Saturday, August 07, 2010

English Wagons arrive at CWM


Posted by at

1 comment:

Dick Flint said...

There’s a funny story behind the effort to identify this wagon. Chappie Fox was much dependent on Dick Conover for the history of many of the wagons that CWM was rapidly acquiring in the 1960s. The history of the English wagons was, of course, quite an enigma. Their style was reminiscent of some of the earliest parade wagons in America which carried such fancy names as the Revolving Temple of Juno (on the Barnum show of the 1870s). When Chappie sought Conover’s help, Dick wrote back that the Temple of Juno had, indeed, arrived in Baraboo. When Dick Conover finally saw the wagons in Baraboo, he revealed to what must have been an excited if perplexed Chappie Fox that this wagon was illustrated in a rare view of Chappie’s own 1953 Circus Parade book. Chappie was a bit embarrassed as it was known that he had erred in hastily identifying a British picture of this wagon as the Juno in his book.
Dick Flint
Baltimore

8:11 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)