Known for his dapper looks and intense settlements, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Art Ricker was a sight to behold one day at Hampton Coliseum. Frank Roach, assistant general manager of the Virginia venue, will never forget (and spent many a later evening laughing about) the day Art Ricker got drenched.
It was a Sunday and Roach and Ricker were settling up on the last day of the circus run in Hampton, a city they had famously said they would never play again four years earlier.
But old grudges were resolved and the circus had returned. It was a rainy day, Roach remembers. It was pouring rain “like it can only do in the Southeast,” he said.
Ricker is in Roach’s office, going over the settlement numbers. Per usual, he had a big cigar in his mouth and wore his trademark, wide-brimmed hat. Ricker focuses in on the charge for filling the 75 stake holes in the parking lot that were drilled for the tents that housed the animals.
“How do you know there were 75? Did you go out there and count them?”
“No, I kind of looked and guessed.”
“You need to go count them.”
“Art, I’m not going out in this damn rain. If you want to go count ‘em, go count ‘em, and I’ll take your count.”
So Ricker takes the challenge. He goes out to count stake holes. When he comes back in, the brim of his soaking wet hat is almost down to his shoulders. His cigar is out. He’s drenched.
“How many were there?”
“82.”
“Well, I’m still only charging you for 75, because that’s what I put on the settlement sheet.”
“If you knew Art, you knew he enjoyed getting people to jump through hoops on settlement. He was very meticulous, very methodical,” Roach recalled. “But, in the end, he was going to do the right thing. He would not have come back and told me a lower number than were actually there.”
Roach later went to work for Ringling. “They wanted what they wanted, but it was all straight up and once it was there, it was done. There was never, ever a day I heard them ask to change the deal, like rock and roll.” — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
PHOTO: Frank Roach, right, with industry luminaries Bill Waldo of Irwin Seating and Alan Freeman of the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans, taken back in the day. (Courtesy of Linda Deckard/Amusement Business)