Billy Jeffers ran for scoop shovel and garbage can.
“I was prepared for the worse,” said Jeffers, a circus employee from Arkansas, after emerging from the tent and what turned out to be - ahem - a dry run.
Isa, on the other hand, knew just what her job was.
With a minimum of guidance, the towering pachyderm proceeded to systematically pull quarter pole after quarter pole into place in the racetrack infield at the Western Montana Fair.
With un-elephantine speed, the perimeter of the 12,000-square-foot tent rose up in preparation for the three-ring circus' three performances later in the day.
“Come on in, folks,” called Doug Munsell, aka “Poppa D Clown,” as a crowd that swelled to 80 spectators ventured into the darkness to watch the process.
Most of the onlookers were kids who sat transfixed on the grass or stood near the outside poles with parents or grandparents.
“This is so cool. This is so-o cool,” said Alice Robertson of Missoula, who just turned 14. “I did this when I was, like, 4 years old in Wenatchee, Wash.”
Was that experience anything like this? she was asked.
“I can't seem to remember. I was only 4,” Robertson said earnestly.
Isa takes turns with Ila in performing the tent-raising task at each stop on the circus' hectic eight-month tour. The family-oriented circus had already stopped in Lewistown, Bozeman, Dillon and Butte this week before it came to Missoula. In the next three days, it moves on to Polson, Kalispell and Libby.
Munsell, a retired physical education teacher from Kansas, said 130 people travel with the show, 115 of them workers or performers.
The tent-raising process is labor intensive. The big top seats 2,200 people and each half weighs 15,000 pounds.
“We have 22 or 24 on the big top crew, and it takes every one of them,” Munsell said. “That's a heavy piece of fabric there.”
The last of the circus' 45 trucks, trailers and recreational vehicles rolled into Missoula from Butte at 9 a.m. The tight turns required to get into the racetrack infield slowed the process, but by 9:30 the tent fabric was on the ground in two pieces and ready for a line of workers to unroll.
Thirty minutes later, the gathering crowd parted to let Isa through, led and followed by the tractors that accompanied her in her work.
“This sure brings back memories,” said Penny Cera of Lolo, “but I don't think it'll compare with when I was that age.”
She pointed to a young boy who stood beside his father and intently watched the construction process.
Cera was enjoying what she called a “girls' day out” with Yvonne Findley of Stevensville. Their husbands had been left at home.
“They'd probably be saying ‘let's go' by now,” Findley joked.
Cera is still enthralled by the circus.
“I was in Southern California when I first saw it. My grandfather took me. That was our special trip we used to go on,” she said.
Munsell said the circus entourage hails from a dozen countries, many of them in Central and South America, but also Italy, Russia and one troupe from Uzbekistan.
None of the performers are American.
“People just don't do it here,” Munsell said. “It's not a high-paying thing, unless you get with Ringling or somebody like that.”
Their payoff, he added, is the cheers, applause and smiles from children like 9-year-old Gary Bruun of Missoula, and his cousins Harpyr Sayler, 10, and Daigan Marks, 6. They were going to the late show Thursday, explained Aubrey Sayler, Bruun's mother. But the morning preview would be equally memorable.
The kids, young and old, watched as Isa and her handlers turned their attention to the half-dozen center poles that made the big top full-sized - 40 feet high, 100 feet longer than a football field and just as wide.
Forty-five minutes after Isa lumbered into the tent, her work was done. She was led, jaw opening and closing as elephant jaws do, out the door and to her pen, there to wait for the next show.
Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
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