Good folks, our hearts go out to you from here in the states where we have found one case of it on our East coast I just heard.

Here's a bit of a tale:

In 1961, when I was 20 years old, I taped recorded an old man, 93 year old Paul Durst -- in Chicago. He was a hobo fiddler who led an extraordinary life. Born in 1868, his parents had come to America in 1848 from Switzerland and settled in the state of Wisconsin because it reminded them of home. Paul made his way around the USA as a hobo and a fiddler and working the various crops. I've talked about Paul Durst in other threads but one of the things he had done was as follows:

Paul joined the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show somewhere around 1880-1890 and traveled to Europe (Germany) to do shows. When there, the cattle with the show were found to be infected with Hoof And Mouth Disease and all of Buffalo Bill Cody's animals had to be slaughtered. Of course, this was devastating to the show. Bill Cody made a deal with a freighter line to bring all his people back to the U.S.A. in the empty hold of a steamer. The trip took forever according to Paul.

Later, I read in a book somewhere that Bill Cody, on returning home, had to be refinanced by another great showman, the circus mogul P.T. Barnum, who got him up and running again.

Art Thieme