Life With Ringmaster Elbert B. Swerdfeger Is a 3-Ring Circus, Albeit a Little Whittled Down

Elbert B. Swerdfeger, 53, of Los Alamitos has an easy-going manner, hardly the man you’d expect to be stashing an entire circus, including animals, in his garage and upstairs bedroom.

“I’m just about to take them all out to show them,” he said. Taking “them” out means the fat lady, sword-swallower, 3,000 other hand-painted circus workers, 214 hand-carved elephants and assorted other animals, 124 tents and 80 wagons, all built on quarter-inch scale. The circus layout is 8 by 16 feet.

While it may sound unique, there are an estimated 3,000 people who are registered circus-model builders throughout the country, said Swerdfeger, a Saddleback High School wood shop teacher. “We know there are 300 in California and 30 in Orange County.”

The Orange County Chapter of Circus Model Builders will be out in force Aug. 1-3 to show off miniatures at the Anaheim Convention Center. Swerdfeger is the club Ringmaster.

While miniatures are popular, “Actually, the full-size circus business is doing quite well,” Swerdfeger said. “Most people were not aware that five circuses played in Orange County in May, and there are as many full-size circuses today as in 1940.”

But much of the equipment, tent and trucks for today’s circuses are new, a marked difference from Swerdfeger’s 1920s-era circus setup, which he said is “historically pretty accurate.” Most of his pieces were copied from vintage photographs.

“I take the miniatures to trade shows, malls, schools and public libraries,” he said, “just for the enjoyment of showing them. Some of the older people remember when the circuses used to come to town in trains and set up in tents. They tell their grandchildren, ‘That’s the way a real circus was.’ ”

“When club members take their circuses to schools, they keep the children absolutely spellbound for hours,” Swerdfeger said. “There must be some mystique to children.”

His interest started at age 8, “and I still spend a lot of my free time on my hobby,” he said, often five to eight hours a week.

“It’s still a good hobby and that’s how I relax,” he said. Along with his model circus, Swerdfeger has about 3,000 photographs of circus equipment and about 200 programs from past circuses, some from the 1920s.

How time does pass. In 1943, Robert Hicks was graduated from Orange High School in ceremonies on the sunken lawn at Chapman College. He returned to that same spot to receive his B.A. and M.A. degrees in separate ceremonies. Now 55, Foothill High School business teacher Hicks was honored at the sunken lawn recently at his surprise retirement party.

The last name “Lee” is pretty common and many of them gathered in Newport Beach for a massive “family” picture taken Monday night from an airplane.

Actually, many of them weren’t named “Lee,” but considering there was free beer, wine and hors d’oeuvres, “I guess a lot of people became honorary Lees,” said Linda Simos of Newport Beach, who promotes the Reuben E. Lee showboat in Newport Harbor.

“We invited about 600 people with the last name of Lee to celebrate the boat’s renovation,” said Simos, who temporarily changed her name to Lee. “If people had Lee for a first or middle name, that was OK, too, “ she said. “As a matter of fact, people named “Li” or “Leigh” were invited to the party.”

And Smith, and Jones and Martin and . . .

You’ve no doubt heard of a gaggle of geese, a brood of hens, pod of whales and pride of lions, but have you heard of skulk of foxes, mob of cattle, cloud of goats, a leap of leopards or a drift of swine?

Searching though the reams of literature he receives, Curt Abdouch, naturalist at UC Irvine, came up with these little-used descriptive collectives for animals, plants and some humans.

For instance, there’s a host of daffodils, a congregation of flowers, a stripe of zebras, chattering of choughs, a peck of perch, a knot of toads, a waddling of ducks and a tittering of magpies.

And, of course, there’s a blast of hunters.

Acknowledgments--Phyliss A. Coleman, 43, of Yorba Linda, mother of four who once helped her parents sharecrop a small plot of Wisconsin land, selected from 39 candidates as Orange County Diocese Woman of the Year by the Catholic Charities Auxiliary.