April 4, 1937: The congestion in Manhattan on this Sunday afternoon was not your typical mix of cars and trucks, but a parade of pachyderms, in town for the Ringling Brothers circus show. “The parade rumbled and clattered across the 125th Street Bridge, and from each corner children cried, ‘Hey, what’s in there?’ ” The Times reported from Uptown, where covered wagons containing the circus’s entertainments collected before the shows. “They pointed to canvas covered wagon No. 57, and it seemed a shame to yell back, ‘property,’ which would have been infinitely too prosaic, though true. So the answer was ‘lions,’ ‘tigers,’ ‘King Kong’ and ‘Mickey Mouse’ alternately, and in most cases the questioners were properly thrilled.”
