The Toe Monster

When I am eight and ten I join the circus.

One of the first circus families I meet is Otto Krippen and wife Shirley, with their son Kevin.

He is the elephant boss; she's one of the showgirls; and Kevin is a little boy with a mop of straw hair. Nice traditional family.

Otto brooks no nonsense with his assistants. They show up late or drunk and he minces no words with them but gives them an immediate knuckle sandwich, so they either quit or learn to behave. His temper, except with his family, is formidable. Facing a Sherman tank would be preferable to facing Otto when he's in a huff.

Shirley is rather homely; one of those girls that 'have a pleasant personality'. The only reason she gets to be a showgirl is because Otto won't work for any circus that doesn't use her as a showgirl. He's still madly in love with her after eight years of marriage. She is also blind as a bat without her glasses, which of course she can't wear when performing. So she always grabs a hold of the chorines to her right and left during the dance routines to keep from getting lost and wandering away.

And Kevin nearly gets me murdered after I introduce him to the toe monster.

There's very little private showering with the circus. We play sports arenas which feature half a dozen locker rooms with showers. The stars get their own locker rooms to themselves, but the rest of us share locker rooms and showers. So Otto and Kevin are in the same locker room as I am. One evening after the show I jokingly tell Kevin to watch out for the toe monster that lives in the shower drain. Get too close to it, I warn him, and it comes out to bite a toe off. The other clowns, sadists all, back up my fanciful claim with a chorus of affirmative moans and groans. Then I go about my business, thinking nothing more about it.

Until I overhear Otto a few days later telling someone that when he finds out who's been scaring his kid about some damn toe monster so much that now he won't take a shower at all, he's going to push his face into his buttocks. Or words to that effect.

Ulp. That's me.

Kevin is bound to rat me out sooner or later, I'm sure. So instant action is called for. Gathering my clown cronies that evening, I take the blunderbuss we use in the show out of the prop wagon. We wait for Kevin to come into the locker room, where I solemnly announce that tonight we will hunt down and kill the toe monster. Kevin's eyes get as big as pizza platters. I caution him to stay well behind us as we begin to scour the locker room.

When we get to the showers I give a yelp, which cues my pals to bunch up around me so Kevin sees nothing.

"I got him!" I cry, and then let loose with a blast from the clown blunderbuss -- which is loaded with black powder and wadding. The explosion is deafening and produces enough smoke to birth a modest cumulus cloud.

We all proudly march away, clawing each other on the back with bloodthirsty bonhomie and saying rather loudly that that is the end of the toe monster for sure.

The hardest part is to keep a completely straight face as Kevin looks searchingly at me and the others to make absolutely sure he is rid of this nightmare from the drains. Clowns are not good at poker faces, but we all manage to stay solemn enough until he runs out to share the good news with mom and dad.

Whew! That's over with.

But it's not. The next day Kevin seeks me out and asks shyly to see the carcass. He wants to show it to his dad.

Oh oh. The jig is up. Otto will now undoubtedly beat me to a pulp with his bull hook as the prime instigator of his son's nightmares.

I mumble something about how the creature dissolved into a dirty froth and slid back down the drain after I ventilated it, which seems to disappoint the child. He runs off to inform dad, and I sit down to calmly await my doom

Otto shows up a few minutes later, with Kevin in tow. Otto's face is grim, looking like five miles of bad road, before he suddenly begins to laugh, saying "Boy, you clowns never stop with the jokes! That was a good one on Kevin." I give a watery grin and nod agreement, wondering if this is how homicidal maniacs lull their victims into a false sense of security. But Otto just gives a few more barks of laughter, tips me a wink, and leads Kevin out to help him water the pachyderms.

And that, boys and girls, is how I first learned that circus clowns can get away with anything. After that, I was unstoppable -- pulling gags on all and sundry with complete impunity.

One time I even . . .

But those stories can wait for another day . . .

The law is an ass, Dickens said

The law is an ass, Dickens said,

and Iowa leads by a head.

Felons aren't serving

what they are deserving;

the loopholes are really inbred! 

Yearning to be great again, rural Iowa turns to Trump

Here in Union County, it’s not hard to find people like Kretz who are weary of the Obama years. She plans to vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump in November because she thinks he’s better suited to address the needs of the average American than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

from the Des Moines Register 

The normal American thinks

the reign of Obama sure stinks.

In rural retreats

they get out the sheets

to ride 'gainst his awful high jinks. 

The Sex Life of the Norwegian Bachelor

Reply to an old friend who thinks I should write a book

You remember Pres. Kimball's preface to his Miracle of Forgiveness, wherein he quotes Job to explain his own reluctance to write: "O, that mine adversary would write a book!" 

The fact of the matter is that I have already written several books, booth non-fiction and fiction, covering my years as a child, as a clown, as a missionary in Thailand, as a radio announcer -- even as a homeless person (I was homeless for several years after returning from Thailand in 2010). I could never interest an honest agent to take them on, or a publisher to look at them. I don't even know where most of those manuscripts are anymore. I know my ex-brother in law has one that I sold to him for a few thousand dollars many long years ago, and I have another one or two slowly crumbling to dust in an old suitcase of mine. I have no interest in resurrecting them.

I no longer believe I have anything of value to contribute to the world of literature in the form of a book-length work. I also believe my timericks are as ephemeral as a bubble. They should not be trapped between the covers of a book, like a butterfly pinned to a piece of blotting paper in someone's collection. 

My master plan, if you can call it that, is to continue to write timericks and little nano-memoirs as the mood hits me, to be shared with friends and family, and to be collected on my blog site. I now have a list of about 20 professional journalists that receive my daily emailed timericks, at their own request -- it may be that one day one of those journalist/fans will be in a position to hire me to produce such work on a regular basis for their newspaper and pay me for it. That is my ambition, when it comes to writing -- not a book, but a paid position producing my topical crambo. 

And can I be just a little bit blunt for a second with you? You are not the first friend to implore me to turn my hand to writing a book; but in every case, those of my friends who have counseled me to do so have absolutely no experience in doing so themselves. They have no idea the amount of work and stress involved in producing a 300-page manuscript and then peddling it to blase publishers. I have had that experience, and it is not pleasant, And I don't really want to do it again. 

But I welcome any other suggestions you may ever have as to how to monetize my peculiar talents. I don't wish to discourage you or anyone from suggesting ways and means for me to pick up a few more spare spondulicks with my quill. 

And I do appreciate you taking the time to write out your suggestions to me. It touches me deeply that there are still friends who feel the need to counsel me for my own good, despite my lackadaisical and cynical ways. 

God bless you for that . . . 

3 Nephi 2:15

  And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites.

3 Nephi 2:15

If you think the scriptures maintain

that skin color can be a stain,

I think you will find

that God's colorblind; 

distinctions are mankind's own bane. 

3 Nephi 1:5

  But there were some who began to say that the time was past for the words to be fulfilled, which were spoken by Samuel, the Lamanite.

3 Nephi 1:5

The time for miracles is past, the word of God expired;

so say all the experts who think promptness is required.

Rational consideration is their bread and butter;

putting God on timetables, so when He's late they mutter.

The Lord of all the universe punches no time clock,

and like the thieving night prowler he'll give experts a shock!

 

See the pretty bauble

"Now, someone has found one more way to keep family members occupied and away from what matters most—it is something called Pokémon Go.  I don’t understand this one so don’t ask me about it.  I just know it is one more thing that prompts young people to look down at their smart phones rather than looking up to see the beautiful creations of God’s wonderful world or even someone they may want to meet, date, and marry with whom they could have a real-world relationship that results in eternal blessings."

M. Russell Ballard 

See the pretty bauble, child; come play with it awhile.

It will make you happy as your standards I beguile.

I have many kickshaws that will nibble at your days,

isolate you from your friends and beneficial ways.

Games and tinseled vanity I offer in profusion;

am I to blame if all it does is lead you to confusion?

There's hardly anyone who doesn't fall for my ripe schemes,

and when they do I take from them their comfort and their dreams.

Whether it be Pokemon or other sly diversion,

I delight to take you on a meaningless excursion! 

The Pumpkins

When you follow Hennepin Avenue east towards St Paul, it turns into Larpenteur Avenue once it hits Lauderdale.

When I still had the dew behind my ears, our family drove down Larpenteur the Sunday before Halloween each year to pick out pumpkins.

For reasons I cannot explain clearly, this was an outing my dad readily agreed to without any growls or feints. Perhaps he enjoyed the simplicity of driving straight ahead, without worrying overmuch about traffic lights or gridlock. Perhaps he liked the bucolic countryside that was Larpenteur Avenue back in those days -- truck farms, greenhouses, and the U of M's experimental fields. My mother, also, found the trip less trying than most other sojourns in the car; she looked out the window at the mellow fields without offering a single driving tip.

We would pull up to the lot that had the biggest pile of pumpkins to begin our search for the perfect Cucurbita pepo. My sisters were always satisfied with something round and well-behaved; but I would scout around for misfits -- lopsided or oval or bulging in the wrong places. Since my carving skills were practically nil, I found that these misbegotten squashes could be turned into weirdly creepy jack-o-lanterns with just a few inept slashes.

Pumpkins securely deposited in the trunk, dad would walk over to the crude wooden stall and drop three quarters into the tin can. I never once saw anyone manning a stall on these Sunday trips. They were either at church, or inside their homes napping or watching a football game. But every stall lay abandoned on Sundays, relying on the Honor System.

At home the pumpkins were put on the basement steps until after school on Halloween, when we kids would joyfully wield the old steak knives mom gave us (so dull they hardly cut through butter) to disembowel our pumpkins and carve the most hideous features into the orange ribbed skin that we could think of.

An interesting sidelight I recall is that mom would only lay the Pioneer Press down before we began our attacks. She claimed it was more absorbent than the Minneapolis newspapers. She also used the Pioneer Press for cleaning fish and to line the parakeet's cage. The Minneapolis papers were saved for the paper drive.

To this day I associate Halloween not with gaudy costumes or bags bulging with candy -- but with the smell of singed pumpkin from the candle flames inside each one of our creations. There was something archaic and druidic about those flickering specks of light streaming from the hewn grimaces of our pumpkins, and the odor of roasting pumpkin flesh mingled with stale candle wax as the wick burned down gave me a delicious shiver that wasn't quite terror, but wasn't quite comfort either . . .

Today I live in Senior Citizen housing, which is nice and quiet. But on Halloween it's too quiet, and I sure miss messing with the innards of a big fat pumpkin.

Oh well, they don't get the Pioneer Press out here anyways.

Out with the old

"While there may be value in decluttering our lives of material things we no longer need, when it comes to things of eternal importance—our marriages, our families, and our values—a mind-set of replacing the original in favor of the modern can bring profound remorse."

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Out with the old and in with the new

is tempting for a man to do;

new job, new wife, new car -- yessir!

He changes all in such a blur.

And women are not much exempt

from treating old things with contempt.

New clothes; new shoes; new lifestyle -- wow!

The past is not a sacred cow.

But just imagine our chagrin

if God should want to trade us in! 

And so we'd better mend our ways,

and stick with those from early days!