Wandering Showman, I

This is the autobiography of the circus performer and puppeteer David Lano, with many first-hand accounts from American show life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lano recounts his seventy-eight years as a professional puppet master. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather before him, David Lano was a traditionally trained puppet master who built all his own marionettes and took the shows he performed with his little people on the road. A beautiful look at the life of a traveling showman and at a dying art form.

David Lano [1874 - 1957] was a born storyteller. And few men have had the varies, sometimes hectic, experiences packed into the nomadic life of this wandering wagon showman. His may be the story of the last of the oldtime professional puppeteers. He lived out his life in Flint, Michigan, where his headstone reads; "Puppeteer" "It's a poor heart that never rejoices in Punch.