Calvin & Ruby Black, Possum Trot, Yermo, CA
The Site
Southerners Calvin and Ruby Black moved to the Yermo, California, site that became known as Possum Trot and Fantasy Doll Show in the 1950s. Possum Trot included, but was not limited to, windmills, stagecoaches, trains, small-scale carousels, and approximately eighty large-scale dolls that mostly were located in a space called the Birdcage Theater. Black carved the figures, which stand between three and four feet tall, from telephone poles; Ruby made their costumes from scavenged clothing. Calvin wrote songs, dialogue, and music for their Fantasy Doll Show, which featured select dolls with an audio element amplifying prerecorded voices from battery-powered tape players.
After both of their deaths, the site was dismantled, broken up, and sold to private collectors. Kohler Foundation, Inc., acquired a selection of dolls, signs, and ephemera from the site, gifting five objects to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center collection in 2010. In 2017 Kohler Foundation and SPACES (Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments) Archives gifted the Arts Center an additional doll and sign.
Calvin and Ruby Black
Calvin Black (1903–1972) and Ruby Black (1915–1980)
Calvin Black was born in Tennessee, and his wife Ruby was from Georgia. The couple met in 1933, while Calvin was traveling with the circus and carnivals, and they married shortly thereafter. In 1953, Calvin purchased land in Yermo, California, sight unseen from a magazine advertisement. For the next twenty years, the Blacks built their home and the roadside attraction they named Possum Trot and Fantasy Doll Show.
Calvin Black died in 1972, and despite his wishes for Ruby to burn the dolls, she maintained the site until her death in 1980.
