The International Showmen’s Museum | Gibsonton
The discovery that the International Independent Showmen’s Association maintains a museum in nearby Gibsonton had piqued my curiosity. This collection of all things relative to outdoor entertainment and amusements connects to the town’s history as a winter haven for traveling show people.
A carny town? Right down the road? This has promise.
Sure an actual carnival would be more fun, but…
Visiting a carnival museum might seem as fun as dining at a restaurant where the food is made of wax. Sure, the food might look tasty, but the joy is in eating it, not staring at it. I’ve now decided to not make my simile to strip clubs.
But I like museums. Curators are the world’s accepted hoarders. They’re able to stockpile old stuff just for folks to walking around and look at it.
While I’m trying to unload my crap onto unsuspecting neighbors on Craigslist and Facebook, these folks get to keep their dross and put it on display. Then we go look at it when taking a break from downsizing.
And though I’ve grown out of most midway rides and games, that doesn’t mean I don’t still have an interest in them. I’ve grown out of children’s shows, too, but I still look up an occasional Electric Company episode now and then.
I’m fickle and capricious.
What is a carny town and how do I get one?
So why is this museum located here of all places? It turns out that Gibsonton, Florida, has been a wintering spot for carnival and circus folk for a long time. Carnies settled the town and they still return here when the less tropical north becomes inhospitable to outdoor amusements.
A town founded by carnies sounds a lot more interesting than it is.
Gibsonton is a quilt of residential, commercial, and industrial properties blanketing the banks of the Alafia River. A few lots store carnival rides under tarpaulins, ticket booths on trailers and tow-behind concession stands shuttered, still, and silent behind chain link fences.
Still, there is not one bold thing that screams “Carny Town” at you on a pass through.
Visits to the Riverview 14 theater don’t risk the opportunity of asking an eight-foot-tall fellow in front of you to please remove his hat. Errand runs to the Walmart don’t have you standing in line beside a bearded woman. Dwarfs aren’t dropping their speedboats down the Williams Park Boat Ramp. And, thankfully, there are no clowns in makeup hiking the local trails.
Of course, showmen include more than the sideshow headliners. They are the owners, the managers, the tradespeople, the general maintenance crews, the animal trainers and handlers, the midway barkers. They are the operators of the games, the rides, the food concessions—The Mixer, and the snow-cone concession.
A carny is any person associated professionally with outdoor traveling amusements. And they’re mostly pretty nice and typical folks.
Running away to the circus
Unfortunately, the International Showmen’s Museum is only open on Saturdays and Sundays. Christa works weekends so I’d be satisfying this arousal alone.
I turned onto Riverview from US 41 and entered the iron gates of the museum. Other than the sign across the building’s brow, the facade belies what lies inside. Decorative wagon wheels give a hint. As does a faded, orange, semi-trailer housing a twin-engine power generator from a defunct carnival company.
So you could mistake it for a Teamsters hall.
I didn’t expect to see relic rides rusting in the open air or a fully operational midway, but it did seem a bit more understated than I imagined. Still, I was excited to see what was in store.
International Showmen’s Museum
6938 Riverview Drive
Riverview, FL 33578
Phone: (813) 671-3503
Hours: Saturday & Sunday – 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Fees: $10.00 per person
http://showmensmuseum.org
What’s in store
The attendant and I exchanged pleasantries and cash for a ticket. He then strongly suggested that I “read everything”. Perhaps this advice was fueled by his enthusiasm for the subject matter.
Though I had to wonder if it was water against the flames of grumblers bemoaning the value of their experience versus ten dollars.
“What do you mean it wasn’t enough? Did you read everything?”
I’ve read sorehead revues of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—odds were this place was certainly getting gripers. But I was determined to experience this museum through the eyes of my youth and in the spirits of spectacle, mirth, and mystery.
The museum seemed more an infinite labor of love in progress than a professional big budget Smithsonian type exhibit. Information abounds in supportive essays and descriptions everywhere.
Walking through the museum lends the feel of walking a fairground before it opens.
Everything is set, the rides are rigged, the games are unveiled and bedecked with prizes. The concessions are parked, leveled, and plugged in. The operators are on their final break before the ticket booths open and the cacophonous buzzers, bells, and Kid Rock mangling Lynyrd Skynyrd fire up.
I’ve experienced this scene every summer having grown up in a small town with an annual carnival in the riverfront park. I’ve walked the labyrinthine grounds between the perfect cubes of trailers and geometrically confounding thrill rides. I’ve wandered past the warped mirrors of the funhouse and over the black serpents of cable stringing the works together in a hum of high voltage.
And back then it was unadulterated Skynyrd.
The Showmen’s Museum had a very similar feel only without the smell of cotton candy, popcorn, and diesel fumes. However, this time there was information available to explain it all.
“What’s that box do? Why is that thing there? Who invented that? What was the first this? When did they do that?”
Let’s get this show on the road
So I took the man’s advice. Maintaining my recalled sense of childhood wonder, I proceeding from display to display. And reading as much as I could without my glasses in the dim and sometimes conflicting flashes of light. I took in as much as I comfortably could and—according to my photo data—spent about 90 minutes there.
They owe it all to the Columbian Exposition
By way of introduction to the museum, an explanation is made regarding the importance of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.
Also known as the Columbian Exposition, it was pivotal in the evolution of the American traveling outdoor shows. The Words Fair was the nexus for the world’s pinnacle achievements in entertainment, science, technology, business, and industry.
Historical firsts included the engineering marvel of the Ferris Wheel, phosphorescent electric lights, and the sideshow midway debuted at the World’s Fair. But it was also advancements in the infrastructure of the World’s Fair that led to modern traveling amusements.
The World’s Fair Midway
Wild west shows shared the landscape with dancing and posing girl revues. Foreign peoples of ethnicities and cultures strange to American eyes were featured beside acrobats and athletes. Exotic menageries, sideshow freaks and oddities, singers and musicians, mechanical rides, and regional foods all shared the Midway.
Modern Mobilization
Many of the acts and attractions of the World’s Fair afterward went on tour with smaller companies. The technological and logistic advances necessary to make the colossal fair happen were later adapted on smaller scales. This helped mobilize carnivals and circuses to whet the appetite of small towns across the land whose citizens’ interests were piqued by the World’s Fair and wanted more.
The traveling show and local fairs
The modern American shows were an amalgam of many precursors: European family-operated acrobat circuses, the wild west shows, menagerie tours, risque girl revues, patent medicine shows, minstrel shows, country fairs and more.
The technological advances displayed at the World’s Fair as well as a modern business-oriented approach formed what would become the singular American traveling shows known today as carnivals and circuses.
Local and state fairs sprung up around the country in response to the enthusiasm. The new traveling companies were to provide the entertainment and recreate the senses-spinning atmosphere experienced by the twenty-five million ticket holders of the World’s Fair who returned home and spread the word of the magic.
Transportation
The museum has a number of motor vehicles on display representing the advances in traveling show logistics. A wall display commemorates the days of rail travel.
Transportation advancements were a feature that not only made traveling amusements possible across a vast nation but also served to set the American style of shows apart from the old world versions. From horse-drawn wagons to rail cars, and ultimately to motorized trucks and semi-tractor trailers, all the equipment, animals, and people had to get from town to town.
The Exhibits
The Carny Priest
One of the first displays is a memorial to Father Mac, “The Carny Priest.” After retiring from a full career as a Catholic priest in New York, Monsignor Robert McCarthy began a ministry to the workers of the many traveling shows. He carried his priestly paraphernalia with him and would set up wherever he could find the space.
At carnivals around the country, he’d offer liturgical and sacramental services to the carnies. Pope Paul VI named Father Mac the chaplain for the 60,000 carnival workers in the United States. Father Mac continued his summer visits to the traveling shows beyond his 95th year, passing away January 26, 2018, at the age of 99 in Watertown, NY.
Punch and Judy
Next to the memorial to Father Mac is a Punch and Judy display. A looped video of an actual performance allows you to watch a Professor have Mr. Punch beat the devil with a bat.
Showgirls
The showgirl revues played a large part in the history of the modern American carnival. They began as costumed women posing in front of painted scenes of antiquity or women in skin-tight suits posing behind backlit sheer curtains to give the illusion of nudity.
These inevitably developed into strip show revues with music, dancing, costumes and support entertainment such as comedians and orchestras.
Some traveling shows provided a Saturday night Red Hot Ramble. They featured full nudity and sometimes audience participation where certain talents were displayed in tents tucked further back from the midway.
“Where did your father get to?”
Girl shows soon became the main attraction of the midways with dedicated tents holding as many as three-hundred spectators. Famous Broadway and Vaudeville performers like Gypsy Rose Lee would headline.
Jim Crow laws prevented black patrons from attending white girl shows. Carnivals responded to the oppression by providing both separate black and white shows.
Leo Claxton’s Harlem in Havana show and Harlem Revue shows toured with the Royal American Shows carnival. Claxton’s shows became the benchmark for both white and black girl revue shows.
Tastes change
Traveling carnivals no longer offer hot-blooded girl shows for various reasons both social and economical. Besides, show women can do more than dance. Ultimately, it was the economic reasons that affected the fading away of the girl revue shows.
Freaks and geeks
Freak shows and oddities were additional features of the midways sideshows. Giant men and hirsute women, the unusually-skilled, and those with unusual features from birth or injury sought the wealth achievable by using the gifts God gave ’em. Some amassed quite a fortune displaying their own traits and talents to an aghast, amused and sometimes appalled public.
One man, in particular, was Johann Petursson, billed as the Viking Giant. A native of Iceland, his staggering height of 8’ 8” left him unable to find work in the tiny shops of his hometown. He left for Europe and soon found he could earn a living by exploiting his height. He eventually took his act to the United States.
Petursson went on to manage himself and became very successful. You can see him as the cyclopean caveman opposite Jayne Mansfield in Prehistoric Women (1950).
The Gibsonton giant
Another notable giant has a more local connection. At 7’ 4” tall (billed as 8′ 4″), Al Tomaini has employed most his life as a circus giant. He met Berniece Evelyn Smith at the Great Lakes Exposition in 1936. Born without legs and with twisted arms, she had been performing since the age of three.
The meeting of the gentle giant and the half girl was love at first sight. They were soon married while touring with a traveling show in 1936. Together they were billed as The World’s Strangest Married Couple.
Eventually, the couple retired and moved to Gibsonton, Florida. There Al coupled his love of fishing with available real estate on the nearby Alafia River. He built a trailer park and restaurant on a bank and called it The Giant’s Fish Camp.
Al died in 1962; Jeanie never remarried and continued operating the fish camp until her death in 1999. The fish camp is no more, but a replica of one of Al’s size 25 boots can be seen on a pedestal in front of a restored fishing shack on US 41.
Food Concessions
Of initial and particular interest to me was a small section on food and concessions. There are examples of early cotton candy floss machines, corn dog fryers, sugar waffle irons, and of course, the ubiquitous Coca-Cola.
No mention of elephant ears and fresh cut fries, though. And sadly missing was the real food to sate the hunger this particular exhibit was inflaming. I moved along quickly.
The Minstrel Shows
A mention of the minstrel shows is made with a subtle display. Though they were part and parcel to the recipe of the evolving traveling shows, their dehumanizing caricatures mix the bitter flavor of racism throughout.
It is important to note that such shows provided income and success not only to white managers and performers but black entrepreneurs found success as well, such as Pat Chappelle and his Rabbit’s Foot Company. Chappelle founded the company as a touring vaudeville show wherein many famous African American performers had their start including Louis Jordan and Ma Rainey.
The Rides
As I cut across the center of the museum floor, the ceiling opened up to contain full-sized, but small versions of a Ferris wheel and a carousel.
A nice example of a 1950 Allan Herschell Company American Beauty Carousel, the carousel is a two-abreast style (two horses, side by side). The horses are made of cast aluminum for easy setup and portability.
It was here in the center that I noticed the massive drapes advertising the Viking Giant as well as something called “Bloody Mama” and the “Fantasies of Pot.”
The banner didn’t specify Mary Jane or Pol.
Royal American Shows
The opposite side of the museum contains several more rides and a particularly interesting rail car. The caboose-like car was of the Publicity and Public Relations Department for the defunct but very significant Royal American Shows.
This was essentially a rolling office on the rails. In time all the little touring companies merged into larger companies with greater assets to compete. One of these larger companies was Royal American Shows.
Royal American Shows was founded by Carl J. Sedlmayr and known as “The World’s Longest Midway.” RAS relied on up to 90 rail cars to travel from town to town. They used more train cars than any traveling show in the world. RAS peaked in size at over 800 employees in 1967 and suffered during the poor economy of the 1970s.
Increased transportation costs led to profit loss and Canadian tax authorities seized equipment in 1975 over a tax issue. They sold the assets to cover outstanding debts in the 1990s. RAS had to close their Canadian route in 1977 due to the tax issues. This led to further loss of revenue.
They continued touring the United States until its final show in Lubbock, TX October 1997. Gibsonton was the winter quarters of Royal American Shows.
The Mezzanine Exhibits
Miniature circus
Upstairs was a mezzanine level that housed a miniature replica of a traveling shows that stretched maybe forty feet. It was clearly someone’s labor of manic love.
Mr. Ray Genter spent 26 years handcrafting the tiny midway and he is still at it with matchsticks and balsa. The intricacy and detail of the midway pieces, rides, tents, etc., is impressive. And I complain of finding the time to dab some paint on canvas.
I fled the scene of creepy clown images and passed the research library of the IISA that occupies the frontmost portion of the mezzanine. I may have to return sometime for further study if my interests are more piqued.
Games of chance and skill
The left side is an exhibit to those star features of the modern Midway, the games of chance and skill. Popularly suspected to be rigged if good-natured fun.
I recalled the allowance dollars spent attempting to win massive survival knives by throwing rings around the handle. Or throwing darts at balloons to win a skateboard only to walk away with a mirror screen printed with Ninja Turtles. And memories persist of the impossible feat of shooting out a red star with a sleeve of copper BBs.
I do enjoy a mean game of Skeeball, though. Also, those damned goldfish which my friend Seth would swallow whole and bring back up over the seawall into the Delaware River. And we thought Carnies were weird.
After a glance at the grotesque imps that passed for toys in the misty eldritch past of my parents’ youth, I realized the fun was over. I had seen it all; the show had come to an end.
This time, however, it wouldn’t disappear in the night. Vanished having left behind an empty park without so much as a crumpled cotton candy cone or shriveled balloon. Only the ghosts of temporary mulch paths. It would remain here, every Saturday and Sunday for the foreseeable future.
Thoughts from the recliner
I knew darned well that a museum to a carnival would not be an actual working carnival. It reminded me of our visit to Circus World in the eighties and how I enjoyed the miniatures and models. But there we could ride rides.
I can imagine it’s difficult to maintain a museum in a niche as narrow as this. They might have trouble finding funding as it is without bringing operational rides and food concessions into the mix.
It’s a nice museum. If you dig carnivals, sideshows, and circuses, you should give it a shot.
Is it worth ten bucks? I don’t know what you value, but I like history, carnivals, antiques, and artifacts, as well as an air-conditioned place in which to appreciate it all.
A round of miniature golf runs eight bucks these days, and a movie is over ten. Ninety minutes of interesting artifacts and historical information for a sawbuck seems a worthwhile deal.
And in the end…
If you’re looking for something to do in the heat of the summer months, on rainy days, or just for something different, there is value in the International Showmen’s Museum. I enjoyed the nostalgia, the stories of people and events, as well as the oddities and artifacts. It helps that I love history, but it is all the more enjoyable to learn when surrounded by the bizarre, the ornate, the whimsical, the creepy and the arcane.
Thanks for reading!