As I walked the sidewalks of Washington Avenue one sunny Saturday afternoon, the faint sounds of carnival-like music caught my ear. I followed the lively tunes until I turned a corner and discovered a very peculiar sight—a small hitch trailer with a puppet show stage cut into it. I stared and wondered how mechanical puppets could be so well-timed to the beats and yet seemed to know when to wave to passers-by. As I kept watching, I realized these weren't mechanical puppets. When a mother lifter her small child up to be at eye-level with the show, the child reached out to touch the puppet and the puppet waved back, then continued dancing.
Several different puppets came up into the staging area and then disappeared out the bottom or the sides. Sometimes one puppet did a solo dance and other times two puppets danced in doubles or even as a couple. The music varied in style, but it was always very fast paced and lively. Above the inside of the puppet stage I also noticed a small spinning light thingy that was adding to the dance atmosphere.
I observed all of this from a nearby bench on the sidewalk until the mother and her children left and no more passers-by looked like they were going to stop and watch. When the song ended, a “Break Time” sign fell into the stage window, and I heard a door open from the backside of the trailer. I stood up and walked around the trailer to discover a tall, thin, ragged man taking a smoke break. I never dreamt that a person would be crammed in that small trailer underneath the puppets, much less a person who was about 6 foot tall.
The gentlemen who was the puppet master struck up a conversation with me and was very accommodating to tell me all about his show. He said he was in Russia and encountered this same type of puppet show on the streets in a city there. He was so amused by it that he talked at length with the puppet master in Russia about how he built his trailer and staged the show. When he returned to the United States, he never forgot about this pupper show, so when he retired from work he set about constructing his own trailer and making this street puppet show in Golden his hobby. He received special permission from the City of Golden to keep his trailer parked on the sidewalk and chained to a tree because he entertains people of all ages for free. He does the shows as often as he can, and much more frequently during nicer weather, but in the winter he does the show for a few hours during the day on almost every weekend.
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