Reddit reviews James Taylor's Shocked and Amazed: On & Off the Midway
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We found 1 Reddit comments about James Taylor's Shocked and Amazed: On & Off the Midway. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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Twain's piece seems to largely be fictionalized, actually - lots of gags and inaccuracies. But the fact that they were that much in the popular imagination says something about their standing, I think.
That might be the best starting point.
"Treated well or exploited" is kind of tricky. I mean, exploitation is part of the deal, but some performers made fairly good money.
There was a hierarchy within the sideshow. At the bottom was the Geek, who was usually a bum who dressed up as a wild man or beast man and who had an act that climaxed with biting the head off a live chicken.
Not much skill, and no physical oddities. Skilled performers like blockheads (Jim Rose is one) were higher up, and so were oddities, with, like, acrobats and trapeze artists pretty far up the pecking order.
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Less formally, I know that in Sarasota, in an otherwise normal suburban neighborhood of 1940s-era tract houses, there are two houses that look like miniature castles. The story goes that they were built for the husband-and-wife dwarves who performed with the Ringling Brothers circus in the 1930s.
This is denied by the Ringling family, but the houses are definitely there, definitely featured in tours and definitely stand out - it seems like they were built first and the rest of the neighborhood sprang up around them. (Just west of 41, east of Bayside and north of Myrtle, if you're curious - walking distance from the Ringling estates.)
(EDIT: Getting my directions right - Sarasota always seems backwards to someone raised on the Atlantic coast.)