Clint Bloom, Clown of the Threshermen’s Reunion Has Packed
Up His Bag of Tricks and Fun and Moved On.
Dayton Daily News Writer and WDRK Daily Feature Joe’s
Journal.
When the circus clown packs up his bag and heads ‘west’
there’s no one left to make folks laugh when the ‘Big
Top’ comes to town.
And, like the circus clown whose mission it was to lighten the
burdens of the human race, but now has gone to another place, so
the ‘Clown of the Threshermen’s Reunion’, Clint Bloom,
has packed up his bag of tricks and fun and boarded the last train
for ‘Steam Engine Heaven’.
It was a sad note, when threshing reunion enthusiasts read the
little notice of Clint Bloom’s passing in a recent issue of The
Iron-Men Album. And threshing reunions gay and memorable events
that they are just won’t be the same anymore for his going.
Clint Bloom was an inveterate clown. Had he followed the sawdust
trail under the Big-Top instead of the straw-pile and the bark of
the smokestack and wail of the steam engine whistle Clint Bloom
might well have entertained thousands of both young and old, making
them laugh at seemingly endless stream of gimmicks and pranks which
he always was pulling out of that old trunk of his in the boot of
his old car.
The huge sun-glasses, the giant, saw-toothed comb, the ten-foot
shoot in-ar’n of Paul Bunyan proportions, the monstrous
bear-trap for catching straw-pile mice, the ceaseless antics that
never ran dry Clint Bloom could always fish something new and
different out of that old black bag of his so long as the human
race could laugh. The coverless ribbed umbrella, the huge pipe he
smoked in the threshing parades, the coal shovel he strummed like a
banjo, all were his trademarks.
Though his heart was with the engines and the men of the
threshing circles, he just couldn’t stand by idly watching the
belching stack, the flopping belt and the straw-pile mount higher
and higher into the bright blue sky without lending his own special
blend of mirth and laughter to brighten the whole grand scene.
