A Clown at Brown. 1

After my epic battle with Michu the World’s Smallest Man on the Ringling Blue Unit I was blacklisted for several years. Or, more precisely, I decided to voluntarily withdraw from the big top milieu for a few seasons when I saw how the wind was blowing vis-a-vis my continuing employment. Management was cold and distant towards me. And Tim Holst, my galant pal, now Assistant Performance Director, laid it on the line for me one night.

“Tork” he said, “you better look for some other line of work. I’ve been plugging you with Baumann and Mr. Feld these past few weeks, but they won’t budge. They think you’re mental, and I think my own job could be in the donniker if I keep sticking up for you all the time.”

I quickly told Holst to cease jeopardizing his own career to take care of mine; I could get along without Ringling or circuses in general. I was sick of them. There was a whole ‘nother world out there breathlessly awaiting my stellar talents. I’d make out just fine. When the season ended and I was not offered another season’s contract I went back home to Minneapolis to mull over my options.

At one time as a child I had thought of becoming a concert violinist after watching Jack Benny on TV. That owly old guy seemed to do okay on the fiddle. And I was now an adept on the musical saw, as well as the Irish tin whistle. But I lacked the gumption to practice. Rote of any kind was DDT to my soul. That let out just about anything that required a university degree.

So I sat in my wooden rocker to think some more. Rocking is the only way I can generate any sustained thought. I began rocking as soon as I could sit up. My mother took me to the doctor when she couldn’t stop my constant swaying to find out if this was incipient cretinism. She was always afraid she was birthing cretins after the she saw how my father was turning out. The pediatrician assured her it was only a phase and would soon pass. But it never did. I am rocking in my beat up old Deseret Industries thirty-dollar recliner as I write these sentences on my Chromebook.

In fact, when I have to stand still I tend to sway back and forth like an elephant. This used to drive choir directors at church crazy. The director would majestically indicate we should all rise to begin warbling “If You Could Hie to Kolob,’ and I would immediately spoil the spirit of the whole thing by bumping shoulders with my fellow basses. My singing neighbors learned to give me a wide berth if they didn’t want to go home to Sunday dinner with contusions.

The Vietnam War was just over and the National Guard had more money than they knew what to do with to recruit new cannon fodder. I was offered a two-thousand dollar sign up bonus, training in any field I wanted, and completely free medical and dental care for life. But I was healthy as a horse and didn’t look good in khaki -- it highlighted my lichen-colored eyes.  

During my years with the show I’d done literally hundreds of radio interviews, and it seemed to me that it didn’t take much brains or talent to spout platitudes over the airwaves. I could do that kind of stuff with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. Compared to the backbreaking physical work of the circus, it looked like a nice cushy sinecure with regular hours and the lure of possible fame as another Wolfman Jack. So I applied to Brown Institute of Broadcasting, down on Lake Street, for the training necessary to backtime a record and get my Third Class FCC Engineer’s License. In those antique days you couldn’t work on the air without a federal license in your back pocket.

Brown Institute was housed in a former carpet store. It was one of the more successful vocational schools that the Twin Cities was famous for. It was started in 1946 by the Browns, a married couple who owned some small market AM stations in western Minnesota. Concerned over the lack of trained announcers, they began classes in voice, music appreciation, how to avoid getting arrested for Payola, how to gather local news, and how to run the board and record commercials. By 1955 their school was churning out dozens of DJ’s, sportscasters, and newscasters each year for a market that was expanding like crazy with the advent of FM radio.

The real money was in sales, and my Brown advisor, Mike Kronforst, strongly suggested I take the additional one week course in how to sell radio advertising. But I pooh-poohed his advice. I had my sights set on doing the news, since my voice held a pleasing baritone timbre that impressed me no end. There was no reason I couldn’t soon be mesmerizing the nation with my urgent bulletins and incisive editorials like Walter Cronkite.

Classes ran from 9am to 2pm each weekday. Since everything in radio is timed down to the nanosecond, punctuality was of particular importance, and the school offered a ten percent tuition refund to any student who finished the nine month course without a single tardy mark. Since I walked to  school from home, I figured I was a shoo-in -- but missed it by seven minutes one lazy spring day when I dallied on East River Road to lob rocks at the Mississippi carp schooling near a gushing drain pipe. Some Minnesota mornings are made for sheer lollygagging and nothing else.

Mike Kronforst was also one of the key instructors at Brown. He took me in hand to discourage my tendency to turn the most mundane PSA into a dramatic reading more appropriate for a circus midway pitch.

“Flash! This just in: The First Lutheran Church will hold a potluck supper AND bingo this coming Thursday night! Tickets for this monumental event are knocked down to an incredible FOUR DOLLARS PER PERSON!! You can’t afford to miss this stellar occasion -- the most important social gathering since Cleopatra held salacious court in ancient Egypt!!! All proceeds go to the Altar Cloth Fund. Hurry! Hurry! HURRY!!!!!!!”

“Now Torkildson,” Mike would remonstrate with me patiently “stop trying to sound like a carnival barker. You’ll wear out your voice and wind up croaking the weather like someone inside a hollow log. Don’t improvise like that. Let’s try it again, and this time keep your voice level and lose about a dozen decibels, okay?”  

He eventually got me to deliver news, weather, and sports in a more reasonable facsimile of a silken voiced professional radio announcer. But not before I had exasperated him with a variety of buzzers, whistles, and other raucous sound effects I dug out of my clown trunk to punctuate the pork belly futures out of Chicago.

I graduated in the spring of 1980 and immediately went down to WCCO Radio in downtown Minneapolis with my audition tape, ready to pinch hit for Steve Cannon or Howard Viken -- two of the top Twin Cities radio personalities. In years past I'd appeared as a Ringling clown spokesperson on WCCO's Boone and Erickson Show several times, trading banter with the two insouciant radio clowns. The receptionist thanked me for my visit, assuring me that a station vice president would personally study my resume before making me an offer. I haughtily told her to make it snappy, because my next stop was KSTP over in Saint Paul, and it would be strictly first come first served.

A few weeks later Kronforst tried to let me down gently. I hadn’t heard back from anyone.

“You can’t start in a big market without any broadcast background, Tim. Start out small market, get some experience under your belt and then try again. There’s an opening out in North Dakota for a news director -- let me call them and see if I can get you in.”

He was as good as his word, and in a few days I was on the Amtrak to Williston, North Dakota, where I began my broadcasting career at KGCX Radio -- 93.1 on your FM dial.

(to be continued)