Always a Story.....

A typical view of Iowa this time of the year is this random shot from the truck. "There is always a story," one student told me of their observation of me. The students like to hear stories.  The story this time is about the broken down barn in the distance. I couldn't get a decent shot of the barn but it has a lot of history. The barn started to collapse last year.  It is the last building of the many barns and buildings that were used by a circus company.

 In the late forties, the circus would winter over in Granger, Iowa.  It was a farm south of the city and all the animals and some performers settled in there to hold our for spring weather. Some animals really didn't need to be inside so there were pens of zebras or whatever.  One of the elephants died on the site and it has been a mystery as to where they buried it on that farm.  No evidence of an elephant grave has ever been found but it has driven the locals crazy because they want to find it. The land is still a farm, but the suburbia building of houses is right next door now.  The barn had a twin  for a lot of years and then it was the first collapsed.  This barn housed a couple of Texas longhorns for quite a few years.

A borrowed photo of the Yankee-Robinson Circus from a newspaper article. The photo originated in a Granger Centennial Book from a resident of Granger.