Thank You, Randy Weldon!

There are no writers without readers. And any reader who makes an intelligent comment about a writer’s efforts is doing the work of angels. To all those readers who liked my mini-memoir “The Clown and the Bully” I say May You Be Given The Biggest Street Parade Heaven Has Ever Seen!

Sandy Weber; Bernard Bresslaw; Mike Weakley; Lainie Kazan; Gabriel Romero Sr.; Estelle Getty; Alberto Ramirez; Jackie Mason; Mike Johnson; Jim Nabors; Chris Twiford; Billy Jim Baker; Keith Murdock; Kevin Richardson; Randy Weldon; Kenneth L Stallings; James D. Howard; Jim Aakhus; Patti Jo Estes Williams; Roy Dietrich; Marion Seidel; Paul Hill; and the euphonious Dave Letterfly.

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”

― Charles Baudelaire

The BAT Tax

The BAT tax ain’t a tax on bats, in case you are confused.

It is a tax on imports that will keep us cash-infused.

It will pay to build the Wall that Mexico so needs

To keep the gringos in their place amongst the Texas weeds.

So if you have our country’s welfare in your heart, my friends,

You’ll pay a handsome forfeit on all foreign odds and ends.

The Clown and the Weatherman

(continued from The Clown and the School Teacher)

Clowns have no business falling in love. But when they do, they fall heavy. At least I did when I met Amy Anderson. And, as in all great love stories, her first order of business was to remove the appellation of ‘clown’ from my curriculum vitae. For no woman actually wants to be associated with a professional buffoon. This sad fact has influenced the history of the world from Adam on down. Adam wanted to throw a pie at the snake in the Garden of Eden, but Eve  persuaded him instead to listen to the serpent’s sales pitch. The results, as we all know, were not immediately happy.  And I, blinded by love, was willing to go along with Amy’s plans for me. For a while.

While I had toiled in the Ringling clown alley, the art of clowning gave me a sense of pride and purpose. The world needed clowns, needed to laugh at their antics. But now that I was cut off from clowning, stuck in a small North Dakota town where my only concern was gathering local news for broadcast, that purpose-driven mindset began to dwindle. I should have replaced it with a desire to become the best professional broadcaster I could be -- but somehow clown alley had poisoned my perspective on any regular career. They all seemed stuffy and pompous. None more so than the work of a radio newscaster. It was all very serious.

Amy, certainly, took my work more seriously than I did. She was ambitious for my success in radio -- and beyond.

So when I casually mentioned to her one evening, during a cozy makeout session, that the local TV station, KUMV, was looking for a weatherman, she flung me from her arms in a frenzy of vicarious ambition.

“You’ve got to audition for that job, Timmy!” she said breathlessly.

“Sure thing, cupcake. Let’s talk about it later and get comfy again, okay?” I replied, amorously determined to regain the recent status quo.

“This is just what you’ve been looking for” she continued, heedless of my lovelorn expression. Cupid had struck out again.

She grilled me remorselessly about the position. I had heard about it during a visit to the Williston cop shop during a lull in Chief Atol’s litany of recent crimes under investigation -- a missing manhole cover on Main Street; the sighting of a moose eating laundry off somebody’s wash line; and the pressing need for a new dog catcher -- or, rather, animal control officer, as Atol phrased it. Clint Bevans, the local TV newscaster at KUMV, had mentioned the opening to me, wondering if I would be interested in trying out for it. My knee jerk reaction had been no thanks, simply because getting to the station, which was several miles out on the highway, would have been a hassle for me, since I didn’t drive.

Amy was aghast at my cavalier attitude towards this potential career boost.

“You call him back and tell him you’ll be there tomorrow for an audition! I’ll take a day off from school to drive you myself” she said fervently. Her eyes danced with a keen determination to push me in the right direction. And suddenly I realized that here was a woman who wanted me to succeed. This was a new and intoxicating idea to me -- a true blue helpmeet. Up until then the women in my life, such as my mother and my sisters and my other girl friends, seemed to barely tolerate my existence -- they were more concerned with their own personal agendas or simply wanted me to shut up and behave myself. But Amy was different. This was a kind of love I had never experienced before. Only a fool would ignore it. And I was not such a fool as that. Not yet, at least.

So the next day I went down to KUMV-TV to audition for weatherman. I dressed in my Sunday best -- white shirt and staid blue tie; black slacks, and spit polished faux Florsheims. At Amy’s insistent urging, I even wore a pair of black socks instead of my ubiquitous white cotton ones. As Clint and Amy watched from the sidelines, I picked up a long wooden pointer to begin improvising about high pressure ridges and the probability of precipitation. This was back in the dear departed days when you didn’t need a shred of meteorological training to do the weather. It was all about ‘personality.’ Things were going smoothly until I tripped over a thick camera cable on the floor. The old clown instincts took over -- instead of quickly regaining my balance to continue the forecast, I dived headfirst through the weather map, made of flimsy paper, and rolled over in my best Buster Keaton style, ending with my feet sticking straight up in the air.

After a moment of bemused silence, Clint thanked me for coming in and said they’d keep in touch. It was an obvious kiss-off.

On the way back into town Amy maintained a frosty silence. I knew I had purposely blown the audition, so for once in my life I kept my big mouth shut. Something told me that it was crucial to my future relationship to let her have the first, and last, word.

Her opening salvo, when we got back to my place, was a loaded question.

“You messed that up on purpose, didn’t you?” she asked, arms akimbo and eyes blazing with righteous indignation. Since there was no right answer, I just gave her the truth.

“Yeah. Once a clown, always a clown.”

“If you really loved me . . . “ she began, and I wilted. This was the end. I’d alienated another woman. Again.

But this is where the real fairy tale romance begins. For instead of finishing that dreadful sentence, she paused, tried to look stern and pouty, and then broke into a beaming smile and began to laugh.

“You big poop head” she said, opening her arms to me.

(to be continued)

Like the roots of a tree

Women are like the roots of a tree. Strong and seeking, nourishing persistently. They reach down deep as taproots. They spread out seeking the best for themselves and for those who they must sustain. A mighty forest cannot exist without them, without their constant anchor and support. The sapling will not survive if they stop their work. The ancient bristlecone depends on them for the few bits of green it still displays. Women uphold life everywhere.

Have you ever tried to uproot a full grown tree? It’s like trying to pick up an anthill, one ant at a time. Take down the trunk and the roots remain. Women must never be ignored or marginalized, for their roots of dignity and determination will remain. She flourishes despite the heat and the cold. She grows despite hatred and misunderstanding and restraints. She burrows into the softest loam, into unyielding hardpan, and down into the driest sand. She is a root that can topple a building, buckle the thickest pavement. Her influence is felt everywhere. She can withstand pruning and pinching. She is quietly powerful. But where she is cut off and dismissed, there is famine and desert and despair.

A woman is a self sacrificing root. Like the carrot or yam she fills herself with goodness and plenty, only to give it all up into the hands of the gardener to sustain others. She brings up the sweetness for apples and grapes, for peaches and mangoes. Roots ripen the butternut and the coconut. Roots bring forth foliage to protect and comfort and feed a multitude of creatures. The very sap of life begins with her questing and absorbing what is needful and useful.

The power of women is a spreading root.

The Short Tempered Chef: Oriental Breakfast Salad.

Fried foods for breakfast -- bleck! I have days when bacon and eggs, with buttered toast, just doesn’t cut the mustard (whatever the hell that means -- I fall into obscure cliches as easy as Trump falls into a Russian bed.)

So this morning I decided that the Short Tempered Chef would tinker with the concept of a hearty salad for breakfast. With an Asian theme. I’m hoping this will turn out well enough so that I can make it when the unpitying heat of a Utah summer returns in a month or two. By ten in the morning my cozy apartment, receiving jagged shards of sunshine coming over the Wasatch range, begins to boil -- even with the air conditioning going full throttle. My appetite wanes as I begin to melt and start to ooze years of lipids stored in my thrifty Norwegian body.

I’m combining bean sprouts, edamame soybeans, hard boiled eggs, candied salmon chunks, scallions, and fried rice noodles. The dressing will be a splash of seasoned rice vinegar, a dash of sesame seed oil, and the squeezin’s of half a lime. And I’ll sip on a cup of Bengal Spice herbal tea. Here goes nothin’!

Well, the individual ingredients were good -- I tasted each one before adding. But the whole was a disappointment. The candied salmon is especially toothsome -- I’ll be using a lot more of THAT in future recipes. The mouthfeel was fine, but it lacked an overall umami -- and there was a residual hint of bitterness. The bean sprouts, I think. It could have really used some sliced ginger and fish sauce. As well as some heat from a chili pepper or two. I won’t be repeating this breakfast experiment again. I think I’ll stick to good old bagel & lox for summer morning meals.

Paul Manafort

Paul Manafort, he took some dough

From overseas to stage a show

That put D. Trump behind the wheel

Of this here country’s Crackpot Deal.

That money was a slush fund trust

That Russians hoped would really bust

The Clinton juggernaut for good --

As far as ethics . . . knock on wood!

But now the tawdry story breaks

And Manafort is in the jakes.

It only shows that Russian coin

Comes back to kick you in the groin.

Memories of My LDS Mission in Thailand: Aerobics.

When President Harvey Brown took over the missionary work in Thailand, he brought with him a certain gusto, a joie de vivre that was exceedingly infectious.  He wanted his Elders and Sisters to work hard, but he also wanted them to enjoy themselves.  His philosophy was that when the missionaries had a chance to mingle with the ordinary Thai people they would find hundreds of golden contacts who would be interested in knowing more about the Church.

To help push this philosophy along, he suggested that the Elders and Sisters in the mission begin an aerobics exercise club, to be called, in Thai, “Wing Phua Chiwid”, which, literally translated, means “Run for your life”, but would be better translated as “Run for Health”.  (Let me just add that President Brown was of a Falstaffian build and could hardly run more than few yards himself!)

The club was based on the book “The New Aerobics” by Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, formerly of the United States Air Force, who had pioneered aerobic workouts to help strengthen the heart.  Each missionary was supplied with a copy of the book and told to make it a part of their early morning scripture study.  We were supplied with bright yellow t-shirts with the logo “Wing Phua Chiwid” in Thai blazoned across it, as well as electric blue running shorts.  It was up to us individually to provide our own running shoes, which proved to be beyond my financial resources at the time, so I did my jogging, with my companion, in my Florsheims.  I developed numerous blisters on my tootsies, until my companion, Elder Heier, took pity on me and bought me a pair of running shoes for an early Christmas present. We set a goal of running two miles every morning, which I found thoroughly exhausting and exhilarating.  As President Brown had hoped, our constant appearance at the local park, warming up and jogging around, aroused curiosity in a few health-conscious Thais, and they began to join us each morning for the run.  We explained to them the correlation between good health and the Word of Wisdom, and then would ask permission to come visit them in their homes to explain the rest of the Church’s teachings.  We always got a warm welcome to do so.

It then became a game of cat and mouse, since the Thais consider appointments, especially at their homes, as extremely flexible.  If they say they’ll be home at 6 to receive you, you can be fairly certain they will be nowhere around their house until after 8 that night; they are not trying to avoid you, they are simply people of an impulsive nature – if they are suddenly invited out for a party or a movie or a swim on the beach, they go, never bothering to notify anyone who might be coming over because they realize that in most cases the people who said they were coming over would not be coming over anyway – at least, not if they, too, are Thai.  We, as Western missionaries, of course, always kept our appointments to the minute – but after a dozen or so pointless trips to empty houses, we would double book or even triple book our appointments.  In other words, we would schedule 3 different families all for the same time, and hope that at least one of them would be home.  This worked out well, and we began teaching families about the Gospel. 

The program lasted about four months before a General Authority came to visit our mission, saw the program in action, and decided it was not exactly what missionaries should be doing.  Plus, many of the Elders and Sisters developed bad shin splints, due to the faulty nature of the running shoes available in Thailand at the time – they were Chinese imports that had absolutely no arch support and would fall apart after the first rain.  Many of us were limping around as if we were walking barefoot on carpet tacks.  We were to give our Aerobics book to a Thai member and encourage them to continue the running club, but we had to bow out and go back to spending the early morning hours in prayer, planning, and scripture study. 

I didn’t mind that much; I found out that running was not one of my talents – my companions always left me far behind, eating their dust.

Besides, for most of my mission I had to struggle with a bicycle – which also came from China – that was made of cast iron.  These behemoths must have weighed a hundred pounds each, and to peddle them around for tracting and street meetings, not to mention discussions, was about all the aerobic exercise I could take.  We never had to lock them up, since they were too heavy for the Thais to steal!

The Donkey and the Elephant

The donkey and the elephant were trapped upon a boat

“That was leaking so severely, it would not much longer float.

“Although in past years they had fought, they suddenly decided

“They’d better work together – or go down as suicided.

“The donkey said they must proceed to search out every leak,

“And plug it up – since, otherwise, the future would be bleak.

“The elephant could not agree; he thought that plan would fail.

“Instead he said they needed buckets, so they all could bail.

“The donkey wouldn’t budge an inch, insisting that the polls

“Were showing everybody wanting first to plug the holes.

“The elephant was adamant that bailing was the cure;

“Any other course would be a damnable detour.

“They argued and made speeches on the ship, both fore and aft,

“Until the other passengers deduced they both were daft.

“Lowering the lifeboats as the vessel still declined,

“The elephant and donkey were abandoned, left behind.

“The boat sank even lower, but those two just kept on squabbling

“Until they floated on the waves, their heads just barely bobbling.

“They then were heard to shout, as both sank out of sight:

” ‘If you’d just do it my way, everything would be all right!’ ”

The Clown and the Washing Machine

We were six in clown alley on the Tarzan Zerbini Shrine Circus many years ago.

Half way through the season we were down to two clowns; the rest had succumbed to the rigors of two shows a day in primitive rodeo grounds where the dust was thick and the audiences were thin. Our juggling and magician clowns were gone; so was the producing clown, who had supplied all the clown props for our gags. There was just me and Victor – who doubled as the Human Cannon Ball.

The boss still expected a grand clown gag with plenty of boffos from the two of us, so we put our bewigged heads together and came up with a weird pastiche that used every remaining piece of equipment we had between us. It went like this . . .

We come out lugging a large wicker laundry basket, full of dirty clothes. In the center of the ring is a huge washing machine (hammered hastily together out of plywood scraps and painted an unconvincing white). We begin tossing the laundry into the machine and set the dials. Working several concealed foot pedals at the base of the machine, I am doused with water and suds from the sides of the washing machine. In a passion I start beating on the washer, and Victor helpfully boosts me up so I can peer inside the rebellious contraption. And then Victor casually pushes me inside the washer. Inside we had placed a propane canister rigged up to some pipes along the top of the washer. I turn on the gas, light it, and WHOOSH, the washer is suddenly aflame! About here all logic and sanity disappears, cheerfully subsumed by the clown mandate that the bigger the disaster the bigger the laugh. While the flames roar I put on horns, a red cape and a long red tail. Then I turn off the gas and unlatch the sides of the washer, which collapse outward. The whole thing ends with me, now inexplicably changed into a leering devil, chasing Victor out of the ring with a plastic pitchfork.

For reasons that still elude me to this day, the gag went over big with the circus crowds. Even the boss, a hard-bitten veteran of the tanbark and not given to praising his joeys, came right out and said he thought it was a pretty good gag.

When the show reached eastern Wyoming my wife brought our (then) six kids to see daddy at his job. I never traveled with my family, preferring to send my paycheck home each week. Clowns always got free room and board, such as it was.

After the matinee I was eager to find out what my children thought of their old man’s comic ability. But when I approached them, still in my clown regalia, their eyes started out of their heads in terror as they ran squealing to their mother, pleading with her to save them from the “daddy devil!”

It was only after I removed my makeup and took them out to McDonald’s for all the Happy Meals they could handle that they warmed up to me again.

For years afterward whenever I needed to lower the boom on their youthful mischief all I had to do was casually mention that I was going to do a load of laundry –they would immediately stop whatever they were doing and start towing the line again.

I wonder what Dr. Spock would think about that?

The Clown and the Bully

There was only one bully I had trouble with in the Ringling clown alley. For the most part clowns are peaceable folk, wanting to be left alone to concoct their outrageous jokes. Pundits claim that the buffoon holds a mirror up to humanity to show us our faults and foibles in a distorted but amiable lampoon -- Make jokes, not war, is their immemorial motto. But there’s always a hectoring exception.

I was plagued by bullies throughout my school years. In grade school a little runt named David enjoyed taunting me for being so tall and skinny and for having a large nose. He sat behind me, the better to throw erasers at my unoffending head and poke my behind with sharpened pencils. If I dared complain of his unwanted attentions to the teacher I could be sure of a pummeling by him during recess. He finally received his comeuppance in sixth grade, when he made the mistake of mouthing off to Mr. Berg -- a case hardened veteran of the Korean War who did not suffer weisenheimers gladly. I still recall with great satisfaction how Mr. Berg picked David up by the scruff of his neck and bodily threw him out into the hallway. He was not allowed back into class until he meekly offered an apology in front of the whole class. That knocked the wind out of his sails but good, and I never had to worry about his threats or kicks again.

In high school there was a gang of bullies who preyed on the weak and handicapped. They roamed the halls in a sinister pack, like ill-bred wolves, looking for the boy on crutches to trip or the homely girl to taunt until she burst into tears. They marked me early on as an easy target, since I never pushed back. I was tall and thin, with no sense of self worth to stiffen my spine. They frequently grabbed my homework and threw it in the toilet in the Boys Room. Or dropped mashed potatoes on my head in the lunchroom. It was a tough blue collar school, where everyone expected you to stand up for yourself and not be a crybaby. But I was a crybaby, a dedicated coward who prefered to hide in the janitor’s closet when I saw them approaching. When cornered by these momsers I instinctively used zany humor as my last ditch defense, falling on the floor to do the Curly runaround and whimpering “Woo woo woo!” This saved my bacon on numerous occasions, as they would sneer “retard” at me and melt away.

Their fate was sealed one day in gym class when they decided to gang up on one of the deaf kids who were included in our school programs. This hard of hearing colossus was six foot and weighed three hundred pounds. His glabrous face made him appear to be a placid idiot, but he was full of pent up frustrations waiting for an outlet -- when the bullies started in on him he simply mopped the floor with them, hurling one of the meanest against the horizontal wooden bars that lined the gym walls and pinning him there until several of the wooden doles cracked in half. Mr. Ciatti, the gym teacher, watched the massacre with calm approval, and when the bullies finally cried uncle he took them down to the principal’s office and had them expelled that very day. It was a heart-warming experience for all of their many victims.

I considered everyone in clown alley as my friend, or at least as being disinterested in using me as a punching bag. But as that first season rolled on one of my fellow Clown College chums, who was portentously nicknamed Don deBully, developed an intense dislike for me, based, most likely, on the fact that I was very popular with the veteran clowns and he was not. Whatever the reason, he began to refer to me as ‘Norman the Mormon’ and to snap his towel at me, inflicting vicious little welts on my arms and legs. He thought this was enormously funny. I bore these as stoically as possible, but when he saw I would not fight back he began flicking his towel in my face, with the possible intention of depriving me of an eye. Humor was no defense against his onslaughts -- since he was a circus clown just like me. Tim Holst intervened several times on my behalf, getting in the bully’s face and growling “Cut it out -- he’s only a kid.” Since Holst was short and squat and very muscular from having spent the year before Clown College dipping railroad ties in creosote, the bullying would abate for a while. But Don always started up again.

I would like to be able to report that I eventually turned the tables on him, serving him up a dose of his own medicine in that satisfying way Harold Lloyd often did in his silent films. Or to write that one fine day he got too close to the big cats and they ripped him to shreds in a satisfying Grand Guignol way.  But such was not the case.

He was brought down in the dust by bad teeth. His upbringing apparently never included any dental hygiene to speak of, and by the time he joined Ringling his open mouth gave the appearance of a neglected graveyard, with blackened headstones leaning every which way. He had to have several root canals during the season, eventually losing over half of his non-pearly whites. His jaw became so tender that the slightest touch made him groan in pain. He and Rubber Neck did a vigorous slap boxing routine that was a bona fide crowd pleaser, but he finally begged boss clown LeVoi Hipps to be released from this torture -- every time one of the flat leather gloves so much as tapped him gently he bellowed in torture, which only added to the crowd’s merriment, since they thought it was part of the act. LeVoi, who shared the veteran clown’s dislike for Don, wouldn’t let him out of the gag -- pointing out, rightly, that it was one of clown alley’s biggest hits that season. Don was soon reduced to a quivering shadow of his former self, and, like a bull with a ring embedded in its nose, could be easily controlled by the mere wave of a hand near his face. I only had to wave at him once to send him scurrying away.

Thus ended the reign of terror of Don deBully in clown alley. And that, my dear kiddies, is why I highly recommend good dental hygiene to one and all from an early age. Unless you happen to be an unpleasant browbeater -- then my advice is to gorge on sweets and never brush your teeth.