A Fundraiser in Clown Alley

Several years ago I was embroiled in an embarrassing contretemps with my employer over a company blog I wrote about the use of homonyms -- words that sound the same but have different meanings, such as “See” and “Sea.” This misunderstanding eventually led to my termination, which I detailed on my personal blog, which was then picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune and went viral online. Here is the full story, if you want to read about it:  http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/sltrib/politics/58236366-90/says-english-homophones-language.html.csp

I found it difficult to find another job because of my sudden notoriety, and so in desperation I turned to online fundraising to help me get back to Thailand and resume my career as an English teacher. My fundraiser site is still active at https://www.gofundme.com/cmbn6w

But alas, the money did not come pouring in, so I spent an uncomfortable winter living in a friend’s unheated basement, sleeping in a recliner and eating at a local soup kitchen. I never did find gainful employment again, taking early Social Security instead.

I mention all this as prelude to my recollection of a fundraiser held for Spaghetti Joe in the Ringling Blue Unit clown alley about 41 years ago. Spaghetti Joe was only four foot ten; he had the classic Napoleon chip on his shoulder, impelling him to talk big, brag outrageously, and swagger around spending his money for drinks on the house and on the tallest, most statuesque shady ladies he could find. He was convinced he was born lucky, so gambled incessantly. The result of all this, naturally enough, was that at the end of the season he was not only dead broke, but in hock to every usurer on the show. And they were very earnest when it came to collecting their vigorish. “A session with the elephants” was the traditional method of encouraging deadbeats; it consisted of shoving the victim between two of the larger pachyderms late at night and then making a loud noise to startle the animals. Elephants sleep standing up, and the entire herd would start to sway back and forth, trumpeting in alarm. Anyone caught between two of the beasts at such a moment was lucky to escape with his life.

Spaghetti Joe was not a popular guy in clown alley, because of the above character traits, but also because he was just plain lousy as a clown. In Clown College he had incurred the wrath of master clown Lou Jacobs for the wobbly intricacy of the lines on his clown makeup.

“Too much spaghetti!” Jacobs pronounced, and so hapless little Joe became Spaghetti Joe to everyone on the show. Besides his makeup, which from a distance looked like a black and blue smudge, Spaghetti Joe was incapable of following orders or taking advice from the veteran clowns. He abused the phrase “Do your own thing” when it came to ensemble clowning; nobody wanted to work with him because we didn’t know what he would do when he felt ‘inspired.’ But whatever it turned out to be, it was always as unfunny and unappealing as a scab on a baby.

So sympathy was lacking for Spaghetti Joe in clown alley the last week of the season when the loan sharks closed in on him. He went to every clown, begging for some financial help to stave off his imminent session with the elephants. He got the cold shoulder from each of us. But then Spaghetti Joe did something unheard of in the annals of clown alley history. During intermission he sat at his trunk and wept. He sobbed uncontrollably as great bubbles of snot blew out his nose. He was so miserable and afraid that he no longer cared about his tough guy image; he regressed back to that scared little kid we all have hiding in us somewhere. I don't think he was play acting; he just wasn't bright enough for that.

Now you can threaten clown alley, cajole it with flattery, taunt it with challenges, or beg it for mercy, and clown alley will simply turn its back to moon you. That is the nature of the collective beast. But no one in clown alley had ever broken down and cried like a baby before. We were nonplussed, standing around in confused knots wondering silently what to do. When Charlie Baumann the baleful Performance Director came in to give us the ten minute warning before come in he glanced coldly at Spaghetti Joe’s spasms of grief, paused to light a cigarette, then asked boss clown LeVoi Hipps “Vhat de hell is it mit him? No more big shot, eh?” And Charlie smiled a slow cruel smile, the kind I imagine he used when serving in the German Army bayoneting French babies during World War Two. Before LeVoi could answer, Swede got up from his wooden folding chair, strolled over to Baumann, looked at him like he wanted to spit in his eye, and said “He’s all busted up because we’re throwing him a fundraiser tonight after the show. Tell the rest of the cast about it, will ya, Herr Baumann?”

Charlie snarled and turned away, like a stage villain, batting away the heavy blue curtains to make his discomfited exit.

“What’s this about a benefit for that little snicker?” demanded Dougie Ashton. “He don’t deserve it! What’s he done to deserve any help from any of us?”

At this question from Dougie, Swede Johnson, usually so philosophical and mellow, blew up like Mount St. Helens. He raged at Dougie to shut his infernal mouth or he’d tear him another one, and went on to exhaust just about every expletive and profane phrase in the English language in his efforts to describe the kind of lowlife scum we were for not helping a fellow joey out. No one dared point out that Swede had also told Spaghetti Joe to take a hike when initially asked for succour.

Swede ended his philippic by enjoining everyone to stick around after the evening show for Spaghetti Joe’s fundraiser, and to have their wallets open and ready to shell out, dammit.

That night, after we toweled off our makeup with baby oil, Swede gathered us around his trunk. Spaghetti Joe, like the rest of us, not exactly sure what Swede was up to, stayed over by his own trunk, quiet and subdued. A few of the showgirls and a smattering of Bulgarians and roustabouts crowded into the alley as well, having heard rumors of something crazy going on.

Swede’s fundraiser took the form of blackmail.

“Prince” he said to Prince Paul. “You remember when you was so drunk you ran right into the elephants during the Manage number? You recall who pulled you outta there?”

“You know you did” replied Prince gruffly.

“Then gimme ten dollars.” Swede held out his hand.

And that’s how Swede collected a goodly bundle that evening for Spaghetti Joe’s fundraiser. Being old, wise, and prying, Swede had the goods on everyone, and he pulled no punches as he described the various peccadilloes of clowns, acrobats, roustabouts, showgirls, and even some of the stars, who, it became clear, were hiding themselves outside the thick blue curtain to clown alley to find out if their particular skeleton was being dragged out of the closet. And those who had led a blameless life of sanctified purity, such as yours truly, got into the spirit of the thing and threw in a few dollars as well. Many of Swede’s scandalous stories were only a few words old when there would be a bleat or shriek, followed by a wad of greenbacks flung at Swede to keep him from continuing.

When Swede figured he had milked the crowd dry, he stuffed the cash into a brown paper shopping bag and solemnly walked it over to Spaghetti Joe’s trunk, handing it to him in silence. Spaghetti Joe uttered not a word, but his face was suffused with the kind of wonder you only see in children on Christmas morning.  

I would like to report that this touching scene caused Spaghetti Joe to turn over a new leaf. But I can’t. The next day he never showed up in clown alley. He was gone for good, having stiffed all the loan sharks and never having uttered a single solitary ‘thank you’ to Swede or anyone else for saving his bacon. To this day, I have no idea whatever became of that little rat.

And by the way, if I start getting some hefty contributions to MY fundraising site mentioned earlier, I’ll be heading back to Thailand to teach English again. It beats sticking around here to see what this country is going to be like during the next four years!  

The questions of Jesus

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?

I am a little sparrow and the Lord will note my hurt

If I should fail to fly away but crash into the dirt.

He spares the weak and lowly; he spurns the high and fine.

And he will always make his love upon his flock to shine.

Kochmanski Rides Again

During rehearsals of the Ringling Blue Unit show for 1972 I took to wearing my wrist watch around my ankle. The reason is not complicated nor eccentric. The faux leather watchband expanded in the torrid Florida humidity until it flopped around on my skinny wrist and kept falling off. So I put it around my ankle, where it stayed snug as a bug in a rug. When I wanted to know the time I simply lifted my knee and looked down at my exposed ankle.

Kochmanski, the Polish clown, took advantage of my unusual circumstance, waiting patiently by my side until somebody in the vicinity asked “What time is it?” He immediately pounced on my ankle and pulled it up to his face to gaze at my watch, upending me ass over teakettle.

“Is four O’clock” he said cheerfully, while I lay sprawled on the ground.

Thereafter I removed the watch band from my ankle, keeping it in my pocket. But I didn’t begrudge Kochmanski his violent little joke, because he was a hard guy to dislike. Diminutive and wiry, he did a Charlot (Chaplin) character in the show, faithfully accompanied by his wire hair fox terrier Kropka. When he whistled, Kropka was trained to sink his teeth into the rear of Kochmanski’s black and white checkered pants until they gave way to expose a bright red pair of jockey shorts. In clown alley Kochmanski was quiet and polite to everyone. He read comic books to improve his English.

“Kaboom!” he would repeat out loud, followed by a quizzical “Splat?”

“What is it, this boo-eng?” he asked me once, referring to an Archie comic where Jughead’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets at the sight of a giant hamburger, accompanied by a balloon sound effect reading “BOING!”   

“It means . . . “ I tried to explain, not very successfully, “Uh, it means when something is like shot out of something else and makes a popping sound but it’s not a popping sound, it’s like a spring or something that goes ‘boing’.”

“Tenk you, Tim” he said politely. He was the only person in clown alley who called me Tim. To everyone else I was Tork, or Pinhead, or Nut-Nut, or Pete the Pup (because of my one black eye), or Torkil-Twinkle, or Schmutz Finger. Like I say, he was hard to dislike.

And his wife, Slavka, was just as nice. Although, as it turned out, she was not really . . .

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here; so let’s back up.

Born and raised in Poland, Kochmanski had spent the tail end of World War Two in a concentration camp for helping to hide some Jewish neighbors. He told me that when he was liberated he found his village blasted and blown away and his family scattered beyond recall. So he joined up with a ragtag circus, as a roustabout, and then learned how to be a bareback rider. That skill took him all over the Soviet Bloc and then to America, where he was able to defect. A bad fall from a horse left him with a slight limp, and so he became a clown. A good one. His Charlot character paid tribute to the ineffable sadness that Chaplin could sometimes display. After his tragic experiences during World War Two, I imagine this was not too hard for Kochmanski to display. And he was up to anything when it came to clown gags; he could throw a pie, take a slap or a fall, and mug it up with the best of ‘em. He never put on any airs as an artiste, as Dougie Ashton, who came from a famous Australian circus family, sometimes did.

And his Slavka made a wonderful pickle soup. She was shorter than he was, with black hair, and loved to sit in the pie car, chain smoking Winstons and playing solitaire. She did not work in the show, preferring to stay at the train all day and cook hearty Polish soups for Kochmanski when he came back at night. Those first few weeks of the season I would give her a smile and a friendly nod when I saw her. She didn’t appear to have many friends on the show. I never saw her gossiping with the other Polish ladies, who worked mostly in Ladies Wardrobe. One day as I passed by her with a smiling nod she stopped me to ask in halting English if I would like to come over that evening for some ‘zup.’

“Is good zup” she said. “Make with pickles.”  

I said sure and that night I tasted a dish that has left me dissatisfied with other watery concoctions for the past forty years. She made it with hamburger, potatoes, and dill pickles; that much I know. But as to how she combined it and coaxed it to turn into ambrosia as it caressed my tonsils on its way down, I never found out. I meant to ask her, but by the time the show reached Madison Square Garden . . .

Slavka was gone; replaced by Brygida, who Kochmanski introduced as his wife. Who was a brunette that never smoked, although she too played solitaire in the pie car all day long. I was sure Kochmanski had introduced Slavka to me as his wife; could I have misunderstood his ambiguous English? When I asked him he smiled pleasantly at me and just said “Is Brygida my wife here, no?”

Well, she didn’t have me over for pickle soup -- but otherwise she seemed okay. So I didn’t think anything more about it.

Until the show reached Denver. Then Brygida was replaced by Magda, a stunning blonde who towered over Kochmanski. She too played solitaire all day long in the pie car, and never smiled. By now I was not only confused about Kochmanski’s apparently polygamous marital status, but extremely curious -- and a bit censorious. I figured if I asked him outright he’d give me some convoluted rigmarole, half English and half Polish, so I went to Prince Paul, who had worked with Kochmanski longer than any of the other clowns.

“What gives?” I asked Prince early one afternoon in clown alley, before there were too many people around. “How come Kochmanski has got a wife in every port, like a sailor?”

Prince put down his New York Times, removed his half moon glasses, and gave me a frown that had his lower lip sticking out like a balcony.

“None of ‘em are his legal wife, Schmutz Finger” he replied. “The Nazis killed his first wife a long time ago. He got married again, but he had to leave her behind in Poland when he came here back in ‘65. When he defected the Commie momsers back there locked her up, and he hasn’t heard from her since. So he grabs a couple of poor Polish grass widows along the route each year, let’s ‘em tag along for awhile, pays ‘em off good, and then hooks up with another one. And it’s really none of your damn business, is it?”

I told Prince I guess not, then went over to my trunk to get ready for come in. I remember that day the shows were hard to do, hard to have fun with. The world can sure be a mean place sometimes.   

Twirly Birds

As a Ringling clown I gathered tons of prestige, but not much mazumah. This was not really a problem as long as I remained a breezy bachelor, but once I married and the little nippers began appearing at regular intervals Ringling became less appealing to me. Shrine circuses were still going strong back then; they had a much shorter season than Ringling, but they paid a lot better and they gave the clowns a fifty-fifty split on concession sales if they wanted to do it.

That’s the reason I found myself up in the Yukon during the late spring of 1984, clowning with the Tarzan Zerbini Shrine Circus. The routing of the show was irregular, to say the least. We started in Whitehorse, the territorial capital, and then moved north towards Dawson, hitting every village with a quonset hut hockey rink on the way. We played Haines Junction, Carmacks, Faro, Mayo, and a dozen other spots that boasted nothing more than a gas station, a Hudson Bay Mail Order Center, and a native population that had nothing to spend their money on except our show. Those were long overnight trips between towns, with the road as straight and flat as a ruler, with the Northern Lights slithering through the sky above.

In most villages the population was not enough to warrant two shows, but we did two anyway because everyone not only came to the matinee but to the evening show as well. They applauded everything just as wildly the second time around. And the sale of tchotchkes was phenomenal.

I worked with a clown team called Tom and Jerry. Neither of them had any Ringling experience; they had come up the hard way with mud shows. They knew every angle a small tented show uses to ‘make the nut’ (turn a profit), and when we hit the Yukon they saw a huge opportunity to make a killing. And they were decent enough to cut me in on it.

The show carried one semi full of nothing but tchotchkes -- trinkets and baubles like kazoos and strings of metallic colored beads. If we sold them we got the fifty-fifty split. But the show owner had made what he called a ‘boneheaded mistake’ by ordering 30 thousand Chinese-made twirly birds. These were cheap handmade red cylinders with some imitation feathers pasted on one end, tied to a long thin bamboo splinter painted blood red. When they were twirled around they made a high piercing shriek. But they were so cheaply made that they fell apart after a hour or two of use. We couldn’t sell them in the States -- nobody wanted such shoddy stuff. But as soon as Tom and Jerry saw the lay of the land up in the Yukon they went to the show owner and offered to take all the twirly birds off his hands for three hundred dollars. The owner, thinking he was getting the best of the bargain, demanded cash on the barrelhead before turning the twirly birds over to Tom and Jerry. They in turn told me if I would give them a hundred bucks out of my future profits they’d cut me in on what promised to be a wonderful bonanza. I said sure why not.

And then the magic began. Starting in Whitehorse every blessed man, woman, and child wanted a twirly bird. We charged 2 Canadian dollars for each one. And when the twirly bird inevitably broke they did not come back to us to complain -- they came back to buy another one. We kept all the money on every sale.

After a few days of this Tom took Jerry and me to the gas station cafe, where we had poutine washed down with (I kid you not) Homo brand milk. Tom proposed that we cut down our clowning to just the bare minimum required by our contracts and concentrate on unloading every single twirly bird in the next few weeks before we headed out of the Yukon. Because once we got back to civilization, said Tom, those twirly birds wouldn’t be worth a dime. I don’t like admitting to whoring after the almighty dollar at the expense of bringing laughter into the world, but I had a hunch I would never be making so much money so easily again in my life, so I agreed. We did a hurried Bigger and Bigger during the show, and that was about it. Otherwise we went out into the audience to sell twirly birds. We sold them before the show and after the show, and if there had been any real houses around we would have gone door to door selling them.  

Oh, it felt good to wire that money home! I told Amy to take all the kids to the dentist; we could pay for it in cash. She bought a good used car, finally disposing of our old clunker which had all the earmarks of a deathtrap -- bald tires, sluggish brakes, whining fan belts, and piston rods ready to drop at a moment’s notice. She bought herself some new clothes, at a real department store, instead of haunting the Ladies section of the Goodwill Store. A new TV; a VCR; a new Frigidaire that dispensed water and ice from the door. She paid back a loan we took from her parents when the first baby came along during a period when I was “at liberty,” as the circus trade says of being out of work.

Tom turned out to be one hundred percent correct about the end of our El Dorado; as soon as we crossed over into British Columbia and started playing spots like Kamloops and Chilliwack we couldn’t give away our remaining twirly birds. Thank the bon Dieu we managed to sell all but a hundred or so before the market collapsed.

That winter was one of the happiest times of my life. Amy had wisely saved much of the money I’d sent her, and so there was no pressing urgency for me to work during those off months. I could play the pater familias to my heart’s content. One extravagance I allowed myself was the purchase of the complete works of Laurel and Hardy on video cassette. It cost a pretty penny, but soon I had the satisfaction of hearing my children repeat catch phrases such as “Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into” and “Hard boiled eggs and nuts, huh!”

The Questions of Jesus

"And why take ye thought for raiment?"

Since Adam fell that men might be
We cover up remarkably
With skins and toga, kilts and pants,
Made from animals and plants.
Around our necks a collar goes,
Choking us until we doze.
Shod with Nike or Doc Martens;
No matter which, the price disheartens.
As if all that does not flummox,
We also have to put on socks!
Like Adam we should shun the weave --
But then we’d hear from Ms. Eve!

How Trump Will Go Down in History

His foot in his mouth, all agree

Is how Trump will make history.

No one so inept

Has ever been swept

Into the job so peewee.

Riding the Unicycle

It is a shameful part of my clown history that I never mastered the unicycle.

At Ringling Clown College the unicycle was taught by an excitable Arabian gentleman who also taught acrobatics. At our first session with unicycles he demonstrated how to mount and stay seated on one. Then he let us all take a turn. Several of the students had already acquired the skill, smugly speeding around the arena. The rest of us gamely used a wall railing to mount and find our balance. Within a week everyone could ride a unicycle to some extent. Everyone but me.

The instructor, Hassan Habibi, came from a long line of tumblers, who had thrived in the querulous Middle East for generations. He was a tough little gamecock, unused to admitting defeat. He did not care for my inability to ride a unicycle, taking it as a personal insult. My problem was I never achieved enough momentum to stay vertical. Once mounted, I always fell over sideways. And let me tell you something, those unicycle seats are unforgiving when you remain on one during a fall. But Habibi would not let me quit.

“Up! Up!” he shouted, his voice rising an octave with each injunction. “You must mount quickly and go forward like a gazelle! You are not trying at all! Why do you shame me like this?”

When the day’s classes were done and the rest of the students went down to the beach for a sunset swim I had to stay behind to take remedial unicycling. Habibi wanted to put on a unicycle exhibition for the Clown College graduation show, featuring all the students wheeling in unison. My willful dereliction would prevent this triumphant display.

Bill Ballantine, the Clown College dean, finally interceded on my behalf. He told Habibi to cease and desist. And just in time, too; I was so bruised and tender that I had to shuffle along sideways, like a crab.  

The unicycle exhibition went on without me. It was a huge success, and became a tradition with succeeding graduation shows.

I put all thoughts of the odious unicycle behind me once I got on the road with the Blue Unit. There was much to learn. How to whip up a batch of shaving soap for pie fights. How to fall on a dozen balloons to burst them simultaneously. The best way to attach a gunpowder squib to my derriere to avoid powder burns when it went off. I mastered all these arcane skills, and many more, the first few weeks of the season.

But then I came down with a bad case of puppy love for one of the showgirls. And she was enamored of the members of the King Charles Troupe -- a Harlem Globetrotters knockoff that rode unicycles. To gain her attention and possibly some of her affection I determined to once again confront my old nemesis, the unicycle.

Since my motivation was carnal rather than theoretical this time around I thought I might succeed. Charlie King and Keywash, two of the stars of the King Charles troupe, had roomettes on the same train car as me; they liked my fresh-scrubbed Minnesota looks and we became friends. So I asked them both to help me get the hang of riding a unicycle. When I told them it was because of my clandestine love of the showgirl Jody, who was one of the last to withhold her favors from anyone on the show, they grinned at me, patted me on the shoulder, and became disgustingly avuncular.

“What you gotta do, Tork” said Keywash, “is never look down once you up on it. You look forward an’ sideways, sure. But not down. Jess like climbing a big mountain. You get me?”

I said I got him.

“My boy” began Charlie King, his arm around my shoulder in a firm grip; his tone that of a manager with his greenest prize fighter. “Don’t let this thing get you down. Who’s the boss, you or the unicycle? Right. You are! Once you mount that unicycle and get her to do your bidding, you can . . . “ he went on with a rather scurrilous analogy about mounting certain other objects which we need not go into here. Needless to say, I was getting hotter to jump on that unicycle by the moment.

Charlie King graciously loaned me his own chrome plated and rhinestone covered unicycle. I leaped on it with gusto and determination and began to pedal like mad. I made it three feet before keeling over, hitting my head on the side of an elephant tub in the process. Charlie and Keywash rushed over to me, hauled me upright, checked for head wounds (none) and immediately lifted me back on the unicycle with encouraging remarks about getting right back on the horse after it bucks you off.  

This time I made it all of five feet before tilting over. I was getting better, but was also experiencing a ringing sensation emanating from inside my skull. Suddenly the thought of a torrid big top romance with Jody seemed ridiculous, a ludicrous pursuit akin to wrangling with windmills.  

“Sorry fellahs” I said to Charlie and Keywash, handing them back the unicycle and shaking my head to deaden the reverberations inside it, “but I don’t think I’m ready to take on a showgirl just yet. I hear they can be awful expensive to satisfy.”

To their credit, Charlie and Keywash did not haze me or tease me about the matter. As experienced and broadminded enthusiasts in the game of love, they agreed with me that perhaps I was wise to put off my first affair amoroso until my physical and financial prowess had ripened a bit more.

Jody eventually hooked up with a candy butcher. After several seasons they married and settled down in Neptune Beach running a frozen yogurt shop. So everything worked out for the best, since I hate frozen yogurt.

The Hobbies of Clown Alley

The merry jesters of the Ringling clown alley were not averse to lavishing their funds on wine, women, and song. Thus it came about that every November as the show wound down, getting ready to return to winter quarters in Florida, a number of denizens in clown alley suddenly found themselves financially embarrassed.

But not the veteran clowns. They made a decent salary, and they had been around the block a time or two. They had wives or business managers who took care of their income, allowing them to spend the winter months at leisure so they could catch up on their sleep and pursue their sometimes surprising hobbies.

Mark Anthony was obsessed with the “Pueblo Incident.” During the off season he collected every scrap of print about that unfortunate episode when North Korea captured a US Navy gunboat. He kept all this in several immense scrapbooks in a storage locker he rented in New Jersey. I went with him once out to it, so he could check to see that the “black bellied paper noshing beetles” (as he called them) had not done any damage. He was worried because he used homemade flour paste as an adhesive. He knew the names of the entire crew, all 83 of them, and he carved a beautiful bas-relief of all of them and their ship on a large slab of Carrara marble, which he donated to the American Merchant Marine Museum, in Kings Point, New York. Mark had trouble differentiating between North and South Korea. I once saw him toss a brand new rubber mallet out the door of his camper in disgust because he noticed a label on it saying ‘Made in South Korea.’

LeVoi Hipps, our boss clown for several seasons, owned a small citrus grove in Florida, to which he repaired during the off season. It really was more of a hobby farm, since he refused to grow anything that he could sell profitably. His passion was raising Nagami kumquats. His kids refused to eat them and his wife could not find a good jam recipe for them, so when they ripened he would pick them and place them in bushels by the side of the road with a sign imploring motorists to stop and take as many as they wanted. Hardly anyone ever did. I had dinner at his trailer house several times during the off season, and each time I ate a dozen of them prior to the meal out of sympathy for his forlorn fruit hobby. You eat them whole, rind and all. They weren’t bad, only they made my lips pucker something fierce.

Don Washburn, otherwise known as Sparky, was crazy about china tea cups. During the season he loved to drift through thrift stores looking for a stray Royal Doulton or Limoges cup. During the off season he traveled the length and breadth of California as a vendor at outdoor flea markets. Each cup was packed in yards of jeweler’s cotton, which was not supposed to be flammable. But it was, and a fire in his truck one night scorched his beloved cups beyond repair, cracking most of them as well. After that, Sparky began collecting pewter snuff boxes. But he did it listlessly, without passion or conviction. When he talked about fine bone china his eyes would light up like a pachinko machine; but snuff boxes were just something to pass the time.

“You gotta have a hobby in the circus” he told me. “Otherwise you just go crazy -- or crazier.”

Anchor Face spent the winter months testing barstools in Massachusetts. He bragged he could nurse one beer for hours without even losing the head of foam. He told me swiveling barstools should be avoided; they tended to make you dizzy (apparently how much you drank while sitting on one had nothing to do with it.) A captain’s chair barstool, in his estimation, was about the best place to rest one’s fanny when bending the elbow. It had some back support, some bottom cushioning, and, most important, you only found them in really classy cocktail lounges where lonely women congregated and were glad of the chance to buy a forlorn circus clown laid off for the winter a few snorts. And maybe a meal to boot.

I think Prince Paul collected delusions during the winter months, he seemed to have so many more of them every new season. He discovered a company in Colorado that sold pine cones for chewing. Thereafter he always had a bit of pinecone in his mouth, claiming it sweetened the breath and prevented cavities. He certainly carried a resinous reek with him from then on. To protect his sensitive eyesight he wore a brand of sunglasses that guaranteed nothing but blue light spectrum rays could get past the lens. This essentially made him blind as a bat when he wore them. At Madison Square Garden he ran into a closing elevator door and had the tip of his nose snipped clean off. He came into the alley the next day with his nose stitched up and so raw he had to wear a rubber nose for the next six weeks. He abominated reading a used newspaper, even though he was otherwise so tight he squeaked. He explained to me, in all seriousness, that you only got the latest news from a crisp new paper -- anything already opened and perused was as archaic and useless as a singletree.

I didn’t believe Swede Johnson’s hobby when he told me what it was.

“I like to build bottles in ships on my off time” he told me once.

“You mean ships in bottles” I corrected him.

“Nope, pinhead. I put together little bottles of gin and such inside model ships.”

“Aw, go on, you old ninny; there’s no such thing!”

He just shook his head at my abysmal ignorance and walked away. Several weeks later he came over to my trunk in clown alley, a wicked grin splitting his lopsided face in half. In his hands was a scale model of the Mayflower, and down in the hatches he pointed out a miniature bottle of Johnnie Walker.

“Did you rig that up just for me, you miserable old sinner?” I asked.

“Is the Pope a Republican?” he shot back, continuing to grin like the Cheshire Cat on something anabolic.

From the New York Times:  A New York Times feature writer, Jacob Bernstein, has come forward as the reporter who made derogatory comments about Melania Trump at a Fashion Week event on Sunday, apologizing in a four-part tweet.

Reporters who quiet can’t be

About others fine livery,

But must become snide

Deserve a rich tide

Of media ignominy.

The questions of Jesus

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

A publican told me “Hello.”

Insulted, I gave him a blow.

An angel appeared

And said “I’m a-feared

In heaven to him you’ll kowtow.”

Irwin Corey, Comedian and ‘Foremost Authority,’ Dies at 102

The ultimate Authority, in need of thoughtful gnome,

Has gone and called Professor Irwin Corey to his home.

No more in sneakers and frock coat will Corey clarify

All the issues of the day in language daft and sly.

But Somewhere Irwin Corey will continue to explain

To laughing angels that theology is just chow mein.

The Day I Made Verne Langdon Cry

The day I made Verne Langdon cry was towards the end of my term at the Ringling Clown College. I had been struggling with the makeup class Verne taught. He was a knowledgeable and dedicated makeup artist who inspired my fellow classmates to create stunning yet breezy clown faces.

My attempts at clown makeup were, by comparison, grotesque -- not to say frightening. My efforts at applying greasepaint looked like fingerpainting. When I tried a hobo makeup I looked like a refugee from a coal scuttle. My auguste makeup showed the consequences of a childhood spent coloring outside the lines. And when I spread on the classic whiteface, I gave a pretty good impression of Bela Lugosi in “Dracula Versus Eczema.”

Verne, who created the makeup for the original “Planet of the Apes”, and who lived in a house in Beverly Hills that was an exact replica of the Seven Dwarves cottage in Disney’s “Snow White,” was very patient and long suffering with my fumbling fingers as he tried to guide me towards a clown makeup that would not scare off too many circus patrons. But even he had his limits.

On the day of which I speak I decided that I wanted to pay homage to Oliver Hardy by emulating his curl bangs and toothbrush mustache in whiteface. The resulting facial carnage was ghastly. Rather than remove the abomination quickly and start over, I decided to brazen it out; powdering my face to set the makeup until Langdon came down to my end of a long row of picnic tables.. We were located under the south bleachers of the winter quarters rehearsal barn, which opened to the outside with some folding doors to give us maximum use of the natural sunlight.  

When he saw my face he gasped and sat down. Cupping his face in his hands, we all heard him groan “Ye gods and little fishes, what has Torkildson wrought now?” When he looked up, his face a mask of pain, there were rivulets of moisture trickling down his tanned and robust cheeks. Vern was considered an artist of note by Hollywood. His obituary ran to five pages in Fangoria Magazine. Some of his work is on display at several museums throughout the world. Yet in me, an obscure dunce from the icy, lefse-haunted wilderness of Minnesota, he had met his match.

After that episode he left me to my own devices. I continued to struggle to find the right combination of colors and lines that would produce a memorable clown face. But nothing seemed right, and my clumsy efforts continued to distort and defy all the rules of theatrical makeup. I finally decided that a simple whiteface makeup suited my me best, and it was nearly impossible to screw up as long as I kept it very simple. So after I slathered on the Stein’s Clown White, I penciled my eyebrows black, put a red dot on my nose, and colored my lower lip red. That was it. It was more mime than Ringling, but Langdon could look at it without shuddering.

Came the big night of our graduation show, when the rehearsal barn was filled with circus management and most of the inhabitants of Venice, Florida, to watch us strut our stuff. This one-time performance of old clown routines and a few new wrinkles thought up by the bolder students would determine who got a contract with Ringling and who was just given a handshake and sent on their way to eke out a drab existence somewhere else.

Needless to say, I was nervous that evening as I applied my makeup. Keep it simple, Tork, I kept telling myself. But some evil imp got into me as I put the finishing touches on my face. I decided that a demure teardrop under my right eye would set things off rather nicely. I dipped my brush in the small saucer of lampblack by my side and began tracing. But my unsteady hand betrayed me; the intended shape became an irregular blob; the more I tried to fix it the more unmanageable it became -- until it began to look like a birthmark, not a teardrop.

There was no time to clean it off and start over -- the show started in five minutes. I did my best to smooth out the shape until it looked something like the black eye people wore in Tareyton cigarette commercials. Thinking I had really blown it, I trooped out with the rest of the students for the opening number . . .

And found my clown trademark. It was unique; it was attention-getting; and it didn’t scare children. Irvin Feld said he liked the little black eye when he handed me my one year contract to sign. And Verne Langdon forgave me, saying at the aftershow party “You pulled it off, Torkildson! Now for godsake stop trying to improvise and stick with that face.”

Which I did for the next thirty years.