Well, sort of. Well, not really.

This morning we headed an hour west to take in the Circus City Festival Parade in Peru, Indiana.

From the late 19th century to the early 1940’s, Peru was the winter home of many circuses. Ringling bought out the major circus housed there in 1929 and the era of circuses wintering there ended in 1941 when, according to the site I just linked "126 circus wagons were burned." (And the Ringling operation moved to Sarasota, of course.). A bit more.

The area’s circus heritage lives through the Festival and the "Peru Amateur Circus" which performs during July.

We’d never been over for this event, so I thought…well, need to catch it. It was a really loooooong parade, but that’s okay. We drove an hour to get there so might as well get our money’s worth. Several bands, lots of gorgeous circus wagons, dozens of horses of all sizes, from huge to miniature, jugglers, clowns, obligatory Shriners in little cars, and at the end, of course…elephants.

And this guy, whom I thinking lost a bet:

The 2pm circus performance was sold out, and we weren’t gonig to hang around until 7, so we just spent our few remaining minutes there in the Circus Museum that’s housed in the building where the circus performs. I wish they had more space and/or money, because there’s a lot of fascinating stuff there, but it’s all just thrown up on walls, all close together, with very little explanatory information.

But you know, HBO’s Carnavale aside, you’d think there’d be more fictional and dramatic play with the phenomenon of the traveling circuses of that era. You just look over the photographs of the sideshow performers, the trapeze acts, all in their slightly shabby costumes and practical, practiced gazes, and for me, especially the group photographs of a couple of hundred circus workers posed in front of their tents, and you think….how many stories?

While we were there, a man, presumably the curator of the place, was guiding a quite elderly man around and discussing the photographs with him. They spoke knowledgeably, of people they both had known. The man was tiny – probably five feet tall, and had the look of a performer.  I trailed behind, trying to catch a hint of what act he had peformed and when and where, but before I could figure anything out, they went off to lunch.

I do love history – the history of anything, as embodied anywhere, but especially in human beings themselves.

After that, and before our journey back east, a visit to the other must-see in Peru, the birthplace of Cole Porter. I’d looked it up last night, but of course hadn’t written anything down about where it actually was in town. I drove around for a few minutes, evidently believing the house would simply call my name, but it didn’t. So I stopped in the library and asked a boho-looking fellow at the desk who gave me the great news that the place was just across Main Street, behind a back wrought-iron fence:

From the website linked above:

Born in 1891 to Samuel and Kate (Cole) Porter, Cole Porter was born in and spent the first ten years of his life in the home at 17-19 South Huntington Street, in Peru, Indiana.  In that short time, Cole wrote several of his early songs (including The Bob-O-Link Waltz) in that home… his beginnings as an unparalleled composer and lyricist!

In the years since, privately owned and subsequently converted into multiple apartments, Porter’s birthplace fell into a state of disrepair.  Furthermore, it became the site of criminal activity in 2003, when a clandestine methamphetamine lab was discovered (and destroyed) by law enforcement officials in one of the upper apartments.  The property eventually became the property of the Peru city tax rolls…

…that is, until purchased in late 2004 by Ole Olsen Memorial Theatre!  The civic theater group, founded in 1964 as the namesake of vaudeville actor John Siguard "Ole" Olsen, has decided to take the project of restoration of the Cole Porter birthplace under its wing!

As I thought the other day when we were at the Lincoln Log Cabin Site in Illinois…God bless the "amateur" historians and enthusiasts across the land who are keeping history alive because if we’d been leaving it up to the professionals over the past 40 years, all we’d have would be one big deconstructed vat of text, image, hermeneutic, with a dash of paradigm shift thrown in for spice, and not a real human being in sight.

Update: And now, idiots. I suppose I should have done a bit more research last night. Not only was Porter born in Peru, he’s buried there. Well…next time. We’re in Peru, Indiana. Which might be a while.