A Letter to Tim Holst

(continued from A Clown in Williston ND)

I have always loved writing letters. I still write them today, in the Age of Email -- mostly to grand kids, who think that mail carriers are my personal assistants. In the Ringling clown alley of 45 years ago I nearly bankrupted myself, buying stamps and stationery. My portable Underwood clacked merrily away day and night.

My news director job at KGCX turned out to be less of a sinecure than I thought it would be. And I wrote reams of letters to friends back in clown alley about it. I had to jump out of bed at 4am to walk down to the station and turn it on. The station’s broadcasting equipment was elderly, bought piecemeal from Army surplus entrepots and assembled by Oscar Halvorson, the owner. He was actually a wheat farmer who had taught himself electronics over the years, first as a hobby and then as a business investment. My job was to get Oscar’s vacuum tubes warmed up properly before turning on the main switch to flood the whole shebang with current. A cold vacuum tube is finicky and liable to blow up if not handled with kid gloves. This required an exact sequence of events; turning on switch A before switch B, and waiting ten minutes before turning on switch C, and so on. My skills in this department were puny. I’d forget the order or wait too long or do something else that left the broadcast assembly unfriendly and uncooperative. Then I’d have to call Oscar to guide me. Although he was a farmer, he was not an early riser. And he didn’t care to be roused from slumber while it was still pitch black outside. He soon gave me a nickname: Dum Gutt. That’s Norwegian for stupid boy.

Once I had the whole thing up and humming, I played a scratchy recording of the Star Spangled Banner and then announced that KGCX was now on the air. This was followed by the latest weather forecast off the AP machine and then a selection from an old Jim Neighbors record called “Hymns and Country Favorites.” At this point I turned everything over to the announcer at the home office over in Montana and busied myself getting my first local newscast ready.    

I rarely got out of the office before 4pm. And then there were city council meetings, county commissioner meetings, and school board meetings to attend at night. And whenever there was a lull in the action at the office I wrote letters. Lots of letters. On thick and grainy yellow paper provided for the AP machine in large rolls. This gave me the appearance of being very busy all the time, which impressed Oscar, but not his wife Faye, who did a ten minute Farm Cooking show each morning.

“You’re always writing away but you don’t produce much news” she liked to tell me. I would just smile and nod my head in reply. Then I would mention her in my next letter to Tim Holst as “that horse-faced harpy with a beehive hairdo.” For of all the people I wrote to during my tenure at KGCX about half of the letters went to Holst. Because he always wrote back -- not much, maybe just a postcard, but it was comforting to get a reply with the Ringling letterhead on it. I always made carbon copies of my letters, and I still have a goodly number of them today, salted away in an old footlocker. One of my first letters to him from Williston concerned l’affaire Becky Thingvold. With a few edits for clarity and continuity, here’s what I wrote him:

My Dear Holsty Tolsty;

These early North Dakota mornings are only made bearable by the song of the birds. I take a ten block walk from my basement apartment to the station, along streets that have houses on one side and wheatfields on the other side.The stoplights flash green until 6am, then automatically begin their duty of harassing what little traffic there is. Downtown consists of a sleepy Main Street that dips down to the Amtrak station. On the other side of that is a slough that drains into the Missouri River. Meadowlarks and magpies and jays banter with me as I stroll, as if merrily mocking my decision to abandon the big top. I may take up birdwatching, as opposed to girl watching -- less stress.

I’m involved with a girl named Becky, a reporter on the local rag. Well, not ‘involved’ involved -- more like I have fed her a string of fibs about starting my own Clown College here in town. She wasn’t impressed with my clowning background until I mentioned that I would start up a clown school. She wants to attend it, to write about it for the paper, and if I could make her my only student . . . . (insert your own dirty clown joke here.)

So it seems I’m committed to training the rubes around here in the fine art of pie throwing and pants dropping. Good thing I’ve got my clown trunk stored in my mom’s basement. I wonder how much it costs to have it shipped out here on the train?

Boy, I miss living on the train! A different view from my window each week and those familiar sounds and reeks -- Roofus snoring like a buzz saw and raw sewage dripping on the tracks. Here I rent a basement apartment for one-hundred dollars a month. It has a small furnished living room and kitchen and a huge bedroom with a king size bed that’s the size of my roomette back on the circus train. I wonder who has my roomette this season? Bet it’s a First of May. Please tell me what they are like this season -- they can’t be as good as we were that first season.

Well, that’s all for now -- I’ve got to go down to the Cop Shop to see what Chief Atol has been up to. He’s a roly-poly chain smoker who starts every morning by replacing his Winstons with celery and carrot sticks, but by late afternoon he’s alway back on the nicotine -- like a dog back to its vomit. He’s from a tribe of Lebanese that settled in these parts sixty years ago as shopkeepers and cafe owners. Now they own most of the construction and paving companies in the county -- remember I told you there’s an oil boom going on here? The Chief was one of the main hellraisers in Williston when he was a kid, until, the way he tells it, he was brought before a judge who gave him a choice -- either ninety days in jail or he could join the police force. He chose the flatfoot option and worked his way up to Chief. That’s the way things work around here, I’ve noticed. If you’re a native you always move to the top of the greasy pole, and if you’re an outsider (like me) you stay where you are.

Be good, amigo -- and if you can’t be good at least be Republican.  Tork.

A week later I got Holst’s reply on a postcard:

Dear Tork; the new clowns are a sorry bunch. All college grads. They overthink the clown gags until Swede and Prince Paul start foaming at the mouth. Linda is pregnant. How does Barnum Bailey Holst sound for a name?

Yours until the popcorn runs out, Tim Holst.

(to be continued)

Restaurant Review: The Worst Restaurant in Provo.

There is a certain simple elegance to a hamburger with fries. No one is looking for a revelation between the bun or Balm of Gilead in the greasy french fry bag. Just have ketchup, mustard, salt, and napkins available, and I can enjoy myself on a basic, earthy level. But somehow the Rocky Mountain Drive Inn in Provo has managed to bollox up that simple equation terribly.

Their booths are designed for midgets. I couldn’t slide into any of them. The don’t even bring you your tray; you have to go up and get it yourself. A small thing, surely; but it’s the little details that add the right soupcon to a meal eaten out. Their decor is a puzzling, not to say disconcerting, blend of picture window and photos of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Ella Fitzgerald. What those three have to do with burgers and fries I cannot figure out. Unless it’s the fact that I’m pretty sure none of the three ever set foot in this forsaken burgery.

As for the food. Suffice it to say that the ketchup was the only part I found palatable. The french fries were wishy-washy; some were hard and stiff as an ironing board while other slices were spongy and starchy. My quarter cheese burger . . . well, it there was a quarter pound of meat in there, I’m a Baptist! And it leaked a goopy orange sauce with every bite until my table swam in it like kindergarten finger paint. It came lukewarm and by the time I was halfway done it had started to congeal into a cold and heartless piece of wreckage that Caligula would not feed to his prisoners. For the first, and I fervently hope the last, time in my adult life I couldn't finish either the burger or the fries. And I hadn't had any breakfast. Even my fountain drink tasted off, and there was no ice in their ice machine.

On the off chance I might be mistaken in my opinion, I asked the guy sitting in the next booth how he liked his corn dog and fries. He was wearing a black hoodie with Provo Law stenciled on the front.

"It was okay" he said grudgingly, as if aware if he perjured himself too badly he might be out of a job.

If you’re into culinary self-flagellation, by all means stop by the Rocky Mountain Drive Inn. Otherwise, fuhgeddaboudit.

A Clown in Williston ND

(continued from A Clown at Brown)

One of the first people I met at my new gig in Williston was Becky Thingvold, who worked as a general assignment reporter for the Williston Daily Herald. She had just graduated from Minot State College and the Herald was her first professional job. She was short and pert with brunette hair and an upturned nose, so I decided to fall in love with her and sweep her off her feet with my media savvy -- learned over the years at Ringling as a publicity-happy clown.

“I’m the news director at KGCX you’ve been hearing so much about” I began modestly.

“I thought you were hired by KEYZ Radio; they’re the only radio station in town as far as I know” she replied sweetly.

“Technically, KGCX is located across the state line in Sidney, Montana -- but we have a news and sales office here in town” I replied through gritted teeth. This was a sore spot with me -- I worked at a satellite office for the station, not even the home office. I thought I would be a big fish in a small pond, but it looked instead like I was a tadpole in a puddle.

“Well, what’s so special about you?” she asked impertinently. Now I was getting to like her.

“Oh, nothing much -- it’s just that my last job was as a clown with Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus. You might have heard of them . . . “ I waited for her double-take, but instead she did one of those funny girl moves when their bra or corset or whatever the hell it is they use to keep themselves vertical starts to pinch. Then she smoothed the front of her blouse and said “So you have no previous broadcast or journalism experience? Interesting. How do you think you’ll do with such a demanding job?”

“Why, um,I think it’s just . . . “ I began to splutter with indignation, sounding like a toy motorboat. I needed to make a bombshell announcement to recover my equilibrium, which this snip of a girl had sadly discombobulated.

“Actually, my job at the station will take second place to my main goal here in Williston” I said, wondering what in the Sam Hill my brain was going to tell my mouth to say next. The two were definitely not in sync at this moment.

“And what’s that?” she asked, looking more interested.

“I’m opening a clown academy here in town, to train young people in the ancient slapstick art of circus buffoonery!” I practically crowed.   

“Wow, that’s great!” she said enthusiastically. Now I had her. “I’d love to be one of your first students and write about it for the paper.”

“Well,” I temporized, rubbing my chin, “we’ll have to see about that. To be fair I’ll have to hold auditions to see who might have the raw talent necessary to successfully complete the course -- but I’ll certainly keep you mind, Becky. Mind if I call you Becky?”

“Not at all -- and I can call you Tim?”

“Of course. Why don’t we go down to Service Drug on Main for some fried egg sandwiches and talk it over some more? My treat.”

“Sure, Tim!”

And so we did. Using my turbo-imagination, which scaled breathtaking heights of folly and bombast under the impetus of her coruscating blue eyes, I briefly sketched out my plans to open the Academy as soon as possible, with the ultimate goal of putting Williston on the map as home to a renaissance of earthy big top comedy. After all, I boasted, I had worked directly under the greats like Emmett Kelly, Lou Jacobs, and Otto Griebling; the Dean of the Clown College himself, Bill Ballantine, a famous author and illustrator, had hand drawn my diploma for me (he did that for every graduate that year.)  I could hand pick my instructors from my close personal friends in the Ringling clown alley. Becky ate it up like laudanum-laced licorice.  

“I gotta go write this up and have my editor approve it” she apologized as she got up from her counter stool. “It should be in tomorrow’s paper” she said. “Meet you here tomorrow for lunch, then?” she asked.

Thrilled at my unexpected and total triumph, I merely nodded pleasantly in the affirmative, maintaining a complete sangfroid. After she was gone I strolled over to the candy counter and ordered several Russell Stover Maple Cream Easter Eggs as a sort of non-alcoholic digestif. They were on sale, two for a quarter. Then I went next door to walk up the dusty wooden stairs to the second storey office of KGCX.

As I sat down to my desk to peruse the latest pickings from the AP wire, the enormous scope of my gasconade hit me like the Tunguska Event. I could never pull off such a stunt by myself, and even if I could get a school of sorts up and running I had no idea if anyone in this hayseed community of 14-thousand would be the least bit interested in learning to clown.

“Uh, Arvella,” I said, turning to the office receptionist. She was a local farm girl with a face that would stop a sundial. “Do you think anyone would be very interested in learning how to become a circus clown around here?”

She put down her crochet needle and yarn to squint at me through her glasses.

“What? No! Who cares for that kind of thing” she replied decidedly. “Don’t forget you have to do the cattle prices from Fargo at 3!”

“No, I won’t forget” I said glumly. This was a fine kettle of fish I’d just pickled myself in. What was I going to do?  

(to be continued)

Thank You, Matt Kaminsky!

For all the many readers who liked my mini-memoir “Yellowed Journalism,” I just want to say May It Rain Gummi Bears On Your Parade!

Mike Weakley; Charles W. Fairbanks; Chris Twiford; Thomas R. Marshall; Matt Kaminsky; Charles G. Dawes; Gabriel Romero Sr.; Charles Curtis; John Nance Garner; Zasu Pitts; Henry A. Wallace; Alben W. Barkley; Nelson Rockefeller; and the magical Walter Mondale.

“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”

Steve King from Iowa

Out there in the cornfields stands a man so white and true

He throws out all the babies that do not share his own hue.

Not a racist, mind you; but a xenophobic dude

Whose policy is radical, and also very shrewd.

For on the fringe Steve King has found constituent support

For his idea America must be a kangaroo court.

God bless this man of tunnel vision, squinting at tomorrow --

Making sure that infants will grow up in ethnic sorrow.

 

Richard Simmons

Where is Richard Simmons? That is what I’d like to know.

Is he captive in Pyongyang or sledding in Fargo?

Is he in his basement held in chains by serving staff?

Does he wear a loincloth now and ride a tall giraffe?

Will we ever see this man in spangled shorts once more?

Or will we find his skeleton inside a candy store?

Come back, Richard Simmons -- it is three years since you stretched.

Upon our hearts and Spandex only your name has been etched!

Jason Chaffetz

You can take away my health care and my tasty icecream cone,

But do not ever try to take away my Samsung phone!

Take away my food stamps till my hands are cold and boney,

Just stay away from my fliptop that comes direct from Sony!

Just how would YOU survive if your own iPhone went away?

I bet you, Jason CHaffetz, that you’d cry the livelong day!

So don’t tell me I’m choosing tween my healthcare and Blackberry;

You cannot keep a job without a cell phone, you dumb wherry!

Yellowed Journalism

This rather murky photo of me dates back to January 19th, 1974. Taken by George Detrio (who went on to win a MacArthur Fellowship for portrait photography in 1981) for the Miami Sun Reporter, it purports to catch me in the act of breaking into one of the paper’s boxes for a free copy. All in good fun, of course.

This was the first newspaper interview that Steve Smith and I did as the advance clowns for the RIngling Blue Unit. We were both nervous. What if the reporter didn’t like us? What if we gave really stupid answers, or became tongue-tied?

Jan Korman was the reporter assigned to cover our appearance at the newspaper. Back in those breezy days just about anyone could walk into a newspaper office and wander about at will. Smith and I went in, unannounced, and had to ask several busy-looking characters pounding on manual typewriters where we could find Ms. Korman before we were directed to her desk on the third floor. Turns out she was a housewife-intern-news stringer. These strange amalgams existed on most newspapers a long time ago; their function was to bring in the mundane press release sweepings for the big bad editor to sift for anything actually newsworthy. They were usually housewifes stifled by cloth diapers and husbands sick from too many Manhattans in the bar car on the commuter train who wanted a wider chance and more compelling spectrum. They yearned to become part of a great metropolitan news organization, to make a difference in the lives of avid readers. What they usually wound up doing was the recipe column on Thursdays -- if they were lucky.

Smith and I felt rather deflated that we had been consigned to a lackey, not a real reporter. We represented the Greatest Show on Earth, dammit, and we didn’t care to be treated like second class citizens. So we acted out, just like spoiled children. Or the Marx Brothers.

Smith upended a metal trash basket to bang out a perky tattoo while I waltzed about the newsroom flinging wire copy about like rose petals. We then turned the tables on poor Ms. Korman by sitting on her desk and interviewing HER:

“Who runs this newspaper?”

“Can you wrap fish in it? And if so, how long before they stink? The reporters, that is -- not the fish!”

“What’s the capital of North Dakota? Quick, gal -- out with it before they change their minds!”

This unprofessional temper tantrum should have ended with us being escorted out of the building, on our ears, and then being fired by Ringling -- since we had just broken every rule that Leon McBryde, the elder statesman of advance clowning, had taught us. But instead, such was our charm and luck way back then, that Ms. Korman laughed until she had an accident and had to retire to the Lady’s Room. She wrote us up in glowing terms, ending her article with “and if this is the caliber of the Ringling clown alley you’d better not miss it; for it harbors nothing but Chaplinesque geniuses!”

Not bad for our first day’s work . . . .

Preet Bharara

Preet Bharara sat on a wall.

Preet Bharara then tried to stall.

But all the newspapers

And liberals bland

Couldn’t keep Preet from flat-out being canned.

A Clown at Brown. 1

After my epic battle with Michu the World’s Smallest Man on the Ringling Blue Unit I was blacklisted for several years. Or, more precisely, I decided to voluntarily withdraw from the big top milieu for a few seasons when I saw how the wind was blowing vis-a-vis my continuing employment. Management was cold and distant towards me. And Tim Holst, my galant pal, now Assistant Performance Director, laid it on the line for me one night.

“Tork” he said, “you better look for some other line of work. I’ve been plugging you with Baumann and Mr. Feld these past few weeks, but they won’t budge. They think you’re mental, and I think my own job could be in the donniker if I keep sticking up for you all the time.”

I quickly told Holst to cease jeopardizing his own career to take care of mine; I could get along without Ringling or circuses in general. I was sick of them. There was a whole ‘nother world out there breathlessly awaiting my stellar talents. I’d make out just fine. When the season ended and I was not offered another season’s contract I went back home to Minneapolis to mull over my options.

At one time as a child I had thought of becoming a concert violinist after watching Jack Benny on TV. That owly old guy seemed to do okay on the fiddle. And I was now an adept on the musical saw, as well as the Irish tin whistle. But I lacked the gumption to practice. Rote of any kind was DDT to my soul. That let out just about anything that required a university degree.

So I sat in my wooden rocker to think some more. Rocking is the only way I can generate any sustained thought. I began rocking as soon as I could sit up. My mother took me to the doctor when she couldn’t stop my constant swaying to find out if this was incipient cretinism. She was always afraid she was birthing cretins after the she saw how my father was turning out. The pediatrician assured her it was only a phase and would soon pass. But it never did. I am rocking in my beat up old Deseret Industries thirty-dollar recliner as I write these sentences on my Chromebook.

In fact, when I have to stand still I tend to sway back and forth like an elephant. This used to drive choir directors at church crazy. The director would majestically indicate we should all rise to begin warbling “If You Could Hie to Kolob,’ and I would immediately spoil the spirit of the whole thing by bumping shoulders with my fellow basses. My singing neighbors learned to give me a wide berth if they didn’t want to go home to Sunday dinner with contusions.

The Vietnam War was just over and the National Guard had more money than they knew what to do with to recruit new cannon fodder. I was offered a two-thousand dollar sign up bonus, training in any field I wanted, and completely free medical and dental care for life. But I was healthy as a horse and didn’t look good in khaki -- it highlighted my lichen-colored eyes.  

During my years with the show I’d done literally hundreds of radio interviews, and it seemed to me that it didn’t take much brains or talent to spout platitudes over the airwaves. I could do that kind of stuff with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. Compared to the backbreaking physical work of the circus, it looked like a nice cushy sinecure with regular hours and the lure of possible fame as another Wolfman Jack. So I applied to Brown Institute of Broadcasting, down on Lake Street, for the training necessary to backtime a record and get my Third Class FCC Engineer’s License. In those antique days you couldn’t work on the air without a federal license in your back pocket.

Brown Institute was housed in a former carpet store. It was one of the more successful vocational schools that the Twin Cities was famous for. It was started in 1946 by the Browns, a married couple who owned some small market AM stations in western Minnesota. Concerned over the lack of trained announcers, they began classes in voice, music appreciation, how to avoid getting arrested for Payola, how to gather local news, and how to run the board and record commercials. By 1955 their school was churning out dozens of DJ’s, sportscasters, and newscasters each year for a market that was expanding like crazy with the advent of FM radio.

The real money was in sales, and my Brown advisor, Mike Kronforst, strongly suggested I take the additional one week course in how to sell radio advertising. But I pooh-poohed his advice. I had my sights set on doing the news, since my voice held a pleasing baritone timbre that impressed me no end. There was no reason I couldn’t soon be mesmerizing the nation with my urgent bulletins and incisive editorials like Walter Cronkite.

Classes ran from 9am to 2pm each weekday. Since everything in radio is timed down to the nanosecond, punctuality was of particular importance, and the school offered a ten percent tuition refund to any student who finished the nine month course without a single tardy mark. Since I walked to  school from home, I figured I was a shoo-in -- but missed it by seven minutes one lazy spring day when I dallied on East River Road to lob rocks at the Mississippi carp schooling near a gushing drain pipe. Some Minnesota mornings are made for sheer lollygagging and nothing else.

Mike Kronforst was also one of the key instructors at Brown. He took me in hand to discourage my tendency to turn the most mundane PSA into a dramatic reading more appropriate for a circus midway pitch.

“Flash! This just in: The First Lutheran Church will hold a potluck supper AND bingo this coming Thursday night! Tickets for this monumental event are knocked down to an incredible FOUR DOLLARS PER PERSON!! You can’t afford to miss this stellar occasion -- the most important social gathering since Cleopatra held salacious court in ancient Egypt!!! All proceeds go to the Altar Cloth Fund. Hurry! Hurry! HURRY!!!!!!!”

“Now Torkildson,” Mike would remonstrate with me patiently “stop trying to sound like a carnival barker. You’ll wear out your voice and wind up croaking the weather like someone inside a hollow log. Don’t improvise like that. Let’s try it again, and this time keep your voice level and lose about a dozen decibels, okay?”  

He eventually got me to deliver news, weather, and sports in a more reasonable facsimile of a silken voiced professional radio announcer. But not before I had exasperated him with a variety of buzzers, whistles, and other raucous sound effects I dug out of my clown trunk to punctuate the pork belly futures out of Chicago.

I graduated in the spring of 1980 and immediately went down to WCCO Radio in downtown Minneapolis with my audition tape, ready to pinch hit for Steve Cannon or Howard Viken -- two of the top Twin Cities radio personalities. In years past I'd appeared as a Ringling clown spokesperson on WCCO's Boone and Erickson Show several times, trading banter with the two insouciant radio clowns. The receptionist thanked me for my visit, assuring me that a station vice president would personally study my resume before making me an offer. I haughtily told her to make it snappy, because my next stop was KSTP over in Saint Paul, and it would be strictly first come first served.

A few weeks later Kronforst tried to let me down gently. I hadn’t heard back from anyone.

“You can’t start in a big market without any broadcast background, Tim. Start out small market, get some experience under your belt and then try again. There’s an opening out in North Dakota for a news director -- let me call them and see if I can get you in.”

He was as good as his word, and in a few days I was on the Amtrak to Williston, North Dakota, where I began my broadcasting career at KGCX Radio -- 93.1 on your FM dial.

(to be continued)