By Leo and Angela Albrecht, Belle Plaine
This excerpt is from “As I Remember Scott County,” a collection of oral histories from Scott County’s senior residents in the 1980s. Leo Albrecht of Belle Plaine, and his family, had a circus for many years, traveling the country and performing for audiences all over. The following contains some of his recollections of his childhood and time in the circus. It has been slightly edited from the original for clarity.
We were born in Belle Plaine when the days most looked forward to were Christmas, July 4th, and the circus. This was the horse and buggy days and before the radio and movies in our town. Dramatic plays, by both school children and adults, were popular.
When I was about seven years of age the Gollmar Brothers Circus came to Belle Plaine from Montgomery. A truly wagon show. They set up near my parents’ home and with great anticipation we youngsters were there to meet their arrival, very early in the morning. Oh! The thrill to see the animals, the fancy costumes, and the various acts. A circus with all the color, glitter, glamor, excitement, and thrills.
After the circus left town, we kids would play in the ring, which was left as it was. To make a circus ring, the circus crew would plow up a circle of sod, forming a ring about 40 feet in diameter. The outside of this was banked with dirt. The space on the outside of the circle where the sod was removed was about six feet wide, leaving the center grass intact. On top of the sod ring bank they drove in stakes, leaving them about four feet above the ground. They would then string three ropes around the stakes, forming a fence to hold the stock from getting out.
We would pick up the transparent colored papers that were wrapped around the popcorn bars. IN those days, all circuses sold popcorn in bars, which were about the size of a Cracker Jack box. We played circus, making a tent of burlap (burlap was easily obtainable in those days for free, as furniture and many articles came wrapped in it for protection while being handled in transportation), had parades, and tried to do some acrobatic acts. It became my burning ambition to become an acrobat and someday have my own circus. In playing, we had to have a menagerie, so my father bought us a goat. We caught striped gophers, pocket gophers, woodchucks, and birds. I tried so diligently and succeeded to stand on my head, walk on my hands, do handsprings, flip flops, and a few other stunts.
At age twelve, the era was for boys to work during vacation, so I went to work in my uncle’s brick yard. Now I was a wage earner and helped support our family of then seven children. The money I earned was given to my mother. At the end of each month she gave me a quarter for my pay. I spent it for five ice cream sodas and was broke until next pay day.
The brick yard work was hard working ten hours a day. We walked to and from home to work. During the noon hour we young ones would run to the river, which was close by, for a swim. My pay at age fifteen was sixteen cents an hour. When night came, I was ready for bed, no loitering uptown, nor any playing. I worked there until I was nineteen, practicing my acrobatics in the meantime. There being no physical education taught, I sent for some books that might help me to learn.
The wanderlust was in my blood, so I left for Duluth; then to Denver, Kansas, and Oklahoma, working at various jobs in the southern states. In the spring I came back to Belle Plaine and helped my brother decorate, wallpaper, and paint. Through this, I became a professional in that line. I had my own company and crew and had all the work I could handle. Being seasonal, I usually left for the south in the fall. However, the circus was still my first love.
At age twenty-eight in 1918, while painting steeples and high bridges in Seattle, Washington, Uncle Sam called me for World War I. I was sent to Fort Dodge, Iowa. There, I helped entertain the soldiers two and three times a week. I met many other performers. The famous Felix Adler was on the same program I was, as well as a man named Wilbur Wright [not the aviator], who I teamed up with after we were mustered out, calling our show “Wright and Albright.”
We toured together from 1922 through 1924, when an injury prevented him from doing his part in the act. We had traveled from town to town in a car and truck on dirt and gravel roads, staying at tourist camps – every town had one. There were no motels then.
I went back to Belle Plaine and got married in 1928, and in 1929, the Great Depression started. Would you believe that we then started our circus, when most of the small circuses went broke? We got all our equipment, tent, truck, props, amplifiers, and all necessary items together and then started our first season in May of 1930. Our son was then 15 months old.
Wedding portrait of Leo Albrecht and Angela (Quast) Albrecht, 1928. SCHS Collection.
We traveled a town a day, with much rain and many disappointments, but of course we had our good days. Admission was 10 and 25 cents; gas was three to five gallons for $1.00. To keep everything going smoothly was a tremendous amount of work with long hours. Minnesota seasons were short, so we spent some winters in the south in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
The Depression was far worse there than in the north. Many kids at age 15 had never had no shoes and had never tasted candy. We often bartered for bread, meat, chickens, or anything they could spare and we could use. In Hot Springs, Arkansas, the bread and soup lines were of great length. When our second son was a year old, his diapers and clothes were stolen off the lines.
This was our pattern for many years.
When gas rationing went in after 1941, we had to cut down on trucks. By now, I had three sons. We joined out acts with circuses and carnivals. As the children grew, so did we in experience and knowledge, and kept adding to our entertainment. Gradually, the two older boys joined the Navy, so Leo and I, with our youngest son, had a large 100-passenger bus converted into living quarters and a place to carry our dogs and ponies, and we traveled with the larger circuses.
Promotional poster for the Albright Circus, 1955. SCHS Collection.
When the two sons returned from the Navy, we built a large portable 32 x 40-foot stage to play at fairs and celebrations. Many dignitaries, such as Governor Orville Freeman, Cedric Adams, Archer Nelson, Hubert Humphrey, the mayors of the towns, queen contestants, drawings, etc. were on this stage. The boys both married girls in the profession; they did aerial, contortion, rolling globe acrobatics, and singing. They boys worked animal acts, tumbling, chin balancing, rope spinning, announcing, and sometimes clowning. We had a complete unit of high class acts. We played fairs, celebrations, trade shows, schools, Christmas shows, shopping centers, and parades. We were a close knit family.
However, television and air conditioning took over and people enjoyed staying indoors. Fairs discontinued free acts and our sons were starting their families, so in 1967 we bid farewell to thirty-five years of trouping through 33 states.
Photograph of one of the wagons used for the Albright Circus. SCHS Collection.