You couldn’t even get to come up to a platform with somebody standing on the platform. And it was at this point Tom was booked in to Omaha for the summer with a ride elephant. Somehow, I don’t know how he worked it or who did, who did what to… Read More
Cuneo. That’s what I thought. He decided he would take this giving elephant rides with Liz and went into, into Omaha with her. God almighty, big old truck. It just about made it everywhere it went. He had her here. I don’t remember what he went to Ringling for. You… Read More
All right, she belonged to?… Read More
Yes. Read More
How’d you develop those, from your experience?… Read More
From common sense. We weren’t being rough with ’em. It’s common sense on the part of circus trainers to go well at it. And when the elephant doesn’t do what you expect it to do, knock hell out of it, jab it in the leg with a bull hook. I… Read More
So when did you decide you had to start training Connie to do something?… Read More
‘Cause she’s costing you money here. Well, you’re constantly training with no end in sight. You can’t handle an elephant without training. It realizes you want something, and it does it. Read More
Did you have different training methods that you were saying you thought would work better?… Read More
Well, you’re talking about Connie the elephant. As you’re progressing, you have an elephant now, and you’re trying to figure out what to do with it. Yeah. Okay. Tom came in here with his wife and two or three elephants. Two elephants I think he had at first. Read More
And they came in, they were chained out in the field, out in front. They had nothing to do with Connie. Obviously she knew the elephants were there. They were aware of her being here too. They saw each other usually. So he was here with two elephants, and they… Read More
Connie?… Read More
Tom met his wife there. His wife had been, this girl, had been boss showgirl on the Ringling show and was hired away from the Ringling show by Cliff Vargas, who was a gay and means nothing, a gay guy that owned this, this fabulous big show on the West… Read More
We had no plan for it, but she was here, and we loved her. We took her out in the field, out in front. It was well fenced. She walked along with us and became a trained elephant. Not very well trained but trained. Our son Tom was working with… Read More
Where was I?… Read More
The three were sold by Allen Campbell, who was then in Little Rock?… Read More
Baton Rouge. He had gone from being a keeper in Jacksonville to getting the title of elephant trainer in Baton Rouge. He did a salesmanship job on them, and it was a pretty good damn trainer. Anyway. Connie was not trained, not sold simply because we kept her hidden while… Read More
What was your plan for this elephant now?… Read More
All right. Connie grew a tusk, not a tusk, a wart on the side of her face where her tusk would’ve come out. This was a wart, a wart that started when she was here maybe four weeks, three, four weeks. But by the time she got any size to… Read More
So eight of ’em. This took a good part of the afternoon, just doing that much training. Anyway, Connie, you’re with a wart on her face. Somewhere along about 30 days, we separated her. We put her around in a little barn that was in good shape then. Kept her… Read More