary of the Carson & Barnes Circus, quite a milestone, it might be fun to mark some other circus anniversaries now and then. Some anniversaries are important, some minor, many are just fun.
Barnum said that the tent poles that hold up the American Circus are elephants and clowns. Most of us would agree with that. Children might add a third pole. Kids would probably argue that you can't have a circus without cotton candy. 106 years ago a man named Thomas Patton began selling cotton candy on the Ringling Bros Circus, and a love affair was born. Mr. Patton is sometimes erroneously credited with inventing cotton candy, in reality William Morrison and John Wharton invented the sticky stuff in Nashville, TN in 1897 and patented the first modern machine. They called their confection Fairy Floss. To this day, in the business, cotton candy is called floss. Eat it, enjoy it, think of it as a bit of circus history.
Ben
