On 24th May I attended the unveiling of "Elephant Circle" in Leamington Spa and set up a stand to sign the first copies of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce". The event was organized to not only unveiled this newly repaired and re-located sculpture by Nicholas Dimbleby, but also to celebrate Leamington's historical links to elephants. The root of this association starts with Sam Lockhart the circus elephant trainer. Sam features in "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" as he was the brother of fellow elephant trainer George Lockhart who was tragically killed by Sauce in 1904. I also dedicated an appendix in my book to Sam's life. Despite George's elephants having a more celebrated history in the UK, Sam was the more successful of the two brothers, and during the early part of the twentieth century he famously walked his elephants around Leamington Spa. While I attended the unveiling I couldn't resist the opportunity of filming the famous "Elephant Walk", the slipway where Sam walked his elephants down to bathe in the river Leam. Here is the footage we took: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1zKlz4j7sc
3 comments:
Jamie, I love your new look. Very good for showing off your content.
What? What this old thing. Oh, it was just something I threw together ;-) Thanks very much, Heather. I hope you are well.
Jamie,
I don't know if this is fact or fiction, but in 1974 during my elephant training apprenticeship, I was shown by my teacher how to make what he called a "Lockhart Hook". He said it was named after an elephant trainer named George Lockhart who first introduced it to the Elephant Training fraternity in the United States. It was a shaped 3 ft. hickory wood handle, with a formed hook in one end, and a platted lash on the other. It took me a week of careful shaving of the wood with a piece of Coke bottle to get a proper taper and to add the hook with a copper ferrel. That implement serves me faithfully today 34 years later, and it would be great history if it was actually created in the early 1900's by George Lockhart.
Wade Burck
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