Restaurant Review: Rocco's Big City Deli. Provo, Utah.

Rocco's is at One Center Street, so you can't miss it. It's down a flight of stairs, which I normally don't do anymore because of my osteoarthritis, but in the cause of good eating I decided to hazard the descent:

 Rocco's appears to be a guy's place. There was a preponderance of shaved heads and beards, and the several TV sets scattered around were all on ESPN. There are sports relicts and New York City memorabilia on the walls, and a low ceiling. An extensive collection of baseball cards is stuck to the walls.

I ordered the Reuben combo, with a six inch Mob City grinder, to go, for my dinner tonight (this is laundry day, so I don't feel like messing with the stove). It set me back $14.35.

The fries are thick and crisp, with Lawry's Seasoning Salt dashed on them. The Reuben was good, but not exceptional; I felt they skimped on the corned beef and sauerkraut. Like I said, I'm saving the grinder for tonight, so I can't tell you anything about it except that it looks and smells mighty good, filled with Italian cheeses and cold cuts. A cut above a Subway sandwich.
I'm giving the place Three Burps. I'd call it a rough and ready hangout for anyone out on the town looking for a full belly and not too choosy about what they fill it with. They open at 7 for breakfast, too. I can see doing breakfast there the next time Nathan Draper comes to town on a flying visit from Thailand; he always wants to spend the whole day with me but his wife always whittles it down to 2 hours in the morning -- so we'll hang out at Rocco's and feel like a couple of Wise Guys while we nosh bagels and lox.

The Lord of the Books

"Whether our testimony of the Book of Mormon comes the first time we open it or over a period of time, it will influence us all of our days if we continue to read it and apply its teachings."    LeGrand R. Curtis Jr. 

The Lord of the Books, you might say;
its power is felt every day.
When read with belief
it brings great relief;
its words are a map of God's way. 

En Strengen av Perler: The Torkildson Family Reunion.

My family genealogy indicates that there were sturdy pioneers on both sides who broke the sod in the Dakotas, roughing it with mud and wattle huts and rude campfires until they could afford the time and money to put up brick and cement domiciles — which they promptly moved into and never again showed the least sign of moving out of to enjoy Mother Nature’s wonders. They’d had enough of her blizzards and locusts, droughts and floods, mosquitoes and sunstroke. Indoor plumbing spelled the death of the outdoorsy spirit for the Torkildsons. 

No surprise, then, that my parents, the direct descendants of these pioneers, had no sympathy toward my childhood requests to go camping. What? Leave their comfortable home — with its modern kitchen, entertaining television, and cozy beds — for the howling wilderness? Not on your wet bar, kiddo! 

This makes it all the more mystifying as to why my parents and some of my aunts and uncles one day decided to go to a state park 50 miles away for a weekend of camping.  When I goggled in disbelief at the announced trek, I was told to stop making funny faces and help pack the car. We were having what is technically known as a family reunion.

Tents were still made of bulky canvas in those years, and so our family’s tent, even when folded and sat on by the entire family, barely fit into the trunk of the car. Everything else had to be packed around us kids in the back seat. I was wedged in so tightly that when we arrived at the campsite, it took two grown men, my dad and Uncle Jim, to pull me out — accompanied by an avalance of Coleman lanterns and mosquito coils.

The initial set-up was rather fun. I got to pound metal pegs into the ground with a bung starter that my dad had liberated from Aarone's Bar and Grill.

But then Aunt Cecelia took over, and everything went to the devil.

Aunt Cecelia was Uncle Jim’s wife. She was not Scandinavian in the least, unlike the rest of the family. She was of determined Bohemian stock, and the blood of Jan Hus, along with his itch to reform everything, ran in her pudgy veins. She immediately deputized all the men to go fishing, so we could enjoy a fish fry that night. It was an overcast day, with an occasional drizzle and a stout breeze. Not a good day for angling. But Aunt Cecelia overruled the menfolk and sent them on their way to the nearby river with a flea in their ear.

They caught nothing. But they were not unduly worried, since they had brought along a case of Hamm’s beer with their tackle, consuming it studiously as they waited for a nibble. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, a tornado roaring through the camp would not have unduly worried them by the time they unsteadily returned from the river.

In the meantime, Aunt Cecelia had asked the phlegmatic park ranger where the ‘powder room’ was, and had been shown a ghastly tin shack with fat blue flies buzzing around it like an aerodrome. There was nothing quaint or rustic about it, especially the odor, and Aunt Cecelia immediately set up a to-do that caused pine cones to fall in heaps from the nearby conifers. She attempted to corral the women into cleaning up the pestilential place, but they were made of sterner stuff than their menfolk. They mutinied. They were not going to spend their time swabbing out toilets — they had enough of that at home!

While Aunt Cecelia fumed, they built a jolly great bonfire and got all us kids sticks so we could roast wieners and marshmallows.

When the men finally returned with not even a carp to show for their efforts, everyone was inclined to shrug their shoulders and let it go; there were plenty of cans of pork-and-beans and a dozen loaves of Wonder bread (and another whole case of Hamm’s surreptitiously tucked under the sleeping bags). Beans, bread, and some rousing choruses of the Crow Song (Krakevisa, in Norwegian), and we could call it a successful family reunion even though it was starting to drizzle steadily.

But Aunt Cecelia, balked of her sanitary crusade, flung aside the sleeping bags, clamped on to the case of beer, bundled it down to the river, and threw it in. Then she demanded that we all pack up and go to Jax Cafe back in Nordeast Minneapolis for a proper meal of prime rib and baked potatoes. 

Confusion and discord followed. Uncle Jim glumly began packing up his family’s gear, as did several others, but a few hardy souls refused to budge and declared their intention of sticking it out for another day, and Aunt Cecelia could take her bossy ways and stick ’em where the sun don’t shine. You betcha!

My dad wanted to go home, but Mom had her dander up now and told us we would stay the night — especially since the reservation fee for the campsite was nonrefundable.

"Ungkarer er heldig" my dad kept muttering to himself as the drizzle turned into a cold steady rain.

Our tent, which had been hastily purchased at an Army/Navy Surplus store just prior to the outing, was as porous as a sponge. And the rain continued the next morning.

We returned home cold and hungry.

There have been other family reunions since that time — but none of them have been held anywhere near the outdoors, or very far away from Jax Cafe -- they offered a complimentary schooner of Hamm's with every roast chicken dinner.  

Truth is the Prism

Truth is the prism through which we may see
the colors of God's sweet variety. 
To spurn any color because of its hue
won't lessen God's grandeur, but only our view. 

Murdering the Prophets

  And the regulations of the government were destroyed, because of the secret combination of the friends and kindreds of those who murdered the prophets.

3 Nephi 7:6

I murder the prophets whenever I cease

to live with my brothers in goodwill and peace.

I put them to death when I choose to behave

in carnal frenzy or as cunning knave.

Their lives have no meaning to me if I fail

to heed them and put my own soul up for sale.

God help me remember all prophets today,

and support ev'ry ruler who follows Thy way! 

En Strengen av Perler: Aunt Cecilia makes dinner.

Aunt Cecilia did her own canning and was a hoarder from way back when.  She preserved everything from zucchini to venison to watermelon rinds.  Her basement walls were lined solid with mason jars.  She salted away caseloads of Green Giant French-cut green beans and Del Monte fruit salad.  To say she was provident was like saying Death Valley gets warm. She never threw anything out. 

Ever. 

She was a plump little woman, as round and soft as a dinner roll; but her husband, my Uncle Jim, looked like a famine victim.  He could hide behind a telephone pole.  With all those groceries in the basement, I often wondered why he was so undernourished. 

And then we went over to their house for Sunday dinner.  I’d been there often to play with my cousins, but had never been invited to stay and eat.

“Waste not, want not; I’m using up some of my old preserves!” my aunt cheerfully explained, as she began serving us.

  We started with some warmed up venison sausage that, Aunt Cecilia boasted, had been bottled in 1953.  That was the year I was born.  Uncle Jim nervously asked his wife if perhaps the sausage might be past its prime, but she gave him such a withering look out of her pudgy face that he subsided into complete silence for the rest of the meal.  Following his lead, I only took a smidgen of the antique sausage.  Once on my plate it collapsed into a gray paste.

“Saving room for the pickled radishes, eh?” Aunt Cecilia chided me jovially.  She handed me the bottle of pickled radishes, on which was a strip of old masking tape, with barely discernible writing that indicated this particular bottle had been put up back in 1949, before the Korean War.  I quickly handed off the bottle to one of my cousins when Aunt Cecelia’s head was turned, and he, in turn, silently slipped it under the table.

I noticed that both my parents were filling up on bread and butter, but when I attempted this my aunt stopped me cold by offering me a glass of tomato juice.  The can she poured it from was rusted a uniform brown – the label apparently having peeled off many years before.  I had never seen tomato juice with clots in it.  I took one cautious sip and let the rest of it sit and subside into senescence.

We had canned and bottled carrots and green beans and even potatoes.  Each item was murkier and muddier than the last.  Luckily, I was known in the family as a picky eater, so when I stuck to just bread and butter, as my parents were doing, it was not accounted as a particular insult.  But my poor uncle and cousins were browbeaten by Aunt Cecilia, encouraged to eat up and take seconds.  My boyish heart, so often filled with nothing but selfish regard, went out to them in empathy as I contemplated the years still ahead for them of nothing but mummy dust.

Dessert was homemade applesauce, put up the year Ike began his second term. It did not look lethal, so I cautiously tasted some. It was absolutely tasteless, like eating congealed air. 

When Uncle Jim and Aunt Cecilia finally passed away, I helped my cousins empty out the old house.  When we reached the basement my cousins, who had been rather sluggish, suddenly revived and hurled away the cans and bottles as if they were live grenades.  I managed to save a bottle of Heinz ketchup as a memento.  The figure “1927” was etched on the bottom of the bottle, and the contents were completely black. The bottle exploded several days later when I carelessly left it in the sunlight on our kitchen table. There was tomato ectoplasm everywhere. It smelled of the Scopes Monkey Trial.   

Restaurant Review: Marley's. Provo, Utah.

The concept of 'sliders' is unknown outside of the United States. Ask a Brit what a slider is and he or she will likely say "Someone batting a sticky wicket, what?" A German might reply "Ein kinder mit der playground, ja?" And a Thai might say "Ting tang walla walla bing bang!" (Thais are very retro.)

Let's set the record straight; a slider is not a bad hamburger. It is a miniature gem of the meat kingdom, small enough, in theory, to slide down your throat in one delirious gulp. Although I personally don't recommend you try it, not with a slider from Marley's. They go to the trouble of putting lettuce, pickle, onion, and a tomato slice, as well as a piece of American cheese on it; making it rather more difficult to slide down your throat than, say, a whole mango.

At 100 North and Center, Marley's is well-located for business; but the shop itself is dinky and run by a one-man staff. They feature a 2 slider, french fries, and pie milkshake, combo for $13.50. I took a video of the guy making my pie shake; you can view it at my Facebook page if you so wish. Timothy R Torkildson.
It was good grub. I'm sure my kids are having fantods at the thought of me soaking up the cholesterol and calories at Marley's, but I promise to not eat there again for a good long while. The combo is rich to the point of surfeit.
I enjoyed putting on the feedbag there, and to add to my felicity a group of tween cheerleaders happened to stop by for a mess of carbs and grease prior to a competition.  Good luck to you, Macs Cheer Leading Club! A good look at you did more for my poor old heart than an electrocardiogram.

I'm giving this place Three Burps Plus. The food is just what you would expect from a place trying to ape a retro malt shop. All they need is a jukebox. With the slower metabolism of yours truly, I doubt I'll feel like eating another meal today, after my brunch at Marley's at 11:30 a.m. In fact, I just may go into hibernation until Boxing Day!

Some Minnesota nonprofits ride post-election surge

Other nonprofit leaders theorize that the election may well be inspiring more people to do good, whether or not they have a political agenda.

from the Minneapolis Star Tribune

So Trump is a source now for good?

I think that I'll knock on some wood.

The next thing you know

there'll be a floor show

to have the Pope grant him sainthood. 

Bonus:  Foam Rubber Mania.  http://bit.ly/2g5wfM2 

The richer I get

 And now there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression.

3 Nephi 6:5

The richer I get the more lazy

I become -- isn't that crazy?

Until I transgress

and have to confess

that my motivation is hazy . . . 

En Strengen av Perler: Foam Rubber Mania

Barnaby Bumpershoot started it all, back in the 1971 Blue Unit of Ringling Brother's clown alley.

We called him Barney for short. He had to make a seven foot tall foam rubber dragon for the walk-around that season. He wanted to show off his artsy-craftsy skills. Because he wanted to compete with our very own Michelangelo of the foam rubber, Mark Anthony. Mark was a happy tramp clown who sculpted foam rubber into amazing shapes. He created a full-sized elephant from foam rubber, and painted it to look like the real deal. It was used in a disappearing elephant act by the show for years. His most recent creation was a bedraggled vulture that sat on his shoulder, seeming to stare hungrily about for some roadkill.

Barney had gone to some kind of art school back in Nebraska, and considered himself the equal of Mark when it came to carving out wildlife from expanded rubber. So he went to work on a green dragon and had it done by the time we reached Madison Square Garden. It was a smash hit with the audience as it walked along, waving a claw and wagging its tail.

Mark, who had nary a mean bone in his body, congratulated Barney on his comic coup de foudre. Then immediately began sculpting a foam rubber anteater, using an electric carving knife -- the instrument of choice by all serious foam rubber artistes.

When completed, Mark's anteater stuck out a long thin red tongue, and could also squirt a jet of water through its elongated proboscis, thanks to the rubber syringe Mark had hidden inside it.

For close up work with the audience, it proved to be just as much a crowd pleaser as Barney's green dragon.

And then Charlie Baumann, the fearsome Performance Director, stirred things up by announcing one afternoon before the matinee at the Garden: "Okay funnymen, Mr. Feld likes der floppy animal tings you make. He vants more -- schnell, schnell! Make it schnappy!"

Old man Feld had bought the show from the last of the Ringling brothers a few years back, and was now the head honcho. His word was law. If he wanted lots of foam rubber clown props, he was going to get them!

The hum of electric carving knifes slicing through foam rubber night and day made clown alley sound like a boutique sawmill. Tigers, kangaroos, zebras, parrots, and even an aardvark, were soon carved and slapped together with a crude coat of spray paint. But in the hands of rank amateurs the props looked lumpy and grotesque, not cute and eccentric, and they fell apart like the shoddy handiwork they were. It was not unusual to see various animal parts strewn around the arena after each walk around, with Smiley, one of the roustabouts, using a push broom to gather them all up to return to clown alley.

Bear and I decided we would ask Mark to tutor us before touching a single piece of foam rubber.

"Well, what kind of an animal do you want?" he asked us.

Good question, that. We hadn't really thought it through. Bear, practical as ever, asked in return:

"Well, what kind of animal is easiest to carve and paint?"

"Chicken. It'll take you an hour to make one to walk around in."

So Mark showed us how to make a giant foam rubber chicken. He then suggested we carve out a large egg from a block of Styrofoam he just happened to have lying around, attach it to a long piece of elastic rope, attach the other end to the giant chicken's butt, and then have one of us inside the chicken walk around the track, occasionally dropping the Styrofoam egg. The other one would be dressed like a farmer, pick up the egg, hold it until the elastic rope was stretched good and tight, and then let go. The egg would then shoot back to the giant chicken's butt -- and another classic clown gag was born.

It was a brilliant sight gag, and garnered Bear and I some huge belly laughs. The only problem was that Bear thought I was made for the part of the chicken, which hid me completely from the audience.

"Why don't you get inside the darn thing, and I'll be the farmer getting the laughs?" I asked after the first few times.

"Tork, you've got such skinny legs they already look like chicken legs. Mine are way too chubby -- it wouldn't be funny anymore."

That didn't sound very convincing to me. Besides, the Styrofoam egg kept ricocheting off my legs when it snapped back, and it stung. I finally gave Bear an ultimatum; either he could get inside the chicken for a week or he could find another stooge to do it. Bear gave in, not very gracefully, and the next matinee I capered about with the Styrofoam egg like a madman before letting it snap back into the giant chicken.

I could hear Bear's muffled cries as the egg slapped into his calves. Ha! I thought to myself; now the egg is on the other foot.

That evening clown alley was tipped off that old man Feld was to watch the show to check up on a number of things, including the new foam rubber clown props. This would be my big chance to show off in front of him!  Bear, needless to say, was a mite peeved that he had to be incognito inside the giant chicken. But I reminded him that a bargain was a bargain. He'd get his chance to shine some other time . . .

The band struck up Lazarus Trombones by Fillmore, which was our cue to take our clown gags around the track for the walk-around. First went Mark with his anteater, then Barney in his green dragon, then Prince Paul smoking a huge foam rubber cigar fully five feet long, then Swede Johnson riding a chariot that appeared to be pulled by ducks, and then me and Bear started around the track.

Just as we got in front of old man Feld to begin the routine the elastic rope broke.

Bear kept waiting for the egg to snap back; I just stood there with my mouth open like a dead carp. Finally I sidled up to Bear, informed him of the disaster, and we both ran off in horrid embarrassment.

After the show that night Baumann came back to clown alley to tell Bear and I that the chicken gag was out -- Mr. Feld hated it.

So Bear and I retired the giant chicken to one of the prop boxes and went with 'Bigger and Bigger'. All it took was a balloon and a long needle. Not cutting edge, but at least we no longer quarreled about who was going to crawl into the chicken anymore.