Dear Friend,
I’m editing for a client who is writing a book of her memories for her relatives. She grew up in the 1940s and 50s in a small town in Nebraska. She was one of 10 kids, and the family didn’t have money —they didn’t have running water or indoor toilets in the house until she was about six, and then there was still no hot water or shower. She’s gathered history from her older siblings, and has a ton of stories from her own memory. When she thinks of something new, she handwrites it and sends it to me in a letter.
A letter that she sent me recently talked about going to the circus with her family when she was a little kid.
In the summers, the circus would come to Yankton, South Dakota, across the border from their little town in Nebraska. My client recalled all the things we think about with circuses, the trapeze, the clowns in a tiny car and cotton candy, but what she said was her favorite thing was something I’d never heard of: A vendor would walk around the audience’s seats selling live chameleons for 50 cents. He’d be wearing the chameleons safety-pinned to his shirt. The pin went through collars around the chameleons’ necks, and the chameleons’ skins would be the color of his shirt. The collars and pins came with the chameleons so that people could wear them as living jewelry!
Each year, my client’s and her siblings would buy a chameleon to take them home as a pet. One year, the chameleon was living in a shoe box under the oldest sister’s bed, until it escaped in the night. It was found in the morning, when their mom opened her eyes and saw the chameleon sitting on her chest staring at her.
Their mom jumped out of bed with a yelp and threw the chameleon outside. It made its home in a cob pile and lived through that winter into the spring. They’d see it on and off throughout the year.
Reading her letter, the whole “living jewelry” thing seemed so crazy that I had to look into it. I found a few threads with people talking about the practice, but very little in the way of pictorial record. Scouring the internet, I found only these two:
How are you? Hope you’re doing very well!
Warmly,
Barrington
I’m off to augment my jewelry collection. I did remember the circus coming to tow in z Minnesota though. Thanks for the memories and reviving my fear of clowns.