TOBY TYLER By David Allen “See the elephants, see the clowns, see the county police shut the circus down” An editor once said my story ledes were pure poetry. And I was on a roll in Fort Wayne in 1986. I was responsible for kicking the Toby Tyler Circus out of town. and had tons of fun doing it. The small-time circus was slated to set up its tents in the city’s Coliseum parking lot.. But the penny-pinching pachyderm show had left a path of collapsing bleachers and broken bones in its wake.. “If the circus is coming to town it better stop by an insurance office first,” I chuckled as I wrote.. Citing lack of adequate insurance, the city balked and the one-ring sorry excuse for a great show searched for a new local venue. t finally found a farm lot just north of the city. “There was a bunch of midgets putting up a tent in my backyard,” a bewildered man who rented a house on the property said. The lot owner neglected to tell him the circus was coming. About 150 spectators saw the opening act before police closed the circus down. It left town that night So, yeah, I killed the circus, And all the clowns, elephants, lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my! NOTE: This one of three of my poems included in The Last Stanza Poetry Journal (6). It's a great quarterly anthology. Get your copy from Amazon.
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