Without mothers, how could you have clowns? That’s assuming, of course, that clowns are human -- and not cloned. Some of the clowns I knew at Ringling may very well have been products from a defective test tube.
Swede Johnson told me that after he was shanghaied at the tender age of 14, he never saw his mother again until he was 34. He had enough money to go back to Copenhagen and look her up. She thought he was dead, and fainted when he walked into the modest apartment where she took in laundry to wash by hand to make ends meet. He had saved up some money to give to her. She wouldn’t take it, so Swede bought a washing machine and had it lugged up four flights of stairs to her apartment to make her wash days easier.
Prince Paul told me all he remembered of his mother in Germany was the time she used all their hyper-inflated paper money, a basket of it, during the Weimar Republic, to make a bed for his nap. He slept on thousands of worthless marks.
Chico said his mother helped his father run a grocery store in Brooklyn, and grew to hate the sight of broccoli and spinach -- so he never had to eat those evil vegetables as a child.
The Little Guy described how his mother made a special dish every Sunday. Potato Chip Casserole. It was horrible. It glued his teeth together.
Holst’s mother and father came to visit the show in Champaign, Illinois. She darned all his socks during their 3 day visit, and then offered to mend anyone else’s socks. I was the only one to take her up on the offer.
My mother didn’t even drive – she depended on my father to take her places that she couldn’t reach by bus or by walking. She did not attend to the affairs of state, and didn’t like the limelight one little bit. She never understood how I craved it so very much.
On summer weekends in my childhood it was the practice of the Torkildson tribe to drive to Lake Johanna, ten miles from home, for a day of picnicking and swimming. It’s no Coney Island, but it was plenty good enough for us. My dad always found a nice, shady tree to set up his folding lounge chair under and snooze away the hours, awaking only long enough to pour a Hamm’s beer down his throat before sinking back as if he’d been shot. My mother worshipped the sun; she slathered on the coconut oil and broiled happily on a blanket on the beach. We kids, of course, turned into naiads and manatees, splashing and floating in our native element, refusing to come out even for lunch.
There was a whitewashed wooden pylon set up for the lifeguard on the public beach at Lake Johanna. He, or she, wielded a large tin whistle, frequently tootling on it to gain the attention of some freshwater malefactor who was swimming outside the roped off area or otherwise acting the maritime scofflaw. The year I turned eight Ramsey County decided not to stock the pylon with lifeguards anymore, no doubt as an economy measure, and neglected to inform patrons of the public beach, outside of a teeny weeny sign, the size of a flyer, that was tacked briefly onto the whitewashed wooden pylon, and fluttered away in the breeze soon after being posted.
That was the year I decided I could swim out to the wooden platform anchored in about twenty feet of water – and nearly drowned in the attempt. Luckily, there were some adult swimmers nearby; they hauled me back on shore, vomiting water like a disgruntled geyser, and turned me over to my mother – who was incensed to suddenly learn there was no longer any lifeguard on duty. Ever.
Her fury at this perceived dereliction of the Ramsey County Park Board’s duty was grim and determined. After making sure I was reasonably responsive, she clouted me on the ear for being such a dumming and strode over to the concessions shack, where sandy hotdogs and lukewarm soda pop were vended by bored teenagers. She found the most likely-looking boy in the group, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and frog-marched the astonished youth over to the white pylon, where she instructed him in the kind of motherly tones that no one who values their life ever ignores to climb up and keep an eye on things until she relieved him of his duty. The teenaged boy, seeing the dangerous sparkle in her eye, meekly obeyed – and once again Lake Johanna had a lifeguard, albeit a shanghaied one. He stayed up there until it started to get dark and we packed up to go home. Then he quietly slipped off the pylon and skedaddled for all he was worth. I’d like to know what he told HIS mother when he got home that night.
Word must have gotten back to the Park Board, for the next weekend there was an older man glumly perched on the white pylon, gazing about him with bitter resignation. I can’t say for sure, but I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that he was a member of the Park Board itself.
From the New York Times: . . . China’s gender gap remains huge. There were 33.59 million more men than women in China in 2016, according to figures from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics that were issued last month . . .
In China the males dominate
Ev’ry aspect of the state.
On Valentine’s Day
They get in the way
Of each other just for a blind date.
No comments:
Post a Comment