how a ham dinner became torture for noah and katrina

 wednesday.  dec. 27.  2022.

The old year is ready to totter offstage, and i, for one, say ‘about time.’

I expect the new year will bring more love more money more laughs and less stress sadness empty calories and chicken feet.

Amy has just chopped me up a bowl of romaine lettuce so i can make myself a caesar salad later today. I’m obsessing about caesar salads this week. The romaine the croutons the parmesan and especially the dressing all combine to give my mouth and tummy something it has lacked for many a long year. So i’m hoping to eat a caesar salad every day in 2023. 

But why would you be interested in any of the above? Truly, i must try your patience (as Groucho said: “Thanks, you must try mine some time!”) with all this aimless tittle tattle about food food food.

So i’ll change the subject – to more food.

Last sunday, xmas day, amy and I fed over 30 people in our building and in the neighborhood by going door to door with a cart and knocking on doors. 

It all started with a ham. A single solitary ham that son adam bought for us to serve shut-ins. He and his family would come over to help us do this on xmas day. (by the way, did you know Joseph Fielding Smith was dead set against using ‘Xmas’ for ‘Christmas?’ He thought it was extremely disrespectful.) 

Where was i? Oh yes, so amy and i started talking over what to offer with the ham. And we went a little nuts. We made 4 quarts of spiced applesauce. Two pans of pecan bars. Peaches & cream jello. Green bean casserole. Corn pudding. Green Bean marinated salad. Then i didn’t think we had enough ham to serve everyone, so i made 2 meatloaves. And a big bowl of chicken pasta salad for those who don’t eat ham. And then rochelle benny’s wife gave us another ham. Amy wanted to print up tracts to tape on all the valley villa doors about the free dinner. So we made up 150 of ‘em. We put ‘em under windshield wipers as well as on all the doors and in the elevators and in the laundry rooms. 

And we invited a single mother and her two boys over for xmas dinner. They didn’t go around with the cart. Amy and adam’s family did that. I stayed with nicole and her boys and we visited amiably while amy did all the hard work. Did you know that when you knock on an old person’s door it takes an average of just over one minute for them to answer? And that it takes another 30 seconds for them to comprehend that you are bringing them a free meal. And about another minute for them to rummage through their kitchen to find a clean plate or bowl for the food? Adam’s kids noah and katrina were dying of boredom by the time they got to the second floor. And then old people don’t like being given a lot of options. Do you want the ham or chicken salad? Or the meatloaf? Do you want corn pudding or greenbean casserole? Do you want some jello? 

It took them 2 and a half hours to serve everyone in the building. Everyone was exhausted afterwards. Adam’s kids now think of coming over to see grandma and grandpa torkildson as xmas punishment & torture, not as a jolly holiday tradition.

So i talked things over with adam. He insists his kids have to do this feed the shut ins thing every xmas. They can’t get out of it – not as long as they live at home.  Adam and i decided that next xmas we’ll do lasagna. It’s easy to make ahead of time and everyone likes it. We’ll have a salad. Rolls, and jello. And that’s it. People can take it or leave it. Plus we’ll dish up the lasagna on paper plates ahead of time. And knock on several doors at a time. So when the old people answer they are handed a plate and told ‘merry xmas’ and that’s all she wrote. All three floors of our building should be served in less than an hour. Hopefully this will engender a cheerful xmas spirit without giving anyone a conniption fit. 

Other than that, there is little to report here at Casa Torkildson. 

It’s been snowing off and on all day today. We went to the rec center early this morning, around 630 a.m. amy walks a mile around the track then lifts weights and does some more miles on the machines. I do ten minutes on a strider, then walk 2 times around the track, then 10 more minutes on the machine, then around the track twice again, and then get on what i call the knife grinder, some kind of arm exerciser, for ten minutes, and then walk 2 more times around the track, and then we came home, had breakfast, and  were fast asleep in our recliners by 9 a.m. we’ll be going to the Temple tomorrow, thank goodness, to mix things up a little.

And a big thanx to virginia & andy for their care package. Pasta and spices and salsa. And to madelaine for the gumball machine. And for bath soaps and creams and solvents and turpentine and gum arabic from son adam’s family. And we still have three chocolate oranges left over – i forget which grandkids are supposed to get them. Sarah, is it your kids? Huh, if they don’t come over soon, i’ll eat ‘em meself. 

May all your days be circus days,   heinie manush. 

Poem to Amy

 When it's time to kiss goodnight

I wish I could be dynamite.

To sweep you up in my strong arms

and give you loving warm alarms.

But, alas, the time is past

when my stamina was vast.

Please accept instead the prize

of all the love that's in my eyes.

Sonnet for Amy. #2

 This is all I have to offer;

a few lines cribbed from richer times.

But when in the presence of your glowing face,

the whole of antiquity will be plundered.

 

 

How can there be an audit of your virtues?

 

As well survey the stars with a glance. 

Moving through my mind's eye,

your lithe figure sweeps me up.

Sweeps me up into realms 

I thought never to visit again.

Where you and I reign past the troubles

of young love and old pain.

This cold winter night our hands touch.

And that is all I can write about love.

Sonnet for Amy #1

 

I am not handsome, except in your eyes.

Tattered as I am with age and interruptions,

you hold up a kindly mirror in your eyes

to dress me in a youthful livery long ago forfeited.

When asked how you find my ripe charm

in such a disarrayed pattern as I am,

the response is not as important or lovely

as your willingness to reply at all.

Your abundance makes of my famine a phantom.

Your green refreshing waters no mere ornament,

they rush over me like a spring shower

that is warm and exciting.

And when I lie down tonight in weary thought

your cool hand lifts my head and spirits.

 

A Child's Christmas in Minneapolis. Sunday. December 18. 2022.

 

CHILDHOOD CHRISTMAS.

I begin with smoke. Lots of smoke. During the winter holidays our house on 19th avenue southeast in Minneapolis was filled with gregarious relatives and friends. My parents kept open house during much of December. And almost every adult smoked. The only adult I ever remember who didn’t smoke was my grandma Daisy. Everyone else puffed away like a chimney. Even after the surgeon general’s report in 1964.  December in Minnesota is decidedly cold, so windows stayed shut. The pall of cigarette smoke on some days could almost be felt. My mother believed that burning a single bayberry candle on the coffee table in the living room would ‘eat up’ the smoke, clearing the atmosphere. She was wrong. My brother Bill, me, and my sisters Sue Ellen and Linda have always had weak lungs as a result of all that second hand smoke. Every winter when we were kids we came down with croup and bronchitis. Sore throats were the norm; coming home from grade school, just a block away, and rushing to one of the hot air registers to gulp down drafts of hot air to soothe my raw aching throat.

My mother was a dab hand with spritz cookies. And she kept a rack full of toppings just for these beauties. Chocolate sprinkles. Cinnamon drops. Glazed walnuts. Candied citrus peel. Chopped dates. Silver dragees (tiny balls of sugar coated with silver food coloring – i thought they were real metal and warned my gullible younger cousins not to bite into one lest they crack a tooth.) jordan almonds. Nonpareils. Dabs of fig jam. New England jimmies. Toasted coconut. Marshmallow cream.  

And on the coffee table, next to the ineffectual bayberry candle there was always a cut glass dish filled with ribbon hard candy. Very colorful. But a pretty lame sweet. I don’t think anyone ever touched them, and they gathered enough indoor grit by New Years that my mother would have to dust them off before putting them back in their wax paper bag for next Xmas.

As little nippers dad took us to see santa at the bartenders union hall. St nick smelled like a distillery and gave out chintzy colored popcorn balls. One bite and they fell to pieces like pie crust. 

But of course the highlight of the season was the loot. The presents. Swag! 

Right after Thanksgiving the Sear Roebuck Catalogue arrived. Thicker than our phone book, this glossy prospectus fed my hunger for gewgaws and trinkets like a narcotic. I’d stare at it for hours, until my bulging eyeballs threatened to fall out of my head and roll away.

But I never got a single solitary toy out of that catalogue. ‘Too expensive – it costs 2 dollars just for shipping and handling!’ mom would say.

Boy oh boy, I really truly wanted the plastic gumball machine they had in there. Just imagine if you can . . . a real gumball machine with real gumballs in it . . . and every time one of my friends wanted a gumball they had to put a penny in it . . . and I GOT TO KEEP THE PENNIES!  Or else I could just rip open the bag of gumballs, never putting them in the machine, and chew on them until doomsday.  Sweet bliss.  But despite my transparent and frequent hints, i never got one.

Instead there would be a Whammo air-blaster. Shaped like a cross between a cannon and a pistol, you pulled back the lever and pulled the trigger and whammo! A blast of air would blow Christmas cards off the table or even scatter my glass marbles around like shrapnel. The air-blaster didn’t last long. I put the muzzle up against the back of my older brother Billys head and pulled the trigger. I thought there was a real possibility this might kill him, or at least put him in a coma. But alas all it did was tear the rubber diaphragm inside the airblaster, rendering it useless. 

In my stocking there were always Slinkys, Duncan yo-yos, Bonomo’s turkish taffy, Crayola crayons, a pack of old maid cards, and a coloring book from Grandma Daisy. 

Under the tree would be a hula hoop, an etch-a-sketch, and a Tonka truck. I’d get a board game – either operation or mousetrap. One year i remember getting a set of dominoes, which I promptly dropped, one by one, down the heat register.

 

*************************************

 

A response to the above from my daughter Madelaine:

 

Dear dad,

Since you were kind enough to share your Christmas memories I though I would send you some of mine. They are less smoky, and a little more bathed in discomfort. The Christmas I will never forget happened in Midway, UT the year I was 15. The previous year uncle ben had made grand promises to mom that he would fulfil our every Christmas wish. We spent weeks scouring catalogs picking out presents and making long detailed lists of everything from bicycles to underwear. Then the week before Christmas they got into a fight and he retracted the offer, so we were left gifting each other last year’s hand-me-down sweaters. Uncle Wylie came through on Christmas Day and gave us a case of spaghetti and several huge jars of Prego spaghetti sauce, which we ate every day for a month. That was a very gloomy year, but the next year we were picked for the ward “angel tree” and notified that our presents would be dropped of on Christmas Eve! Looking back on that night, I am still filled with awe at the generosity of those ward members. Granted, they were all living on pretty ritzy estates and probably had buckets full of cash lying around, but they unloaded no less than 23 construction sized trash bags of wrapped gifts, 3 whole bags for each of us. Almost 25 years later I still remember the smell of the bath & body works bath sets. We had so many bottles of lotion, perfume, sets of stationary, craft kits, socks, coats, dresses, toys, everything you could imagine. And the candy, oh man! mom only ever let us get candy with our own money (which was also our only means of getting new clothes or cool shoes), and we didn’t often get to go inside the store with her. I got a beautiful dress that year, I believe it was the only dress I’d had before that was brand new from the store, not made by or passed down from a family or ward member. It still had the tags and came with a gift receipt. When I finally grew out of it I was quite devastated, it was the first piece of clothing I felt beautiful in.

 

OK, I have to get back to work/ Most of the above is probably not true, in the Torkildson fashion I have inserted random details to take the place of my foggy memory, but who can say what is true all these years later anyway?

 

-Madel

 

Shakespeare's Sonnet #1, as run through Quillbot.com

 That beauty's rose may thus never fade from the fairest creatures, but as the riper should wither with time, his sensitive offspring must bear his memory:

However, you made yourself your enemy by feeding your own light's flame with self-substantial fuel and creating a famine where there is abundance. You were too brutal to your sweet self.

In thine own bud, you burst your content and, tender churl, make waste in niggarding. You are now the world's new ornament and the sole one to announce the garish spring.

If you don't feel sorry for the globe, this glutton will eat the planet's due by the grave and you.

A Slow Saturday. December 17th. 2022.

 it's a slow saturday, by golly.

i slipped on the ice at the provo rec center last thursday. went down wrong on my right leg and it's been bothering me ever since. we canceled our thursday afternoon temple appointment and we skipped the rec center yesterday, friday. just stayed in, since it never got above 17 degrees. boy, did we watch a lot of movies! none of them very good. the last two nights i've gone to bed at 9:30, out of plain boredom. your mother is having her troubles, too. she's got conjunctivitis bad in her left eye. she's been treating it herself but it's not getting any better. so we'll go see the doc on Monday. we did go back to the rec center this morning. early. 5:30 a.m.  neither one of us could sleep much last night. after we got back i made fried potatoes, sausage, and cheese quesadillas for anyone who wanted to show up at 8:30 in the morning -- which turned out to be 3 people. then we sat in our recliners for a few hours. i worked on some rewrites for adam while amy snoozed away. i also wrote a poem this morning, based on Proverbs 23:23 --

The truth will forever abide.

God keeps it at his side.

Men may rage

and lies engage;

but light will override.

 

your mother suggested i unload all the leftovers in the fridge for lunch today, so we reheated week old shredded pork, four day old grits, and a can of chili beans in a pan, and called it Bargain Basement Stew. Surprisingly, enough people stopped by to eat it all gone.  We continue to work together on 30 second videos that garner about a hundred viewers each. here are two links, if you care to watch 'em:

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0yF5II584bY

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ppYKzygcs9I

i'll only inflict one more poem from this past week on you:

The Lapps keep herds of reindeer;

I think they are nomadic.

Cuz when I look for reindeer steaks

they seem to be sporadic.

I wonder if dear Santa

would actually grieve

if I asked for one of his

to roast on Xma eve?

your mother is just now (1:32 p.m. mst) hanging a xmas wreath on our door. i should get up to help but my leg is aching like someone is pounding on it with a mallet. as Dr. Smith says in the original lost in space -- 'oh, the pain, the pain!"  my mistake -- she's vacuuming, not hanging up the wreath.  since we haven't found anything to replace binge watching the blacklist we are going retro, watching lost in space and leave it to beaver and the wild wild west. pretty soon we'll be reduced to gazing at bewitched and F Troop on the big screen while drooling.  i have finally concocted a snack/meal that is inexpensive and that i can eat anytime with a great deal of relish.  what i do is take a can of black beans, rinse 'em, put 'em in a bowl, add some diced onions, a can of ro-tel diced tomatoes with jalapeno peppers, some kalamata olives, a sliced cuke, some capers, and then sprinkle it with red wine vinegar, lemon juice, and liquid smoke. add a pinch of salt and pepper, a squirt of salad oil, and mix it all up. i don't refrigerate it -- i just snack on it all day. eat it with a toasted bagel & cream cheese in the morning, have it over my salad at lunch, and snack on it again at dinner with my ramen noodles.  i've been doing this for a whole week and so far i haven't gotten tired of it. it's my new go-to food, replacing sardines and pickled herring.   we went shopping this morning at Smith's so amy could get a new pair of yellow rubber gloves to wash dishes with, and do you know a dozen eggs now costs over six dollars? Yikes! so i've decided we are going to stop using eggs. well, i'll stop using 'em. your mother will continue to get the expensive organic range free eggs she has always gotten. i'm going to have tofu instead of eggs from now on. much cheaper.  darned if i can think of very much that has happened to us this week, or anything out of the ordinary that we initiated ourselves. we got a nice xmas card from daughter virginia. and really, i think that's the highlight of the whole week. your mother starts work at H&R block in 2 weeks. she has to drive to springville to work several days a week.   Honestly, i think i could go to bed right now and sleep through the rest of the day and most of the night. i just took a big dose of aspirin.  except they're having pizza in the community room tonight at 7pm. don't want to miss that. amy is making an apple crisp for the event. or rather, she put it together and i have to put it in the oven. oh, yeah, one good movie we saw yesterday was The Seven Little Foys with bob hope. in it he gets to dance with jimmy cagney. it's a showbiz movie, and i always like those.  okay. i'm taking a drink of lemonade and then tilting the recliner back, covering my face with a bandana, and dreaming of owning a condo on the beach in hawaii.  poi, anyone?

 

1983: The Year I was Ronald McDonald in Wichita, Kansas.

 my memories fade but my emotions sharpen. as i grow older.

remembering the year i did Ronald McDonald in Wichita, Kansas, brings few concrete stories. it was 1983. adam was just a baby. 

i had to fly to milwaukee to train under a guy named aye jaye.  he had to okay my ronald mcdonald performance before i could be officially hired. two days of him teaching me the makeup and the mantra. there was an official script, which i had to follow exactly without deviation. (which i never did.) what i remember is him telling me to always use the restroom before performing, cuz i might be in public for hours on end with no break possible. and his drinking wan fu wine before each appearance. for reasons i no longer remember. he had little white ceramic bottles of it all over the van he traveled in when performing. his voice grated on me. i eventually came to despise him and called him a pissant the last time i spoke to him on the phone. 

we first lived in an apartment, then we bought a house in Wichita during my year of ronald mcdonald. the house had a particular poverty smell to it -- all slummy houses have the same sour smell. something to do with the gas meter having a loose fitting.

i was never able to put on the makeup very well. i often had to wipe it all off with baby oil and start over again because i couldn't get the big red grin or the arching eyebrows just right. luckily i only worked a few days a month. the rest of the time i stayed home with amy and the kids. i wrote a script for a tv sitcom about a wall street broker who runs away from his firm to become a circus clown. i sent a copy of the manuscript to my old clown partner Steve Smith. he wrote back thanking me; telling me it wasn't very good. 

the biggest memory i have of that period has nothing to do with ronald mcdonald. since i had so much spare time on my hands i got a part time job as a janitor at the Eisenhower National Airport. i worked 8 to midnight, emptying trash cans in the administration office into a big canvas sack on wheels and then wheeling it out to the outdoor dumpster. there was never anyone there. i had the place to myself.

one windy night most of the trash cans were full of white styrofoam chips. the office staff apparently got a lot of packages that day. when i took the big canvas sack out to the dumpster and started to tip it over the wind caught the little white chips and sent them spiraling up into the air. in enchanting circles that went up higher and higher. then came silently down like snow. i was fascinated by this. i watched this artificial blizzard for nearly an hour. until it petered out. then i ran back inside to ransack more trash cans -- any trash cans with those little styrofoam chips. i found plenty. so i repeated the procedure three more times that night. by the time midnight rolled around, the entire field behind the administration office was filled with restless white styrofoam chips, slowly circling each other; lifting up and settling down into drifts. it was a beautiful and compelling sight. 

and it was a huge mess that i was completely responsible for. i didn't realize it at the time, but i had just created my first piece of installation art. i briefly considered trying to clean it all up, then thought "Nah, the hell with it" and went home. as far as i know there was no uproar over it the next day. at least nobody ever approached me about the matter.

but that was when the was seed planted. installation art. ever after whenever i saw an empty space i would feel like i wanted to fill it with something strange and wonderful. i filled the basement of the old Arts building at the University of Minnesota with balloons. i put shaving cream into people's shoes at bowling alleys. how many blank doors have i plastered over with haiku on note cards! and of course there was my watershed moment when I stood on Capitol Hill, dressed up in my old clown rig, holding a sign that read:  "UNEMPLOYED CIRCUS CLOWN. PLEASE HELP PUT ME IN CONGRESS WHERE I BELONG." i narrowly avoided arrest and eventually became a great favorite of chinese & japanese tourists, who insisted on taking photos with me. now that i think of it, my can pyramid during come-in at Ringling Brothers was a sort of installation piece as well. it was certainly very far from any traditional clown gag ever done before or since.

as the shades of eternity lower over me i begin to regret not pursuing that errant impulse more. until i could turn it into a career. into fame. being hired and paid for my work all over the world like banksy or kurt schwitters.

if you're wondering, here's a pretty good definition of what installation art is:

Often site-specific, and occasionally occurring in public spaces, the boundaries of what constitutes installation art have been blurred since its very inception as an artistic genre. Though installation art varies widely it can best be thought of as an umbrella term for three-dimensional works that aim to transform the audience’s perception of space. Sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent, installation artworks have been constructed in spaces ranging from art galleries and museums to public squares and private homes and will often envelop the viewer in an all-encompassing environment or within the space of the work itself. Installation art developed primarily in the second half of the twentieth century (though there were clear precursors) as both minimalism and conceptual art evolved, culminating in installations in which the idea and experience was more important than the finished work itself.  

 i have one final installation piece i dearly want to put up. i want to fill the front yard of a house on a busy street with nothing but hundreds of those blow-up Bozo punching bags. like the ones i had as a kid. 

since i don't own a house and probably never will again, i am patiently waiting for a patron of the arts to intercede on my behalf. maybe buy me and amy a nice little house on a busy street. and pay for all those bozo punching bags. they cost 30 dollars apiece on amazon. plus i'll need someone to blow them all up. 

Dear Kids. Sunday. December 4. 2022

 so i woke up with the jimmy legs this morning. couldn't stand to stand still or sit down for long. i wanted to walk to church but i didn't think your mother was up to it, so we drove the old black Kia.  it needs oil or something in the gearbox, according to amy, cuz it's starting to get herky jerky. i'll remind her of it on Monday.  and don't say fat chance. my memory works as well as it ever did.  whoops. guess i better write it on the calendar.

both your mother and i bore our testimonies in fast & testimony meeting. your mother's was very sweet and loving. mine was in a big booming voice, my radio newscaster voice. i just said the basics, didn't fool around with any stories or travelogues. from the faces of some of the kids in the pews i bet i scared 'em a little bit.

back home we watched a youtube book of mormon church video for sunday school. we haven't gone to our ward sunday school in over a year. uncomfortable cold folding chairs and i'm afraid the teachers are often overwhelmed and distracted college students who don't get enough sleep and are so earnest they forget their teacher training -- do they still have that class?  i haven't taken it in twenty years. haven't taught a class in over twenty years, either.

so back home after watching the video we both tried napping but amy had to get to work on some crocheting and i was too hungry. we broke our fast with grits, sausage, rice krispies, canned diced tomatoes, and some green powder your mom mixes into the blender and drinks every morning. i try to look the other way when she swallows it.

then it was off to choir practice. only 5 people showed up, and three of them were kids.

then back home, and the jimmy legs were worse than ever. so i decided to mix up a batch of whatchagot soup and take it door to door until it was all gone.

into the pot i threw 2 cans of cream of chicken soup. a container of leftover spaghetti squash. can of green beans. can of corn. can of diced potatoes. fried up some onions  to put in the whole mess, and added two cans of Swanson's breast white meat chicken. let it simmer a half hour, the got the cart out of the community room and your mom and i went door to door. we served ten people from that one pot, and in return got a dollar bill, a big can of Crisco. 4 dozen eggs. a bag of sugar. a bag of flour. and a carton of butter. so we made out like bandits.

now it's five o'clock and the first presidency christmas message will be airing in another hour. i'm resting my tootsies in the recline and your mother is in the bedroom on the desktop working on family history files.

later tonight we'll draw the blinds, lock the door, and watch a couple more episodes of The Blacklist. we're on season 7, and the whole shebang has turned into a comic book. i think they're going to go to mars by season 9.

our health is passable. your mother eats cookies and ice cream and manages to look like Anne Margret.   Me, I'm still the pillsbury doughboy. 

we rejoice to think that daughter daisy is moving out here next week, i think it is, and will be joining ed. i hope all you kids know that you are always in our prayers and in our hearts, and can never hear your voices or see your faces without our hearts racing like mad with happiness.

guilt. guilt. guilt. guilt. guilt. guilt. guilt. guilt. guilt.

 

did you see our latest reel video on youtube?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Yg-miXN0Qic 

 

just 2 poems i wrote this week:

 

World, you have your secrets --

deep and guarded well.

Kept by agents fearsome;

pledged to serving hell.

But God will be revealing

iniquity and spite.

No secret or deception

but comes into the light!

 

 

bottle of mincemeat

in the back of the cupboard --

older than driftwood.  

love, heinie manush.