Bedouin Clowns promote this weekend's Shrine Circus

Oct. 18—Early Childhood Center students gathered around Sparky the clown and gave him a big hug Tuesday morning.

Sparky had some good news for the youngsters at ECC and throughout the area — the Bedouin Shrine Circus is coming to town.

Shrine clowns are visiting area schools, handing out free tickets to the circus, which runs Saturday and Sunday at Muskogee Civic Center.

"These are free circus tickets, how much is that gonna cost you," Sparky asked some ECC children.

"Zero," they yelled after a teacher's whispered prompting.

"But I got one little problem, we've got our elephants all at the train station and they're asleep," Sparky said. "Can everybody say 'wake up elephants' real loud?"

And they all yelled loud enough to awaken all elephants.

Bedouin Shrine Potentate Bob Lackey said they have 4,000 to 5,000 tickets to distribute to children 16 and younger. Shriners are distributing tickets at Hilldale, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma School for the Blind, as well as ECC, Sadler Arts Academy and Muskogee Public Schools elementary schools.

"It raises money for our building, it's for the Temple to help get our children to hospitals in Shreveport, St. Louis and Galveston," Lackey said. "It's to keep the temple open so we can provide transportation for the kids. We've got people going to the outlying schools and passing out tickets."

Bedouin board member Hank Starkey said "we're handing out tickets from McAlester to almost Pryor, from Okmulgee to Poteau, almost to the Arkansas Line."

"We encompass about 17 counties in eastern Oklahoma," he said.

Lackey said the circus will feature elephants, camels and other animals.

"We're going to have a lot of acrobatics, it's going to be a lot of fun," he said.