Audiences don't stand and recite The Pledge before theatrical stage productions, but they do at professional sporting events. So, it seems a fitting compromise that a clown bore the Flag as the Ring Master led us in The Pledge. By and large, the individual acts within a circus have been the product of non-american born people, often families, that seized an opportunity to take their amazing feats on the road in a land of opportunity that doesn't ask, "who are you? Where did you come from?" but rather "What can you do?"

The concept of the circus may have been born in Ancient Rome, and refined in Europe, but the most noted circus entrepreneurs have been American, and as a result, running away to join circus was once the common American Dream of children desperate for the spotlight. I wanted to give my son a taste of this American mystique before the allure of Hollywood took over that place in his mind.