You make your own problems

My dad was Norwegian, and so, by definition, morbid and moody.

Unlike the go-getting dads in our Southeast Minneapolis neighborhood, my dad would never dream of telling me "You make your own luck". He believed instead, and rather strongly, "You make your own problems." So I grew up with a timid and diffident mindset when it came to luck.

I was always the class clown in grade school and high school. And so when Ringling Brothers announced the opening of the Clown College in Life Magazine, I surreptitiously cut out the article and mailed away for an application. I told myself I wouldn't be lucky enough to ever hear back from them. And I was almost right.

A few months later, after graduating from high school with mediocre grades, I heard back from Bill Ballantine, the Dean of the College. He invited me to attend that fall.

But I didn't find out about the real luck behind this break for me until years afterwards, when Bill's secretary, Linda, told me that when my application had come in Ballantine had glanced at it and then thrown it in a wire wastebasket, where it languished for two days (the janitor was rather dilatory). Then Irvin Feld, the owner of Ringling Brothers, happened to pass by the secretary's desk, saw the mashed up application, and demanded "What's this?" She pulled it out, smoothed it down, and handed it to him. He read my application, she said, with deep interest, and then commanded "Invite him down; he sounds like just the kind of nut we can use!"

My winning streak continued at the Clown College in Venice, Florida, when it came time to audition for Mr. Feld and a select audience he invited to the barn-like Winter Quarters building to view each clown doing a solo act.
My solo act, juggling straw hats, lasted all of forty seconds, when one of my inflammable hats rolled over to the hot footlights and caught on fire. I hastily stamped it out, and then, completely flummoxed, took my bow and exited.
The luck came when I accompanied another clown for his solo act. He juggled fire torches, and I came out with him dressed as a comic fireman, holding an old-fashioned brass fire extinguisher canister. I was not supposed to do anything, just stand there; but I decided to put down the canister and let it tip over. Next thing I knew there was foam fizzing out of the hose all over the place. When I tried to pick up the hose I squirted myself right in the eyes, becoming temporarily blind. And then I turned blindly around with the hose in my hand, spraying the audience, including Mr. Feld in the front row.
For that I got a tongue lashing from Bill Ballantine, but a few hours later I also got a contract to appear as a First Of May on the Blue Unit of Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows. The Greatest Show on Earth. As Mr. Feld handed me his gold Waterman to sign the contract, he chuckled: "You're a natural lunatic, Mr. Torkildson -- I like that!"
My streak of clown luck continued for the next 6 years, from the circus in the US to gigs inMexico and Thailand and then back to the circus, where I got into a fight with Michu, the World's Smallest Man. I was blacklisted from the circus after that, and my clown career went to hell in a handbasket.

Helaman 7:8

  "Yea, if my days could have been in those days, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my brethren."

Helaman 7:8

My days are now, my place is here;

and so I must attend with cheer

to all my duties this day brings

no matter how my yearning swings.

For I do dream of better times,

of sweeter days and softer climes;

Good places I was meant to be,

but for my God's economy.

But since no time machine exists

and I've no time for vain sophists,

I'll focus on what present ways

I can serve in these dark days. 

Helaman 6:3

"And they did fellowship one with another, and did rejoice one with another, and did have great joy."
Helaman 6:3

When the clouds are rolling up and thunder echoes deep,
there is comfort in the joy of fellowship's wide sweep.
 For though the world may hasten to its bitter tawdry end,
the Saints will gather and rejoice that Jesus is their Friend.
Despite our diff'rent languages and cultures, we are sure
that happiness is part of life for those both clean and pure.
And if we slip and stumble it is good to know that others
will not judge but strive to be our sisters and our brothers. 
 Won't you join our lively ranks, and learn the mystery
of how those favored by the Lord obtain such pristine glee? 

Altercasting

To make people act as you wish

use lather from any soap dish.

Just tell them how warm

they seem to perform;

they'll stop being such a cold fish. 

Pizza

Inventing the pizza's heroic;

chewing it, you can't be stoic.

The crust and the sauce,

with toppings -- it's boss!

It's Homeric, or even Troic! 

Dissenters

  But it came to pass in the fifty and sixth year of the reign of the judges, there were dissenters who went up from the Nephites unto the Lamanites; and they succeeded with those others in stirring them up to anger against the Nephites; and they were all that year preparing for war.

Helaman 4:4

Honest disagreement is no bar to amity;

but backbiting dissension leads to dire calamity.

No two people think alike but that's no cause to fight.

Only lust for power turns debate to dynamite. 

So if your shoulder holds a chip, don't nail it down -- instead

pry it loose and throw it into any old woodshed.

Stow your tongue and bow your head, then turn the other cheek;

otherwise a traitor you'll become and havoc wreak.

And when the battle's over, win or lose, you won't receive

any of the plaudits that you thought you would achieve. 

The readers who speak their own mind

The readers who speak their own mind

are not often very inclined

to dally with prudence;

instead they like rudence.

Their ignorance is nonaligned. 

The Paper Drive: Another Stumble Down Memory Lane

The crisp colors and temperatures of fall remind me of the paper drives we held at Tuttle Grade School in Southeast Minneapolis when I was a moppet.

Everyone took the newspaper in those wasteful and extravagant days. Delivered to your doorstep before the dew was gone in the morning, and then again as the meatloaf came out of the oven at eventide. Sitting on the porch reading the newspaper was as common and iconic as raking leaves in the fall or cutting the grass with a push reel mower in the summer.

And those were days when the long shadow of the Great Depression still lingered in the minds, if not the wallets, of my parents. You cleaned your plate. You turned off the lights when nobody was in a room. You saved up string and rubber bands and newspapers; because there was no telling when you might need to tie up a parcel for mailing or spread out some newspapers prior to filleting a dozen crappie -- and nobody in their right mind made a trip to the store just to buy string or an extra newspaper.

And so every well-regulated household had its pile of newspapers in the basement or the garage. And there it sat, gathering dust and sheltering silverfish, until the annual paper drive.

Memory no longer informs me what the money raised was used for -- perhaps a new mimeograph machine or school field trip to the Bell Museum.

What I do recall distinctly is my sudden decision to pretend I had an allergy to the sisal twine used to bind up the stacks of newspapers. The twine had a peculiar tangy odor and was stiff and prickly. You could almost get a splinter from it.

Out of the blue I told my second grade teacher, Mrs. Redd, that I was allergic to twine. In proof I began sneezing the minute a ball of twine was brought near me. They were unconvincing sneezes; weak and insincere. But Mrs. Redd swallowed my fib -- hook, line, and sinker. And thereafter, right through sixth grade, I was excused from having to tie up the stacks of lose newspapers.

I never had to worry much about bringing in a goodly amount of newsprint. My mother religiously kept every edition, neatly bundled and tied with string (not twine), and had me lug each stack out to the garage for safekeeping. Plus our next door neighbor was old Mrs. Henderson, a widow whose basement was a fire trap from the extent of her newspaper collection. Brown and flaking, she had copies dating back to World War Two (the newspapers were brown and flaking, that is; not Mrs. Henderson). Each year she graciously allowed me to scoop up a dozen or so bundles for the paper drive.

So I had it made in the shade. I loaded the bundles on my wagon on a glorious autumn day and trundled them the one block to Tuttle, where they joined a huge pile on the front lawn that soon took on the dimensions of a small turreted castle nearly two stories high. I dumped my stack and then joined the other kids in climbing to the top of the pile to yodel like Tarzan while the turrets swayed like a pendulum. How and why no one was ever buried alive in a newspaper avalanche is still a mystery to me. Maybe guardian angels aren't such a myth after all . . .


Teachers and students alike dreaded one thing during the paper drive -- a long soaking rain. Such an occurrence would turn the newspapers to mush, making them useless to sell. The pile grew so large that no single sheet of canvas could cover it all. Half-hearted measures were made to cover it up piecemeal with old blankets and tents at night. But everyone kept a weather eye peeled until the big truck came from the paper mill to pick it all up.

In fifth grade an evil idea came to me and my comrades during the paper drive. Since the paper was sold by weight, what if we were to surreptitiously slip a few bricks and stones into our paper bundles, thus fraudulently increasing the take?

Our crime was discovered by Mr. Berg, the sixth grade teacher. Under his stern gaze we sullenly removed the rip rap from our bundles. He then bade us begone, and never sully the good name of Tuttle Grade School again with such low maneuvers.

I would have felt pretty bad about it, except that evening I happened to take a stroll over to the schoolyard, since I lived just a block away, and saw Mr. Berg and a few other teachers, under cover of darkness, dousing some of the newspaper bundles with buckets of water -- and they were NOT attempting to put out any fire . . .

The prodigal

A prodigal returned; was met

by those who never could forget.

They cherished naught but memory,

and made it rub like emery.

The prodigal must fight the past;

his 'friends' would like it long to last.

For prodigals the future beams,

and recollection turns to dreams.

But those with no cause to repent

oft turn the welcome to torment.

Though prodigals have made mistakes,

I think the smug make more heartaches . . . 

Harold Bloom said . . .

"We read . . . in quest of a mind more original than our own."
Harold Bloom 


The mind of man cannot contain
the least scintilla to make us vain.
Upon an anthill we recline,
while universes round us shine.
The pinnacle of wisdom here
is really nothing but small beer.
Original, and so unflawed,
is the mind of Christ and God.