My Day. Sunday May 29. 2022. Old stories remembered.

 did I finally get the date right on this?

maybe i should date this june 10th 1956. who's going to notice or comment?

the quest for, the yearning for, the lust for immortality. is that what drives me to write this piffle? possibly. a bad motivation, then, and all just to develop carpal tunnel syndrome (i always want to say 'carpal tunnel vision.')

i've just subscribed to 4 different food catalogues, and will have them all sent to our new summer home in wendell, idaho.  i'm thinking of having my mailing address changed to up there as well. but maybe not.

'our new summer home.' has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?  it's amy's sister's farm. just five acres. but there's a big cold bedroom in the basement where we can sleep and possibly hang garlands of garlic and onions to cure.

i hope to investigate the raw inhabitants of wendell idaho, with photographs, and include the results of my anthropology investigations in these letters to oblivion.

which reminds me -- a postcard can't be hacked. so there.

amy is in the kitchen this afternoon making peanut butter cookies. we are going over to her cousin camille's house later today. i made a huge pot of unctuous chili con carne to bring along so they don't feel obligated to serve us sunday dinner. we are bringing them all the extra cans blocks bags boxes and tubes of food we have been given over the past few weeks. how many cans of greenbeans do people think we can handle? people leave stuff like that at our door like babies in baskets at the orphanage steps. they don't want it, so they palm it off on us.

so there's two stories i've been thinking about today. i often let my mind wander during sacrament meeting. my default mode is personal stories. i'm sure my hearing is going bad, since most speakers in church nowadays seem to mumble and rush through their comments as if someone is holding a gun to their head and timing them. they used to have classes on how to give talks in sacrament meeting, which i enjoyed taking. but i haven't seen anything like that offered in a month of sundays. have you? amy wears a special headset in church now so she can hear the speakers. but sometimes it's hooked into the spanish translator instead. then she just falls asleep during the meeting.

oh yeah, the stories. here goes:

when i came back from my mission to go back to work as a clown at ringling brothers the PR department was ecstatic. because back in the 1970's there was this big trend in mainstream christian churches to have clown ministers preach sermons on sunday. i don't know where that fad came from, but the marketers at ringling wanted to use me, a bone fide true blue dyed in the wool former proselytizing missionary as a clown minister to big churches in all the major cities we played. just think of it -- i could get up and say whatever i wanted. but i felt that such a thing was a desecration of the gospel, so i refused to do it. what a fool i was! i could have testified of joseph smith and the book or mormon and played my musical saw and told hundreds of people to their faces that there was a living prophet on the earth today. but i had to say no because of misplaced pride and arrogance. idiot!  luckily, peggy williams, another convert who was baptized by good old tim holst just like i was, and was a first of may clown, consented to give those sermons and homilies. 

my second story happened on my mission in thailand, where i did clown shows to raise money for the red cross. the mission president thought the PR would be good for the church, which was going through a bunch of libelous accusations in the thai press at the time. now the red cross was created by people in switzerland and so the swiss embassy in bangkok decided to thank me (and my companion) for doing these shows by having us over for dinner with the ambassador's wife. the dessert was candied orange peels, which she had made herself. i told her they were delicious and asked for the recipe. why? i don't know. maybe because i was nervous. anyway she gave me the recipe and said "I doubt you'll ever make them, young man." i promised her that i would and that i would bring some of them over to her.  it's an involved process to make candied orange peel, and there was no time to do it during regular proselytizing hours, so i got up at 4 in the morning for several days in a row to work in our kitchen making 'em. when i was done we took some over to the swiss embassy and left 'em for the ambassador's wife. i never heard back from her, so don't know if she ever got them or not.

and that's sunday at the torkildsons. after we get back from amy's cousin's house we'll settle into our recliners and watch reruns of Monk or something else that amy ordains as sunday suitable. by the way we bought all 9 seasons of monk on dvd at DI for 3 dollars a piece. put that in your coffee mill and grind it!

until the clouds roll by,

heinie manush

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In response to the above one of my old missionary companions emailed me back thus:

I recall an invitation for dinner at the Swiss Embassy in Bangkok.  We were served beef stroganoff and the bathrooms were gilded mansions. I was just a poor boy from Virginia and my maternal grandparents were real McCoy hillbillies from the mountains of North Carolina. One year during the Great Depression, they moved back to Carolina and rented a farm for $50 (for the year) and subsistence farmed.  Did what was needed to keep their family alive. Blink and your life changes. I didn’t know where Thailand was when I was called to serve there. Next thing I know I’m paired up with a professional clown and performing on television in Phuket or at some provincial fair in Mahadsarakham. Life is interesting and strange.

And another old missionary companion had this to say about my post, in an email:

You should have told me in no uncertain terms when we were companions in Thailand that we were going to spend days just cooking rather than going out.  I would have learned something rather than wasted my time.

My memories of Bangkhen are few.  One was an encounter with some snakes in the underground water storage tank that for some stupid reason I decide to try to clean up.  I have NO idea why I felt I wanted to do that.  I see such nonsense ideas in my son Tom, quite often.

Another memory is when our house was burgled.  I lost something.  I think it was an inexpensive camera.  Elder Kelly was a missionary in that house.  He used to pray for long periods of time, at lunch break time.  Sister xxxxxx don't remember her name now, was our maid.  Good looking woman.  Pilailak?  She made pancakes.  Elder Nebeker slipped her extra money, I'm sure.  Elder Nebeker and Elder Wall (?) had a gun put in their faces just down the block at that corner restaurant or whatever, for some dumb reason.  And Elder Wright (visiting zone leader?) told me not to say "Before I start gossiping", when I was trying to say "Before I say too much..." when I was the silly Sunday School president or whatever I was, and had to run the meeting.

I was in Deseret Towers at BYU just two rooms down when Elder Wright got his mission call to Thailand.  He was underwhelmed.  He told me later he had hoped he'd go to Europe where there was culture, since he was an aspiring opera or conductor person.  When I saw his mission calling paper I thought "Wow, what a lucky guy.  Thailand!"  6 months later I got my mission call.

Elder Nebeker let Elder Ward give the baptismal challenge to some young woman when they taught her in our house.  I think he baptised her too.  

My son Tom asked me how my life would have been different had I not barely missed the Vietnam draft and been forced to go to combat.

I think there's some possibility that I would not have met Liping.  My Thai language capability, and exposure to Asia encouraged and aided me in finding Liping.  But had I been a soldier first, I may have just gone AWOL with some Vietnamese woman.  Good chance I would not have gone to BYU, and definitely would not have married Tom's mother.