A Mudshow Season

When I think of carnival, and circus, and Wild West shows I think of my father, those were his things. But when I think again it was my mother and my grandparent who took me, at around the age of 5 to see Mr. Beatty in the early 1960’s. And it was my mother who, this season, would drive for five hours north or east or west or south to visit us on Carson & Barnes. I suppose when I think of my parents (my father has been dead for many years) it’s always as they were when I was seventeen. Somehow it’s hard to reconcile my mother as older.
On Friday morning my brother Lewis, a well know horse trainer phoned from Pennsylvania to tell me that our mother was in hospital. Five years ago a cardiac problem led to open heart surgery and she endured a long slow painful recovery. During her convalescence in upper New York State I remember the Ringling dates in Madison Square Garden, and the Shrine dates in Rochester. By the time that I returned home to California winter had turned to spring. On Friday there was another surgery for an intestinal resection, and now I am in the east again, in the snow again, driving the same road I covered in circus trucks when it was summer. It’s a hell of a way to near Christmas.