Our Maine Street's Aroostook Issue 6 : Fall 2010 | Page 33

to get lost in that one), a freak show, a House of Horrors
(afraid of that one, too), and one of my all-time favorites
“Dancing Waters.” I went to that show almost every day
to listen to the beautiful classical music while water was
sprayed in rhythm to the music, an early precursor to the
famed fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

I was too little to go into the girly shows of course,
but I stood with the many other kids and adults outside
the tent when the girls would come out to dance in their
skimpy costumes, enticing people to pay to come in to
see the show. Years later when I grew up, I heard that
the hot Saturday night shows were the ones to attend for
various and assorted reasons.

The freak show consisted of showing people and
animals with oddities of human nature – like a cow with
two heads, a real bearded lady, a sword-swallower, a man
with elephant skin, and other such things that were twists
of fate. When some of them came out on a platform
before the show started, I think I felt like a peeping Tom
or a voyeur, although at eight years old I didn’t even know
that word.

It seems strange to me now, but my whole family
always went to what was called The Midget Show, actually
a wonderful and wholesome family-oriented variety show
done by Little People. The show was always sold out and
I don’t ever remember anyone making fun of them…we
were more in awe and appreciation of their talents and
abilities.

My grandfather Jim Ladner was often a tickettaker at the sideshows, no doubt a job my father found
for him. It was fun to see Grampy doing that, although
he often looked sleepy or bored to death by the middle of
the week. I remember being a little embarrassed though
when I saw him taking tickets at the girly shows.
The fair offered all kinds of attractions. After horsepulling competitions in the morning, and I suppose as a
filler between other major events, a platform containing
a big Hammond Organ with large speakers was wheeled
onto the racetrack and a lovely costumed lady would climb
aboard the organ bench and begin to play flashy popular
music, the sounds amplified throughout the fairgrounds
and wafting into the surrounding neighborhoods.
Wherever I was, when I heard that organ music begin, I
would rush over to the racetrack, sit on the ground nearby
and watch her play by the hour, mesmerized by her hands
playing on the different keyboards, her feet practically
dancing on the foot pedals. I loved it, and wonder now if
she might have been one of the inspirations for my own
future interest in becoming an organist.

Before the days of television, rural Americans
didn’t have the opportunity to see live variety shows
and one of the big features of the fair was the George
E. Hammond Revue, a vaudeville show performed each

evening on a large stage in front of the grandstand. My
whole family always got all dressed up and attended this
show, our tickets having been purchased in advance as it
was almost always sold out. It was truly a huge theatrical
production, with professional lighting brought in, a live
orchestra, a chorus line of fifteen or twenty beautiful
dancers in lavish costumes, comedy routines, magic acts,
and vocal and