The Clown and the School Teacher

(continued from Amy Meets a Clown)

One thing the Ringling clown alley never taught me about was love. But then, clown alley is the natural and logical opponent to everything that is fine and noble -- it takes every great sentiment known to man and turns it topsy turvy for a belly laugh. Underneath that belly laugh, it might be said, the audience is acknowledging that fine things like love and patriotism and piety can be corrupted and used for foul and hurtful purposes. And so a good laugh at the expense of romance or politics is a healthy cynicism that all free and wise people should exercise constantly. And thus the buffoon in his particolored uniform with a slapstick at his shoulder, ready to do battle against the inconsistencies of the human heart.

When I met Amy for the first time in Williston I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to embrace the complete beauty of a fulfilling physical, emotional, and spiritual relationship. Heaven knows my own parents never had such a thing when I was growing up -- they had simply grown used to each other over the years and found it easier to fight than to disengage. In clown alley all finer emotions were carefully camouflaged, if they existed at all, with a cunning patina of crude humor. Only at church did I find any celebration of love and marriage. And time was passing. All my companions from my LDS mission in Thailand were by now married -- the wedding announcements had trickled in over the past two years, showing bride and groom silhouetted against the Salt Lake Temple. I was the last holdout.

So it’s possible I was simply brainwashing myself when I looked at Amy and immediately told myself that I was going to marry her. But what does it matter how or why I loved her? Love is the only mystery we never finish exploring. And enjoying. And hating.

She is the oldest daughter of Alice and Fred Anderson. The family is a huge one. There were twelve children, with Amy being the oldest daughter. They all lived, at that time, in a former funeral home in Tioga, North Dakota. It was the only building big enough to hold them all. And they certainly needed holding. The Anderson kids ranged in age from two to twenty-nine. They were notorious for showing up, en masse, at church picnics and Sons of Norway dinners like a swarm of locusts -- eradicating anything edible in their path. They liked being mobile, and like so many other rural kids back then they had a collection of derelict jalopies they were constantly resuscitating to take them up and down the washboard gravel roads of Williams County. Amy was the first one in the family to get a college education, and her parents doted on her.

They did not like it when I started seeing her. I was not a local. I was tainted with a circus background. And I wrote her a poem every day. I began writing to her every day after our second date, and continued to do so for the next fifteen years. The Post Office owes me a medal, considering the fortune I spent on stamps when I was away from her traveling with the circus after we married.

Amy was not impressed with my cooking, when I had her over for dinner. She thought my bacon/potato casserole rather greasy and fattening. She knew I couldn’t afford to take her out to the movies or to a restaurant very often. I was being paid 700 dollars a month. So she usually came over to my place with her lesson plans for the next day to get my input on them. She’d bring a green salad and some of her mother’s whole wheat buns and chokecherry preserves for our dinner and we’d work late into the night trying to figure out how to interest her Special Ed pupils in learning to tie their shoelaces or opening and warming up a can of soup.

Inevitably she asked me to come to her school in Tioga to do a clown show. At that point I had sworn off clowning forever. The memories of the laughter and the thrill of the crowd were too painful to revive again. And the debacle with Becky Thingvold over my clown academy still rankled.. So initially I hemmed and hawed and stalled Amy until she played her ace in the hole:

“But Timmy, I thought you liked me . . . “

I did like her. Dammit, I loved her! So I agreed to pull out the old gladrags one last time.

She had me do the show in her classroom, which was narrow and smelled strongly of Pine Sol. Her Special Ed kids, all in their late teens, paid no attention to me whatsoever, and when my back was turned for a moment they snatched up my makeup kit to smear themselves with warpaint. They muddied up all my colors, ruining a complete tin of Stein’s clown white.

But when it was all over I warmly thanked Amy for the chance to use the talents God had given me for the benefit of others. Just as I had cynically suspected, this moved her to the point of  embracing me and landing a long lingering kiss on my rouged lips. I reciprocated, and by the time we broke our clinch her face looked like she had roseola.

It was now official:  Dusty the Clown had a Girlfriend!     

(to be continued)  

Chuck Berry

Old musicians do not die, nor do they fade away.

Their vinyl records keep them resurrected day by day.

Although their private lives may be a messed up can of worms,

We keep them in our hearts and ears with most forgiving terms.

The melodies and lyrics that a troubadour contrives,

After he is silent, still transform our humdrum lives.  

Amy Meets a Clown

(continued from Sex and the Single Clown)

The Ringling clown alley formed my early Weltanschauung -- one I never really overcame, or wanted to. It consisted of the phrase “Anything for a Laugh,” blended with “Never trust a townie.” To this day I feel nothing but affection and respect for those goofy guys that strove so hard to wring a chuckle out of the distracted and sugar-maddened crowds. We had our disagreements, sure -- but I never felt anyone in clown alley was my enemy. Not even Michu, the World’s Smallest Man, whom I once locked inside his own wardrobe trunk.

But at KGCX Radio in Williston I had a true enemy. For the first time in my life a nemesis stalked me -- intent on my destruction. She was Faye Halvorson, the station owner’s wife. She disliked everything about me, and said so frequently. I hated her guts, but since she was Oscar’s wife I never said it outloud -- but my face, long-trained to display the broadest emotions for thousands to see, all too plainly revealed my violent loathing.

When Becky Thingvold and I broke up, Faye pounced on my misery like a panther on a weary disoriented traveler in the wilderness.

“We heard that Thingvold girl finally came to her senses and dumped you” she purred at me one morning, using the royal ‘we’ as if she were Queen Victoria. “We always thought it was a bad idea to mix with newspaper people -- they only want copy from you. We really think Oscar should dump YOU now -- since your love affair with radio is obviously over. That last newscast was the sloppiest ever heard.”

I was too disheartened to even glare at her. Instead I just started making my morning phone calls to surrounding county sheriff’s offices, as well as to Red over at the Williston Volunteer Fire Department. I never got through to any of the other sheriffs -- I only got as far as the receptionist, who couldn’t be bothered to tell me anything except “Nothing going on here, sorry.” Even if a spaceship crash landed in a wheatfield next door, they’d say nothing to me about it, just keep parroting “Nothing going on here, sorry.”

Red, on the other hand, was a good egg. He ran a hardware store in his spare time -- but spent most of his hours at the fire station playing gin rummy and polishing up the city’s one and only fire truck until it glowed like Chernobyl.

“So Becky dumped you, eh?” he greeted me that particular morning when I called. “She’s a cousin of mine, y’know.” In Williston everyone was related to everyone else by consanguinity or marriage. And apparently the news of our extinct love affair was as widespread and virulent as a plague epidemic.  

“Don’t let it get you down, Tim” he continued. “There’s plenty more salt in the ocean. By the way, did the sheriff over in Watford City tell you about the grain elevator burning down? Big explosion -- could be heard ten miles away. Lemme tell you what I heard . . . “

And Red would give me all the details, since the sheriff over in Watford City was also one of his cousins. I got most of my hard news from Red, bless his card-playing soul.

Even at church, usually a haven from worldly sorrow and distraction, the members couldn’t wait to come up to me and commiserate with my loss -- just to see how miserable I was. All except old Doc Maisy, who ran a thriving dentistry clinic with several of his sons -- and was also the LDS Branch President for the entire town and surrounding countryside.

“You’re better off without her, Brother Torkildson” he told me in the chapel foyer. “You need a good LDS girl, one who shares our values. Say, I’ve got a niece coming in from Twin Falls this week. Why don’t I set you up with her for dinner at our house and then you take her out to a movie?”

Before I could reply there was a resounding crash from the area of the foyer couch. Doc Maisy and I looked over to see hefty Alice Anderson and several of her numerous brood sprawled on the floor next to the collapsed sofa. It had apparently given way underneath her girth and the kids jumping on it simultaneously. A young woman, a beautiful young woman -- one I had not seen at church before -- was helping Sister Anderson to her feet.

“C’mon mom” she urged. “Look what you and Mathy did to the couch! You should keep him on a leash!”

Doc Maisy and I came over to see if we could help. But the young woman had her mother well in hand, while the kids scattered like BB’s down a hill.

“Hi, President Maisy” said the young woman, blushing prettily. “Sorry about the couch -- I’m sure my mom will pay for it.”

“I’ll do nothing of the kind! It was very wobbly to begin with . . . “ Alice began to sputter. But Doc Maisy cut her off smoothly.

“Don’t worry, Sister Anderson. We were going to get it replaced soon anyway. Are you back from BYU now?” he asked the young woman. The very fetching young woman.

“Yes. I’m teaching up in Tioga.”

“Fine! We’ll get you a calling by next week. I should introduce you to this young man just moved into town. Amy, this is Brother Torkildson. He used to work for Ringling Brothers as a clown.”

“Hi.”

I shook her hand, holding it a second longer than needful. And thinking -- why, why, why does everyone have to introduce me as having worked as a clown at Ringling Brothers? That life is behind me -- now I’m an important media personality. It irritated me vastly back then, and it still does today. Even my kids introduce me to their friends as ‘This is my dad, he used to be a clown for Ringling Brothers.”

What are they expecting me to do -- drop my pants?

(to be continued)

The Short Tempered Chef: Dill Pickle Meatloaf with Bashed Neeps

I don’t know about you, but I can never get enough dill pickles in my diet. They are savory and sour and salty and just plain good for what ails ya. So today I’m making a meatloaf with ground beef and pork, and putting in about half a jar of dill pickle chips. With it I’m making mashed turnips, as a snooty alternative to mashed potatoes. I just wanted to show you guys I can be as refined and hoity-toity as any old French gourmand. For dessert I have invested in a box of chocolate-covered Twinkies, which seems kinda like gilding the lily. But never let it be said that the short-tempered chef isn’t willing to go out on a limb when it comes to good things to nosh!

Well, I got the turnips peeled and put in a pot of salted boiling water without any mishap. I added a few bay leaves just for the heck of it. Can’t hurt anything -- as long as I remember to extract them before mashing. They were much easier to peel than I thought they’d be -- I think what I’m fixating on is rutabagas, or swedes, which are the very devil to peel, as are beets. That settles it, I’ll be featuring them next week, just to show the world I can peel a root vegetable without taking the Lord’s name in vain.

I thought I had everything ready for mixing the meatloaf. There’s only one way to mix meatloaf, and that’s by hand. I had some latex gloves that I struggled into, sitting down and humming a calming hymn to myself while I tried to put them on without a yawning hole developing. After that, I opened all the jars and bottles of spices and other accoutrements to my dill pickle masterpiece (I’m using Mt Olive hamburger chips, by the way -- it was the smallest bottle I could find on the shelf; I don’t much care to get a hernia lugging a ton of groceries home just so you can chuckle at my haphazard cookery!) Anyway, I thought I had everything pre planned and prepared. I mixed up the pork and beef, added the pickles and McCormick’s seasoning packet and the cream and mayo and two eggs and then smooshed it all up with my hands. Then I put plastic bags over my gloves so I could put in a dash of Worcestershire sauce I had forgotten earlier. Man, I was on fire! But then I forgot to get the disposable aluminum pans ready, and I got raw meat grease all over knives and the sink and everywhere -- dammit!

But not to worry -- after the mixture was safely in the pans, with yesterday’s leftover cherry tomato gunk on top, I slid the two pans into the oven, set the timer, and washed down everything that might have that damn raw meat grease on it. So I’m feeling better, thank you. It’ll all come together in about an hour for a superb midday meal, the kind of meal you get in France or Italy or maybe Greece. They know how to take a long midday break in those places, have a big meal, guzzle wine, and then pass out in the shade for a few hours. Outside of the wine, I plan on doing the same thing. My tipple today is a chilled bottle of Bundaberg Ginger Beer.

I’m happy to report that the meatloaf turned out just as I hoped -- the dill pickle chips added just the right soupcon of sour and tart, and I had two helpings with deep relish. Unfortunately the mashed turnips were watery and tasteless -- I think those babies have to be roasted (or else maybe not boiled so long; I followed the online recipe that said boil ‘em for 45 minutes.) And the chocolate-covered Twinkies are superb! Light and sweet, and yet at the same time substantial enough to let your taste buds know they have had an artery-blocking dose of the good stuff.

I’ve got a pan and a half of the meatloaf left, so I’m going to make some phone calls -- see if anybody wants a pan for tonight or their Sunday dinner. My freezer is so full of unidentified leftovers that I’ve notified the Smithsonian they should drop by to look for woolly mammoths in there.

Reading Recommendations

The kind of book I’m looking for will sparkle sans tin foil.

It keeps me coming back after I am done with daily toil.

Fantasy or history, it really makes no diff --

As long as heroines refuse to dangle from a cliff.

I am not frightened of big words, but if they’re put to use

I do not want to feel they are for bragging or abuse.

A bio is a good choice if the author ignores Freud.

And sea tales are like nicotine I simply can’t avoid!

Who’s writing now like Wodehouse or Bob Benchley -- anyone?

Or Walter Scott or Robert Lewis Taylor -- he was fun!

My tastes are so eclectic that to find a decent read

I just may have to go back to the Venerable Bede.

The Clown and the Insurance Agent

Clown alley is a semi-autonomous state within the larger world of the traveling circus.  What goes on in there, who comes to visit, and why a sudden geyser of water might erupt onto innocent heads outside of the alley, are all matters of high policy not usually discussed with the circus management, unless they impact the performance of the show.

While no formal passport was ever issued or required to enter clown alley, all visitors, by mutual consent, were to be scrutinized outside of the alley by one of the veteran clowns before gaining admittance.  This went for sweethearts, bill collectors, reporters, pizza delivery boys, relatives, and insurance agents. Of course, this was AFTER they had passed muster with Backdoor Jack.

Although I was a committed zany during my working hours, squirting seltzer and flinging pies with the best of them, when I was out of makeup and out of the alley I was a serious young man.  For one thing, I was haunted by the poverty and near-homelessness of one of my grandmothers.  Before I left to join the circus she had come to our house and pleaded with my mother for a room in her house to stay in, as she had so very little to use to pay for rent and food.  My mother, with tears in her eyes, had to turn her down – our house was cramped as it was, and my father, who attended the Simon LeGree school of Hard Knocks, did not approve of any relatives besides children moving in.  I did not want to wind up like that, and thought the best way to avoid such a melodramatic end would be to salt my money away in the bank and invest it prudently.  To that end, I was always ripping ads out of magazines and newspapers for mutual funds and whole life insurance, sending away for their pamphlets.

One fine day, when the show was playing Philadelphia, I was told a visitor awaited me outside the alley, having passed muster with one of the older clowns.  I thought it might be a girl I had met at church the previous Sunday, so I smoothed down my bushy hair (which I was also using for my clown wig), spritzed myself with some Old Spice, and hurried out, only to be met by a shambling figure swathed in a tan raincoat, even though it was a warm sunny day in the City of Friends.  Turns out that this creature, by the name of Dewey Moede, was with a Philadelphia insurance company which had received one of my inquiries; Mr. Moede had made it his business to come out to the circus to see if he could sell me some insurance.

Not knowing any better, I invited him into the alley.

Pulling up a folding chair, he began his spiel while I applied the greasepaint in preparation for the day’s merrymaking chores.

He asked my age, where I was born, did I smoke, how much did I drink, and was I married.  He then did some tabulations on a sheet of graph paper and produced a document that he told me indicated I would live to the ripe old age of eighty and that if I began investing in whole life right now, to the tune of five dollars per week, by the age of seventy I would have enough to live a life of ease and comfort in a broom closet in Miami Beach. If I lived that long.  Or, if I preferred, I could immediately invest twenty-thousand dollars in an annuity, which I would not start to collect on until the age of sixty-four, and could then look forward to three square meals a day, if I didn’t mind two of those meals being cheese and crackers.

While I found his logic alluring, I couldn’t quite see myself committing to five whole dollars every week.  At the time my salary was ninety-dollars a week, and I was already putting ten of that away in a savings account each week.

I was about to voice my hesitation when there was a loud bang behind us.  It was just Spikawopsky, making black gunpowder squibs and testing them out to make sure they were efficacious.  I explained this to Mr. Moede, because he seemed suddenly rather nervous.  I told him we went through at least two dozen exploding squibs each show, and I had never lost more than a singed eyebrow.  He began fiddling with his graph paper again.  While he did, I went outside of the alley to help Swede Johnson with the new flamethrower we had installed in the stove we used for the baker’s gag.  A nozzle blew powdered coffee creamer over a candle flame – creating quite a spectacular tongue of fire, about five feet long.  It was Mr. Moede’s misfortune to come hunting me just as Swede squeezed the bellows after I had lit the candle.  The resulting roar of fire caught the insurance agent completely off guard, and before I could explain that the flame was relatively harmless – producing minor blisters only – he was galloping up the exit ramp of the arena, tossing aside crumpled graph paper and blank insurance forms like confetti.

Oh well, I thought to myself, there’s always more insurance agents – and Sunday school girls – in the next town.

Thank you, Roy Dietrich!

A world without readers would be as flat as the skeptics of Columbus thought it was. I hope those who liked my graphic mini-memoir “Sex and the Single Clown” always find a rounder, fuller world each day!

Hannah Tapfield

Leo Acton

Lydia Farnsworth

Gabriel Romero Sr.

Elizabeth Jones

Herberto J Ledesma

Ann Eliza Young

Mike Weakley

Mary Van Cott

Robert E. Handley

Harriet Amelia Folsom

Mary Pat Cooney

Catherine Reese

Kenneth L Stallings

Sarah Malin

Jim Aakhus

Martha Bowker

Roy Dietrich

“Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story.”

― Daphne du Maurier

Trump Offers No Apology for Claim on British Spying

Unmoved by a stern British crown,

The President never backs down.

Will Putin not ever surmise

The White House don’t apologize?

Sanders and Clinton may prate,

But there’s no chance he’ll abdicate.

Congress may get many licks in,

But Trump is not pulling a Nixon.

And “Never Say Sorry” has thrust

Aside the old “In God We Trust.”

One Billion Yahoo Accounts Still for Sale, Despite Hacking Indictments

If you are using Yahoo you are sailing in a sieve,

Riding on a tiger, knitting with a prison shiv.

They have no more security than Mormons have DT’s,

And your account will be sliced up like wedges of soft cheese.

Don’t think your information is protected in the Cloud;

More likely it’s been delivered unto hackers in a shroud!

The Short Tempered Chef: Baked Steak with Parsnips Fried in Butter and Cherry Tomatoes Braised in Balsamic Vinegar

I dream about steak. A lot. About the big slabs we grilled in the backyard when I was a kid. I like to recall eating at chop houses across the country when I traveled with the circus. About Surf and Turf meals that punished my stomach -- but in a good way. So today I decided I would treat myself to a steak for a late lunch. I’ve been writing my circus memoirs all morning, and just got to a painful breakup I had with a beautiful brunette. So now’s a good time for a pleasant, nourishing meal -- Blast all women to blazes!

I’m going to bake the steak. I tire of fried foods, and I don’t own a grill. So I’ll try baking my T-bone and see how bad it turns out. Beef is hard to spoil, I’m thinking. Along with that I’ve got some parsnips I’ll peel and fry in butter -- a dish I made often for my mother during the last two years of her life when she was bedridden. And then I’ve got some cherry tomatoes, which I don’t particularly like anymore (I used to be crazy about them) but I got them for free when I bought a pound of butter yesterday (go figure.) And dessert, more than likely, will be Alka Seltzer. I’ll be drinking a fine Pepsi Crystal Light. One of the more recent vintages.  

I’m not exactly sure how long to cook my little T-bone. All the recipes I’ve seen are for three pound monster beef steaks, to cook several hours. No way am I doing that to my delicate little piece of meat. So I’ve put the stove on 375 and will bake it for 45 minutes. I sloshed it all over with Worcestershire Sauce and sliced the rest of the shallots over it before sealing it in tin foil. You can't ever go wrong with Worcestershire Sauce. Not with beef. Now I gotta figure out how long to cook the tomatoes in balsamic vinegar without reducing them to mush, and peel the parsnips. I’d forgotten about that unpleasant chore -- bleck.

So I peeled the parsnips without a hassle (I think it was turnips I was thinking of that are so hard to peel -- or is it beets?) Oh, and I forgot I had cooked bacon in the frypan yesterday, so I’ll use that AND some butter to fry up the parsnips. As always, a little improvisation is what spices things up pleasantly: I dumped the cherry tomatoes in the wok, then saw an old cannister of dried apricots I’ve been getting ready to throw away -- they’re as hard as marble and the grand kids won’t eat ‘em, not even the little ones that are still teething. So I tossed a few of them in with the tomatoes. What can it hurt? Might make an interesting flavor blend. Mmmmmm . . . I start smelling the baking steak, and the Worcestershire Sauce. Splendid! Oh, and just to be on the safe side, I wrapped the steak in my last two pieces of bacon. This is my main meal of the day, folks, so it's gotta be good and nourishing!

The final result

Final results were decent. The parsnips were very fine, making me wish I had cooked many more of them. The tomatoes and apricots were surprisingly in sync, so I’ll save the leftovers (for what exactly is a mystery best left to the morrow.) And the steak . . . well, the steak was okay. Not tough; not stringy; salted just right; and yet, and yet it wasn’t quite the thing. I don’t believe a T-bone was ever meant to endure the indignities of moist surrounding heat. A T-bone needs the sear and spit of the hot grill. So I apologize to the spirit of this particular T-bone; I disrespected you, O great piece of beef, and the next time I have truck with you it will be on a grill and nowhere else.

And now I think I’ll get back to my circus story and make up some more lies about that brunette.