Here's a nifty, sad thing.

A fellow named Curtis Eller, who calls himself a banjo-playing punk yodeller, or something like that, released a song a few years back about the Hartford Circus Fire. I’m late to the party, but that’s because I only just got my invite. Curtis the Man hisself sent an e-mail to those of us in a Facebook group dedicated to the circus fire.

An angry yodelling banjo player

On Curtis’s website, some unidentified scribbler writes in first person that Eller’s band American Circus “plays more waltzes than any band I know, though no one ever feels like dancing.” That’s probably because the songs are all grim and sad, having to do with John Wilkes Booth and Richard Nixon and the Triangle Shirt Factory fire and a burning circus tent.

I love sad walzes.

My favorite part of Curtis’s circus-fire song is the line about how “the ashes still stick to our shoes.” That’s some good gritty realism.

And except for the nightmares and the coughing 

It’s like the circus never passed through

Enjoy your own sad turn…