Throughout the spring, summer and fall the circus travels around the country putting up their enormous tent and providing entertainment for women, men and children of all ages. But when the snowy weather comes up north it's just too cold and treacherous to travel, and many of the animals simply can't take the chilling temperatures. That's when they travel to Florida for a well-deserved rest.

The problem is finding housing for all of the workers and their families which would be otherwise vacant three quarters of the year. P.T. Barnum had a great idea. He built a tall building of apartments which he rented out during the summer months to vacationers coming down for a little sun and fun, then in the winter months his performers and workers would have a place to stay. He fully furnished each room as well since the circus workers couldn't take all that with them on the road.

It worked out great for everyone, or almost everyone. The apartments were custom-made for the type of act it was. The fat lady had an extra-wide doorway, for instance, and the strong man's bureau drawers had springs on the back to make him work out when he was getting his socks in the morning. The trapeze artists and tumblers all had extra high ceilings, and so on. But when the clowns were shown their rooms they too noticed the fridge and the radio, along with the comfortable bed and matching side table. They were quite happy until they found that their rooms were missing the fold-down ironing boards the other rooms had.

As a group they confronted Mr. Barnum asking how they were going to press their clothes. Just because they were clowns didn't mean they didn't want to look nice. But Mr. Barnum had already planned for this. "Look, fellas," he said, going into one of their rooms, "there just wasn't space to to put the folding board in since your closets had to be deeper than everyone else's so your shoes would fit. But I had the builder make something special for you."

He led them into one of the clown's rooms and from beside the fridge he pulled a tapered board with some sort of metal attachment on one end. He went to the window and opened it, and using the attachments he clamped the board to the ledge of the window so it rested horizontally. He had one of the troop bring a shirt from the closet along with the iron and proceeded to show them how they could press anything. The board hardly moved, and when he was done he unclamped it and put it back in its storage location. The clowns were satisfied that they hadn't been overlooked, and when they went back to their rooms it turned out that every clown had a sill for ironing.