On Friday, a week after the Bastille Day Lightning Strike — certain things in one’s life just need their own names, such as that or the long-ago Mirabella Incident, when I was the focus of an Italian town’s attention for a few minutes — I opened the deck umbrella to shield myself from the noonday sun, which is pretty much the only thing the umbrella is good for.

I have a conversation piece for anyone who visits my deck in the summer.

Early in July, we passed through Delevan, Wisconsin, pop. 8,500.

“During the second half of the 1800s, as many as two dozen circuses flocked to the Walworth County town of Delavan to winter their horses, elephants and other big tent critters,” said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a 2011 article.

“The famed P.T. Barnum Circus was organized in Delavan in 1871… The Mabie brothers, who ran the U.S. Olympic Circus — during its time the largest traveling show in the country — quartered their animals during the off-season at the site of the Lake Lawn Resort on Delavan Lake because of its abundant pastures and water.

“Alas, the last circus closed its winter digs in 1894, and within 25 years, the huge ring barns and other landmarks were gone.”

So Baraboo isn’t Wisconsin’s only circus town, though it is the one with the Circus World circus museum. Baraboo claims the Ringling Bros. circus. Delevan, which is in southeastern Wisconsin only a few miles northwest of Lake Geneva, claims P.T. Barnum’s circus, as this Walldogs mural attests.

Barnum’s circus – mainly, he lent his name and financial backing – later merged with Bailey’s circus, and that entity was eventually bought by Ringling Bros. So I suppose Baraboo prevailed in that sense, though the combined circus skedaddled to Florida in the early 20th century anyway.

We stopped for a look around and possibly lunch, which we ended up eating in Elkhorn, a few miles away. Delevan has a pleasant main street, Walworth Ave., marked by century-old (at least) buildings.

Note the street bricks. They are apparently distinctive enough to be on the National Register of Historic Places as Delavan’s Vitrified Brick Street. So we trod on historic ground, very literally.

The mural isn’t the only reminder of the town’s circus past.

Those figures are in the aptly named Tower Park. A water tower emblazoned with the town name dwarfs them.

Unlike many water towers, you can stand right under the one in Delevan.

Maybe I should take more pictures of water towers, though of course I’ve taken a few other images over the years.