"Elephants" and Grover

In the first four pages there is prostitution, the hint of betrayal, a yak stampede (followed by chimpanzees, a polar bear, a zebra, a lion, a panther), and a murder.

Last night I began “Water For Elephants”, a 2006 novel by Sara Gruen. If the photo accompanying her bio can be trusted, she is very pretty. But what a story she is telling. Set in a depression era traveling circus, this promises to be one dusty, tawdry, twisted ride. I love it!

My great Uncle Grover, a one time tailor for the Army stationed in Alaska during WWI, spent many years in the middle of his life traveling with a small chips circus. He was a show clown, posing before and after the main event for photos with the locals (it’s Grover, full show drag, in the photo above). Grover, who had a penchant for crochet and a nice evening cross-dressing with friends, was very old by the time I knew him. But I adored him. He had seen Mary Martin in South Pacific. Fanny Brice in Grab Bag. Charlotte Greenwood (his favorite) in virtually everything. The death of vaudeville was deeply and bitterly mourned well into the nineteen-seventies. The “bare butts” he encountered when Eleanor Parker brought Applause to Indianapolis were a travesty, Gypsy Rose Lee’s cavorting a thing of beauty. Grover never missed me in a show and never wavered in his prediction of my impending stardom.

But never, no matter how I begged at 8, flattered at 13, or kidded at 18, would he talk about his days with the circus. On that, Grover was mum.

My brother Michael, who remembers Grover as vividly and, I think, as fondly as I, chose the book for me. Maybe he thinks that in “Water For Elephants” I might learn a little something about what Grover remained oh so silent.

I hope I do.