In I946 I worked in a store show (museum) for Ray Marsh Brydon in San Antonio. The building was on the main st right across the street from Woolworth dime store. The old
museum operators all agreed that the closer you got to Woolworths the better the location.

Ray had a big show, about twenty acts each on a separate stage, with a sideshow banner as a backdrop. Two blowoffs. In the back on ground floor was Dolly Reagen Ossified girl, and on the mezzanine was the "NUDE RANCH" which was slide photos of nude girls, each posed behind a bush, a fence, or peeking around a statue. The amount of exposed flesh exposed was about as much as you would see of a lady bundled up for the cold wind on a frigid winter day walking down the street.

Two big show windows facing the street. One with "Waxo the mechanical man" and the other with a drag queen with a snake.   The space between the windows was big double doors. The ticket box stood between the windows in front of the door.

Admission was ten cents, a dime.

We started each day at 10am till 11pm weekdays and Sunday. Friday till Midnight and Sat till I am. Everyone got paid the same, $5.00 a day, paid in nickels and dimes. This was a good living in those days.  Most stayed in a small hotel around the corner, where rooms were a dollar a day double, bathroom down the hall. A good breakfast was anywhere from I5 to 30 cents at any good downtown restaurant, a good dinner for fifty cents. To have a dress shirt laundered was a dime.

Business was good.

The show opened there thanksgiving week and ran through the middle of Jan. The show was so strong many folks came back again and again. The show moved from San Antonio to Birmingham Ala., where the location was not good nor was the business. When the show closed Ray wanted my partner Harry Leonard and I to go in his show at Riverview Park in Chicago, where he had a sideshow for many years, and he also had a very beautiful sideshow for fairs. However, we went back to Dailey Bros Circus, a gigantic railroad show out of Gonzales, TX. where we worked through the season of I949.

Remember the number one rule in operating ANY business, the magic words: Make Money.

Ward Hall
 

Image John Robinson Copyright ©2007 All rights reserved.