Chuck Thomas recalls growing up in Cedaredge, where he hunted rabbits from horseback as a kid, and where he learned his future trade as a tightrope walker by walking on top of barbed wire fences on his way to and from Cedaredge High School. He also talks about his high wire act for the Happy Day Rides carnival, doing Houdini’s straight jacket stunt on a Ferris Wheel, being a vaudeville actor and musician in traveling tent shows, and hypnotizing a woman who slept for three days in a store window. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.