In Mexico, an Outbreak of Fuel Thefts Becomes a Crisis

The brisk, open gas trade is one of the more obvious manifestations of Mexico’s national fuel-theft epidemic. Thieves are now siphoning gasoline and diesel fuel at record-high rates from the system — often by drilling taps into pipelines under cover of darkness — and are selling it on the black market around Mexico and perhaps even in the United States and Central America.

By Kirk Semple

An hombre who hailed from El Paso

Was collared with some bootleg gaso.

He sold it so cheap

It made tourists weep

When he was dragged off with a lasso.

Church Sleep

“I am pretty sure that church sleep is among the healthiest of all sleeps.”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

When my head begins to nod

While I’m worshipping my God

I do not become upset

Or begin to shake and sweat.

If I make a pew my bed

It won’t make the Lord see red.

Spirit willing, body weak;

A nap at my age ain’t unique.  

A Quotation from Mark Twain

The only quote I ever want to be affixed to me

Is “Never pay for virtue when a vice is offered free.”

I kinda like the ring of it, although it don’t make sense.

It makes me sound a cynic who is through with all pretence.

I’ll send it first to Hallmark, then I’ll try MAD Magazine --

Between the two of them I ought to see a little green.

But if no one will buy it, still my work is not in vain --

I’ll put it on a t-shirt with a picture of Mark Twain.

My Unfinished Clown Gag

Schubert had his unfinished symphony. I have my unfinished clown gag. I’ve been working on it for years, and still haven’t come up with a satisfactory blow off.

It all began back in the Ringling clown alley when I was a novice joey. I loved prowling around thrift stores in the down and out neighborhoods of the cities we played. I found wonderful cast-offs, including a pure wool tam-o-shanter, a silk top hat, duck calls, wooden train whistles, a pair of pince-nez complete with attached black ribbon, a trombone case for my musical saw, a ceramic ocarina, a patched up squeeze box, a parking meter (I took it into the audience and tried getting quarters from the audience for expired seats), and golf clubs.

I especially doted on golf clubs. I saw myself as another Bob Hope, strolling casually around the ninth hole with a putter. Used golf clubs, all bent, nicked, and twisted, cost fifty cents a piece back then at a Goodwill store or St. Vincent de Paul. I collected a round dozen of ‘em, along with a narrow canvas golf bag to keep them in. But since I didn’t ever play golf I just threw the bag into one of the blue clown prop boxes until boss clown LeVoi Hipps complained about how they were taking up room and not being used for anything.

Fine, I told him, I’d think up a clown gag for them.

There are many precedents. W.C. Fields has a celebrated golf routine that he included in several of his movies. Both Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges placed several of their two-reelers on golf courses. Harpo the Clown made a good living just carrying an oversized golf club around at golf tournaments. And my favorite Our Gang comedy, Divot Diggers, was nothing but a series of bizarre slapstick gags with golf clubs, golf balls, and a chimpanzee. I could work up a mashup of golf gags as easily as kiss my hand.

I began by loading up the golf bag with an eclectic blend of strictly non-golfing items -- such as a garden rake, a bamboo fishing pole, a skein of red yarn, and a shotgun loaded with blanks. After discarding the rake I would keep stepping on it, bringing the handle up into my face. I kept one of Mark Anthony’s handmade foam rubber fish attached to the bamboo pole, so I could mime a terrific struggle in landing it. The red yarn just kept coming out of the golf bag in an endless stream until I got tangled up in it like a spider web. And I used the shotgun to blast my hapless golf ball when it refused to take off for the horizon after several futile strokes.

I also added some traditional schtick to my golf routine. My hat kept falling off whenever I bent over to address the ball, and when I would step up to retrieve it my clown shoes inadvertently kicked it ten feet away. When finally retrieved I would place my chapeau on a golf club I was holding over my shoulder, instead of on my head, and then look around in mounting anger for the missing headgear. I took spectacular pratfalls by stepping on the little white golf ball.

But I couldn’t come up with an adequate ending, a blow off. I put the gag in the show, just to get Hipps off my back, but it lacked something to bring it to life, to bring it to a rousing, hilarious close.

Prince Paul suggested I keep a rabbit in the golf bag, and when I was done with all the golf clubs just pull it out, pet it, and wave to the audience as I walked off. That made no sense to me, but Prince pointed out “Who the hell needs a clown gag to make sense? You just pull out the damn rabbit so the kids can ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over it and then get the hell off.”

Mark Anthony offered to make me a sexy foam rubber mermaid to pull out of the golf bag for my blow off. He had a thing for mermaids, and was always trying to put one or two in every ring gag we did. He was especially painstaking about carving and painting their bosoms. I told him thanks, but no thanks.

“Use a bowling ball instead of a golf ball, Pinhead” Swede Johnson said cryptically.

“What earthly good would that do, you old buzzard?” I asked irately.

“You could drop it on your foot -- that would get a big laugh.”

I never got the gag to my complete liking that season. I put the clubs and bag away at the end of the season and didn’t think about it again until I returned from pantomime school in Mexico to begin working as an Advance Clown for Ringling. I needed a lot of material for school shows, so I dusted off the incomplete golf gag, hoping that I could improvise something that would tie the whole schmear together. And I almost did.

It came to me in a flash -- use a marshmallow instead of a real golf ball! Then eat the darn thing at the end of the routine. When I tried it out it only got a moderate titter. Even from crazed kindergartners, who were so excited to see a real live circus clown that half of ‘em had accidents when I just waved my hat at them.

Once again I packed away my golfing paraphernalia, completely stymied. As the years trickled by I would pull out the old golf bag for mud shows and Shrine circuses occasionally -- but it just never clicked. It didn’t make sense and at the same time it wasn’t nonsensical enough. Maybe I should have actually learned to play golf and joined a country club -- but there was never that kind of money in the Torkildson piggy bank.

I threw the whole frustrating mess away when I moved out here to Provo. It was just junk, anyways -- the heads were rusty and cracked and the handles were riddled with beetle holes. Nowadays when I’m browsing for bargains at Deseret Industries I avoid the outdoor section where they sell the derelict golf clubs. Who needs that kind of aggravation? But every so often, when sleep is as elusive as a plastic shopping bag in a gale, I sit up in bed and wonder if maybe, just maybe, a tennis racket is what that gag needed all along. Or perhaps just a simple pants drop?     

The Rising Tide

As sea levels rise, even graves

Are no longer sacred enclaves.

All those by the coast

Are soon to be toast --

Exposed by the merciless waves.

From a story by Justin Gillis

Water into Wine

“When we trust and follow Him, our lives, like water to wine, are transformed.”

L. Whitney Clayton

Those who prate about bouquet or vintage of their wine

Have never tasted anything as good as from God’s vine.

He cultivates disciples till they sweeten far beyond

Anything a simple grape has ever truly spawned.

Transforming men and women into such a grand libation

Is what the Savior wants when He instructs us in Salvation.

Restaurant Review: El Mexsal in Provo

El Mexsal is at 325 S. Freedom Boulevard in Provo. I and a Young Lady of My Acquaintance got there at 12:06 and the place was packed. We had to sit next to the drafty front door. But I can understand why this place is packed. Their combination of Mexican and Salvadoran vittles is unpretentious yet muy deliciosa. And the price is very reasonable.

The Young Lady and I had both plain and stuffed tamales and pupusas chock full of cheese, pulled pork, and onion. Along with fountain drinks and chips w/salsa. They brought us a big jar full of pickled cabbage -- very spicy but just the right thing to put on the pupusas. All for $14.75. CHEAP DATE RENDEZVOUS, SINGLE GUYS!

This is a bare bones kind of place -- nothing fancy on the walls, with utilitarian tables and chairs. But the staff knows their comida. And even though we got there at rush hour, it only took 20 minutes from the time we placed our order to the moment the goodies arrived. I'm giving this place 4 Burps. Don't bring your boss here (unless he's a folksy nonpareil along the lines of Lincoln) -- but for Family Home Evening or a cheap date this should be your Home Away From Home. The Young Lady of My Acquaintance eats here often. I'm glad she recommended it for our tryst.

History of a Long Shirt

I was introduced to the long shirt gag my first year on the road with Ringling Brothers. As the biggest member of the troupe inside the clown car, I had to lay flat on the bottom while the other clowns piled on top of me. When it came my turn to pop out I was immediately grabbed by the traffic cop, played by Tim Holst, and hauled off to jail. Except that as he pulled on my shirt it just got longer and longer -- until it spanned the entire length of the arena. At which point it came off of me, my pants fell down, and I toppled over the ring curb. That was the blow off.

The simple elegance of this sight gag has always pleased me. It requires no gadgets or fiddling with -- it’s just a long tube of cloth with arm holes and a large opening for the head. Someone working for the Marx Brothers thought it was a great gag, too; for it’s used to great effect by Harpo during the football match in their film ‘Horse Feathers.’ I’ve never seen it used in any other slapstick comedy movie. And I have no idea who first thought it up. It’s probably as ancient as the toga.

Years later, after I had left the Ringling fold, I described the long shirt to my wife Amy, to see if she could sew me up one to take on the road with the next mud show I was scheduled to join in the spring. It didn’t sound too complicated to her, so we shopped around for some suitable fabric, finally settling on a long swath of an elastic nylon/cotton blend that had both stripes and polka dots in red, blue, and yellow. She stayed up all night cutting and stitching, and in the morning I was the proud possessor of a 25 foot clown long shirt.

It was rather bulky to wear, but that turned out to be a good thing. The show I went out with had two other clowns -- the Calabozo Brothers from Brazil. They were rough and tumble performers, who did a slack wire act and blew on whistles as loud as they could while they pummeled each other with broomsticks. They liked to pummel me as well during our clown entr’acte, but with the long shirt providing lots of padding I never felt a thing. The Calabozos were unfamiliar with the long shirt, and eventually grew tired of heaving on it while I got all the laughs. So one day when I wasn’t looking they cut halfway through my long shirt near the top -- the next show, they gave it a perfunctory tug and the long shirt came apart, with most of it still around my waist. We still got a laugh, but it was only a titter -- not the satisfying belly laugh the full unfolding of the long shirt usually created.

Infuriated at their callous and lazy tomfoolery at my expense, I took the sundered apparel to the wardrobe mistress -- a Catholic nun from the Sisters of the Sacred Heart that volunteer world-wide with circuses. I explained what happened and implored her to bind up my broken long shirt before the evening show. She was glad to do so, and even reinforced the whole thing to make it harder to snip through. I offered to pay her for her heroic efforts on my behalf but she gently refused -- her order took a vow of poverty and never accepted payment for services rendered. After that I kept my long shirt with me at all times -- I even used it as my pillow at night. There was no more trouble from the cursed Calabozos.

That long shirt stood me in good stead over the following years. The material was so durable that it outlasted all of my other clown wardrobe. And it was always good for a laugh, no matter what clown gag I stuck it in.  In fact, I had a business card printed that read, in part, “Dusty the Clown. Have long shirt -- will travel.”

We weathered several years of grassy lots and muddy sinks together, that long shirt and I. And then one winter’s day during the off season while I was enjoying a leisurely game of Scrabble with my older kids, Amy took my long shirt into her sewing room and cut it apart. She then made nightshirts out of the material for me and the kids.

At the time I didn’t understand her action or reasons. She hadn’t asked me if she could do it -- she just did it, silently and swiftly. Now I know it was her way of telling me to quit traveling with the circus once and for all. But I didn’t parse her meaning back then; I put it down to female whimsy.

I’ve still got that long shirt nightshirt. I wore it this past winter, even though I’m in a subsidized apartment where I don’t pay for utilities -- so I can have the heat up as high as I want at night. I like keeping it cool so I can put on that sturdy old piece of material -- rubbing it like a magic lamp to conjure up the memory of happy trips and tempo of years fled past.

California’s Deluge of Rain Washes Away a Homeless Colony

The Golden State is flushed with rain.

The Homeless there must move again.

The riverbanks where they once hid

Into the rapids now have slid.

Wrapped in tarps, a sad memento

On the streets of Sacramento.

The rushing water doesn’t care

About the homeless anywhere.

And people, like the H2O,

Turn their backs and let them go.

Perhaps another drought will teach

Them more compassion in Long Beach.

The Holy Ghost

“The Holy Ghost binds us to the Lord.”

Ronald A. Rasband

A nudge from the real Holy Ghost

Leads me to pray, not to boast;

To work quietly

For God’s own glory --

And never become too verbose.