Going to a freak show in old-time Phoenix

One of my followers on my history adventuring podcast casually used the expression "freak show" yesterday, and I knew exactly what he meant, in spite of never having seen a real freak show. I really didn't give it much thought until this morning when I was out pedaling around, and thought that it would be fun to time-travel back to old-time Phoenix and actually go to a freak show.

I tried searching the keywords "freak show" at the Library of Congress site where I look at old Phoenix newspapers, and was surprised to find that it turned up nothing. But I know that freak shows were part of the circus, so I just found this ad from 1912.

It must have been amazing to see. From what I've read, you could see all kinds of unusual things, including animals like giraffes, and elephants. And in addition to seeing what usually springs to mind at a circus, watching the acrobats, or clowns, you could go see unusual people. I don't see the word "freaks" in this ad, so it must have already been a pejorative term.

The freaks (or whatever they called them) would have been in a separate tent. It would have included the bearded lady (of course!) and people who were very tall, or very short, or very fat, or very thin. I can't imagine that I would have been brave enough to go into any of those tents, as I've always been a shy and timid kid, and prone to nightmares. Someone could explain to me that the half man/half wolf wasn't anything to be afraid of, just a very hairy man with some makeup and fake teeth to make him look more canine, but it would still scare me too much. Scares me now to think of it, and I'm a full-grown man!

All we need is 25 cents admission! No, I don't have that, either. Maybe we can sneak in under the tent when no one's looking. What's that? You're saying that I could just walk into the freak show tent and show them my face? How would you like a knuckle sandwich?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more