Tim Holst Holds FHE

I rejoined the Ringling Blue Unit clown alley on Wednesday, March 30, 1977, after my two year LDS mission to Thailand was completed. Brimming over with a curious blend of nostalgia and deja vu, I immediately got back to the serious business of being funny.

Things had changed in my absence, of course; there were new First of Mays, Swede Johnson was gone, my old partner Steve Smith was out ahead of the show doing the advance work by himself, and Tim Holst was now the assistant Performance Director. The first thing he did when he saw me there in Cincinnati was invite me over to his stateroom on the train for a traditional Family Home Evening.

In 1915 LDS President Joseph F. Smith set aside Monday nights in the Church for members to gather as households or groups of single individuals for "prayer ... hymns ... family topics ... and specific instruction on the principles of the gospel." This is what is known as Family Home Evening. Over the years tradition has added a festive round of snacks and goodies to the mix, making it both full of piety and cholesterol. I felt grateful to Holst for including me in his own family’s FHE. Especially since I did not immediately fit in with the climate of clown alley -- the amount of carousing and dedicated blasphemy seemed, to my evangelical eyes and ears, to have escalated enormously since last I had worn the cap and bells for Ringling. I did not score any points on sociability when I was invited out by some of the new clowns for a night on the town, ending with a bit of something in the red light district, by stiffly refusing their invitation. At least I had the good sense not to try preaching to them; sinners have as much right as anyone to be left alone until they find their own epiphanies.

And so when the next Monday rolled around I went over to Holst’s stateroom after the last show, bringing along my LDS hymnal and my Book of Mormon. Holst’s wife Linda, who worked as a showgirl, had made up a special beanbag chair for me -- since their furnishings were limited by the size of the train room, they had little real furniture. Their stateroom was not much larger than a modest walk in closet. Still three times as large as my roomette, but Lilliputian nonetheless. We began with a standard hymn, Come, Come, Ye Saints; I was asked to give the opening prayer; and then Holst asked me to give a ten minute description of my proselyting efforts in Thailand for the lesson. Never one to hide my light under a bushel, I described the frustration of trying to introduce the concept of a final resurrection to a people steeped for centuries in the Buddhist belief of reincarnation and eventual oblivion. I also tried to describe how much I had come to love Thailand and the Thai people -- never once did I have a door slammed in my face when I and my companion went door to door to introduce the LDS church to anyone willing to listen. Although I was attacked several times by geese -- the Thais use them in lieu of guard dogs. The fact of the matter is they were ALL willing to listen -- they thought the Joseph Smith story a fine ghost tale. And in every home we were offered a meal -- not just a drink of water, but a full blown repast. The Thais believe in keeping a pot of rice and a kettle of fiery curry warming on the stove for every visitor, with an overflowing bowl of papaya, custard apples, mangoes, and rambutans for desert. My description of their luscious food led naturally to the end of my narration and the beginning of our snackfest. Linda outdid herself with a pan of BYU brownies -- an LDS specialty consisting of thick rich chocolate brownie cake overlayed with a light mint icing and topped with thick whip cream. She also produced a gallon of ice cold milk to wash it down with. After two years of chalky Thai soy beverages and cloying pineapple Fanta, I guzzled it with unrestrained glee. We closed with a prayer and Holst walked me back to my roomette on the old ‘Iron Lung.’ He said it was good to have me back and invited me to visit them every Monday for the rest of the season. You betcha, I replied gratefully.

Holst was only trying to be friendly, and he always invited a few others he thought might enjoy an FHE evening in his stateroom to show he wasn’t playing favorites, but his generous offer turned out to be something of a problem for me in clown alley later on.

As I settled back into the routine of clown alley I learned to let the frailties and foibles of my fellow joeys roll off my back. And I quickly relearned that old lesson on human nature: most of it was pure unadulterated brag. On a clown’s modest salary they really couldn’t support much in the way of spectacular vices. A few stiff drinks and an X-rated movie was about all it ever amounted to. I made an especially close connection with Terry Parsons, a true comic hellion. He and I hatched some clown gags together that raised Charlie Baumann’s hackles, and blood pressure, in a most gratifying manner. And Parsons, known to one and all in clown alley as Spikawopsky, was a dyed in the wool atheist who left no stone unturned attempting to show up my religious credulity and hypocrisy. I enjoyed our theological wrangles almost as much as the stunts we pulled out in the arena. I was in the habit of picking up any loose change I found in the alley -- finders keepers, losers weepers was my motto when it came to a stray quarter.

“Yer going straight to hell for that one, Tork!” he’d yell gleefully at me. “That quarter probably belonged to a poor orphan girl who won’t be able to pay for her education now; she’ll wind up a streetwalker instead. All because of you!”  

During intermission it was our fiendish delight to hawk “Used Balloons.” We’d rig up some deflated specimens we found on the floor to a few dowels and offer them to the audience for a dollar. A surprising number of audience members wanted to buy them, but I, of course, simply grinned and walked on. Spikawopsky, on the other hand . . . well, let’s just say he always came away from that gag richer in laughter, and a few dollars. The candy butchers complained vociferously to Baumann about this trespass into their mercantile territory, so he’d yell at us to stop the verdammt monkey tricks. We’d bow our heads contritely before his terrible wrath, wait a few weeks, and then start up again.

But as the weeks flew by I noticed a distinct frost in the atmosphere. And I noticed I now had a new nickname in clown alley. Brownie the Clown. As in brown nose. My weekly visits to Tim Holst’s stateroom were being viewed by members of the alley as debriefing sessions where I would report on all the scofflaws in the alley so Holst could crack down on the miscreants. He did seem to have eyes in the back of his head when it came to sniffing out egregious misdemeanors in clown alley -- but that was only because he had been a clown himself, and knew all the dodges, not because I was a stool pigeon. He never asked me what went on in clown alley, and I never told him. It all came to a head that summer, when the Bulgarian baggage smashers began leaving my trunk outside of the alley on set up day. Thinking it a simple oversight, I moved my trunk back in -- only to discover it back outside the next day, with a note on it to the effect that snitches were not welcomed in the alley.

I asked Spikawopsky about this, and, as ever, he was brutally honest.

“Most of the alley thinks you’re a %#@** informer, Tork” he told me. “And sometimes I have my doubts about you myself. You’re an ass kisser, aren’t you?” I told him how it stood between me and Holst: he was a cherished friend who had introduced me to the LDS Church, and that we met on Mondays for religious and social purposes only. He could come and see for himself if he wanted -- I respected the privacy of my coworkers and wouldn’t think of ever ratting them out.

“Well, to keep things quiet you better let things alone for now. I’ll talk to some of the guys. But if you report this to Holst everyone will know you’re a spy.”

He was right. I’d have to solve this problem myself. The next day I brought in a pair of cheap toy binoculars, and instead of painting my nose red I painted it brown. I used the binocs in every clown gag, avidly watching the other clowns and taking copious notes, and even brought it out for the production numbers, where I ogled the showgirls appreciatively. The change in my makeup was soon noted, and appreciated with high good humor, and the crisis passed. My trunk was restored to its rightful place in clown alley. A few of the First of Mays actually took Holst up on his offer and came to FHE once or twice. But it didn’t really ‘take’ with them -- they saw nothing in it for themselves. Not even a chance to do a little brownnosing of their own.