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Show Former Bareback Queen Destitute GERTRUDE S'.VASEY I By PAUL HARRISON' NEA Service Writer. HAVERHILL, Mass., Oct. 25 (U P) Rex and Snowball and Dock and Prince and Imp and Bill! Snow-white, gayly - beribboned, with arched necks and fire in their eyes, the half dozen cricus horses would prance around the sawdust. On their backs skipped the beautiful beauti-ful sylph, Gertrude the Great, blowing blow-ing kisses at the crowd. And now, one knocks at the door of the shanty which leans against, the elevated railroad tracks and the greeting is a bedlam of canine yelps, backed up by a throaty question from 71-year-old Gertrude Swasey. "Just try to get in try to take me to the poor house." shouts the voice. "You'll find a tough old woman wo-man and eight dogs are mighty hard to Lick." Attempted Ejection It is the same Gertrude who once blew kisses at the crowd, now thundering thun-dering imprecations at the constables consta-bles whom she expects, since a recent re-cent unsuccessful lawsuit, to eject her from- home. She mollifies when she learns her visitor has no connection with the law. , "They're all I've go to keep house for them and the ten cats," says the one-time queen of the circus horses. She ousts a couple of the pets from a chair. "Bessie" who has "been niliu' lately" crawls back into the oven of the rusty stove. "Some people," she says, "try to tell me, 'Why,, if you'd get rid of them eighteen extra mouths to feed. J maybe you could get along.' I can't make the fools understand that without my family, I wouldn't want to get along. I "There was a delegation of church women came here once on ' what they called a Christian mission.' miss-ion.' I told them there was more' teal Christianity In 'Stranger's' I eyes there than in all their souls. It made them right angry, but they haven't bothered me any more. . Loves Amiuiils j 'T just couldn't help loving animals. ani-mals. When I was little, my daddy built me a dog house that cost $1.-1 200. He built me a race track, too, I j and I shocked the (own when I I rodo four abreast down Main 'street." I Gertrude tells more of her st;ry, a reversed Cinderella tale. From her wealthy home she ran away (o the circus. Her fattier then honght a circus for h:-r. and a'l her jewels were spent in trying In mako it a paying business. Hut always sho cumcs buck to her animals. I I "I'm too old to scrub nnw, like' I've been doing. But I intend to ! stay here, lawsuits or no. It'll take wild horses to drag me to the poor house and away from the only friends I have." The "Immortal Equestrienne" petted the bristly back of a mongrel. 'Sit up, Flossie, and shake hands for me," she coaxed. |
