It's back in the saddle for Buffalo Bill
By Martin Hintz

Brian Downes alternates between riding herd on a desk at the Chicago Tribune and lassoing a group of Wild West performers who were the hit of the show grounds at the Great Circus Parade in Milwaukee this July. While in Beer Town, Downes acted the role of Maj. Frank North, a rough-tough cavalry scout who helped organize the original Buffalo Bill show in the late 1800s.

But in real life, Downes is an office manager at the Trib, as well as serving on the newspaper's Pulitzer staff and writing travel stories, most of which have to do with Western lore and, of course, Ireland. He's been to Ireland at least a dozen times over the past 30 years, usually heading to the West coast. On one of his recent trips to the Auld Sod, he wrote a travelog for the Tribune on sites made famous by the legendary Irish guerrilla leader Michael (the Big Fellow) Collins.

Downes, 47, lives on Chicago's North Side in St. Gertrude parish and is the oldest of nine kids. He's been at the doughty Grande Dame of the Windy City newspaper world for 28 years. In day-to-day life, his dad, Emmett, a former steel company executive has hosted Irish radio shows in Galveston, Tex.; Ruidoso and Santa Fe, N.M; and Palm Beach, Fla. Currently retired, the elder Downes now produces the Harp & Shamrock radio program in Savannah where he recently moved.

Downes' great-grandmother, Mary Ann Farley, a native of Co. Meath, met her soon-to-be-husband, policeman John Joseph Downes, of Co. Limerick, in Chicago. The couple eventually sired 13 children.

"I think it was really interesting that they both saw Buffalo Bill Cody perform at the 1893 World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago where he was set up just outside the fair grounds on the South Side along 63rd Street," Downes said. He added that Cody's sister, Helen, always claimed that their family was descended from Irish high kings. "But historians say that the Cody name probably came from the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel, but who really knows," Downes went on.

But when he's not rounding up verbs, adjectives, nouns and adverbs for his stories in the summer, he's a volunteer at the circus parade grounds.

Each July, historic wagons from the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis., are hauled by train to Milwaukee's lakefront for several days of clowning around, acrobatic thrills and chills and elephant trumpeting. The lakefront exhibition concludes with a grand parade through downtown. About 20 years ago, the circus parade even visited Chicago with its "dazzling, stupendous cavalcade of mirth and magic."

Downes, admittedly bitten by the circus bug early on, has volunteered at the parade for the past two decades, including a stint as a mule-riding clown. He's been in love with the circus museum ever since his family began vacationing in central Wisconsin near Baraboo, the former winter quarters of the old Ringling Bros. Circus and now home of the Circus World Museum, a state historical site.

Now, he recruits friends from Wisconsin and Illinois to help out in Milwaukee. Among them is Ed Baumann, a retired veteran of the Trib's city desk. Downes' family also chips in. His brother Terry works on the train crew and and another brother, Phillip, rides in the Wild West show. Then there's nephew Kyle Switzer, also on the train crew, and Terry's wife, Jeanette, in the cookhouse. Phillip's daughter, Stephanie, helps with the ticket wagon.

Downes' daughter Katy, 19, who collects tickets for the Wild West show, recently returned from University College-Cork where she attended summer school studying Irish literature and history. In the early 1990s, she was also a Trinity dancer.

"I think my love of Ireland will live on in her, just like my father passed it along to me," affirmed Downes, beaming broadly at his Stetson-topped daughter...who, incidentally, was packing a vintage pistol as part of her getup for the Wild West routine.

For the past several years, Downes and several other friends had set up an encampment on the parade ground to demonstrate life behind the scenes at Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Along with tents and teepees were Buffalo Bill's original ticket wagon, a covered wagon, a stagecoach and some other circus wagons to lend a touch of authenticity.

In 1999, Downes and Al Huffman, a Buffalo Bill look-alike who, for years, played the western showman at the parade, traveled together to Ireland. Huffman, who represents a line of barbecue tortilla chips, has visited Paris, London and other European destinations, just as did the first Buffalo Bill. "But Al said that his visit to Ireland, which was his first, was the best of all," Downes reported.

"The Earl of Dunraven, who built Adare Manor in Co. Limerick, was a close friend of the original Buffalo Bill and often hunted with him when he visited the States," Downes continued.

Last winter, the parade management suggested that Downes put together a real Wild West show. "Well, since you never say 'never,' I said 'sure,'" he recalled with a laugh.

Since Huffman retired from this year's parade, Downes was lucky to find Kent Shelton, saddle-collecting stuntman and co-owner of the Hanlon-Lees Action Theater in Chicago.

Shelton also has a love of history and is a regular participant at renaissance fairs and rercently participated in a swashbuckling movie, The Black Knight, with comic actor Martin Laurence. Shelton and his team had put together a Wild West show at the Naper Settlement in Naperville, Ill., so they had the experience Downes was seeking. Shelton had also visited the circus parade a couple of years ago to offer his services whenever the time was right.

Subsequently, the two men assembled this year's pre-parade program, complete with a long-horn steer named Horace. Then there was Ivan the Black, a saber wielding Cossack rider; fast-talking master-of-ceremonies Ned Buntline; sharpshooter Annie Oakley; cowboy film star Tom Mix; Native American riders Iron Tail and Rain-in-the-Face; as well as assorted comic gunmen. Toss in a stagecoach robbery, horse vaultings, trick shooting and assorted other skillfully staged pandemonium and you have the makings of a real Wild West event.

"God must love us to allow us to have this much fun," Downes offered with a mighty smile as the last bit of dust settled. It's a bet that Buffalo Bill had a rousing bit o' craic, too.