Tim Torkildson's Clown Alley

Sunday, June 18, 2017

without focus, all you see is a lie

Saturday, June 17, 2017

P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain

Susan Yund was a visiting professor from Missouri at the University of Minnesota back in 1976, when I was making one of my infrequent forays into the canebrakes of scholarship as a sophomore student. I met Ms. Yund at the Wilson library, where she tripped and spread a swath of documents along the path I was trodding to the Theravada Buddhism collection. As I helped her pick up her papers we conversed casually -- when she found out I had been a clown for Ringling Brothers, she became extremely excited. Because, it turned out, she was doing research on the little-known relationship between P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain!

I had never heard of anything going on between Barnum and the beloved author of Tom Sawyer, and when I mentioned this to her she insisted I come to a party she was having for her graduate students that Saturday at her rented home in the Seven Corners neighborhood -- I would hear all about their interaction, plus be the star of the show myself as a bona fide refugee from the modern Ringling clown alley. I wasn’t keen on being stared at by a bunch of research fellows who could probably give Erkel a run for his money -- but when she mentioned she would be serving Swedish meatballs and krumkake I acquiesced faster than you can say “Tom Thumb.”

Saturday night I showed up on her doorstep in brown corduroy pants and a dark green turtleneck -- which, with my ubiquitous glasses, gave me a studious, not to say avuncular, appearance that left quite an impression on the brainy bunch gathered in her living room.

“Who’s the stumblebum?” I heard one student whisper to his companion, a corpulent hoyden who was shoveling meatballs and noodles into her mouth like there was no tomorrow.

“Probably one of Yund’s charity cases -- I hear she takes in homeless people as a hobby” she replied between ravenous swallows.

I settled daintily on a butt-sprung chesterfield with a plate of goodies, wondering how soon I could decently excuse myself from this mare’s nest -- but Yund pinioned me with an exuberant introduction, as “one of those fabled troubadours of mirth -- a professional clown with the Barnum and Bailey Show,” and invited her students to pick my brains (assuming I had brought any with me.) The stony silence that greeted her invitation to grill me would have done credit to a mausoleum. Before I completely disintegrated from ignominy she kindly stepped in to announce a brand new bonanza for their research project -- a cache of letters from Mark Twain to P.T. Barnum that had recently been unearthed in Redding, Connecticut.

The hubbub this created quickly turned the spotlight away from me, thank goodness, and I sat back to listen in fascination to what Ms. Yund had to say.

It appears that back in 1889 P.T. Barnum felt inspired to offer Samuel Clemmens -- the redoubtable Mark Twain -- a well paid position as ‘Poet Laureate’ of Barnum & Bailey’s. His duties would be extremely light, and, in fact, the position would be a mere sinecure -- allowing Twain to continue on with his own writing projects. All Barnum wanted from Twain was a few quotable pages each season on the charms and benefits of Barnum’s circus -- which could then be incorporated into the florid lithograph advertisements that adorned many a barn and board fence back then. Twain had been polite but coy about Barnum’s offer. He was already a world-famous author -- but his financial involvement with the failed Paige typesetting machine had drained him dry and he was getting ready to move to Europe to cut down on living expenses. The idea of using his talent and image to tout a vagabond assemblage of clowns and tumblers both tantalized and repelled him. In the end, after a dozen or so letters back and forth, Twain had amiably declined Barnum’s invitation. Instead he set off on a frenzied lecture tour of the globe -- writing two books about his experiences as a celebrity tourist -- and eventually pulled himself out of the fiscal hole he had dug for himself.

Barnum appeared not to take Twain’s rejection much to heart -- the two exchanged Christmas cards until Barnum’s death in 1891.

Professor Yund quoted extensively from several holographic copies of the Twain letters to Barnum that Saturday evening. And while I did not get a copy of them from her, there was one brief paragraph that Twain wrote to Barnum that so stuck in my mind that I was able to write it down in my journal before going to bed that night. Here it is:

“Some may claim that the circus takes our coins in exchange for the doubtful pleasures of an overpriced candy apple and the tawdry appearance of some groveling buffoons -- but I cannot endorse such a heartless philosophy. To me, the circus brings a refreshing dew to the mind and heart. Your efforts to bring this balm to the American people is as praiseworthy as any missionary’s Bible-pounding in the benighted realms of Africa.”

Soon after that evening at Professor Yund’s I gave up on my college education, again, and went back to the Ringling clown alley. I lost track of Yund’s research, but often wondered if she’d been able to write an extensive article or even a book about it. I remember her saying that there was big money in anything to do with Mark Twain. Long years later I did read about the results of her Twain/Barnum work. Turns out she had faked most of it. So they took away her robes and mortarboard, and she was now running a Bed-n-Breakfast in Hannibal, Missouri. She’d never written anything further about the spurious relationship between Twain and Barnum.

So you can take the above ‘quote’ by Mark Twain with a huge grain of iodized salt. Still, I believe the sentiment expressed in that quote could have very well been in Twain’s heart -- even if he never put it on paper.

Charles J. Sykes Warns Against Alex Jones

This is Alex Jones, Radio Ranter.

We have to watch out for the fringe,

Where paranoid thoughts like to binge.

All those who abide

In the Land of Broadside

Face sanity with a deep cringe.

This is Charles J Sykes -- who says Jones is a dangerous nut

Headlines & Verse. Saturday. June 17. 2017.

BARNYARD ANIMALS USED TO PREDICT EARTHQUAKES IN ITALY.

A scientist studying sheep

Was certain that they’d start to beep

When earthquakes were nigh --

His colleagues were wry,

And labeled him ‘Little Bo Peep.’

IRANIAN LEADERS LABEL ZUMBA 'IMMORAL,' BANNING ALL CLASSES.

The mullahs in distant Iran

Don’t want the gals to shake their can.

So Zumba is out --

The girls will get stout

Just reading the sacred Quran.

FORGET 'WHAT'S IN YOUR WALLET?' HOW ABOUT 'WHAT'S IN YOUR CESS PIT?' NY MAN MINES TURDS FOR TREASURE.

There was an old man down in Queens

Who frequented landfilly scenes.

When he found a bottle

He sold it full throttle --

Becoming a fixed man of means.

Friday, June 16, 2017

email to an Elvis Costello Fan

I can’t stand Elvis Costello, but thanks anyways.

The musics I embrace are loud circus marches/galops/polkas; flamboyant overtures; soppy Broadway tunes from before 1960. And not much else. My crotchets about music and everything else grow more sclerotic by the day. And my kids are stepping up the pressure to remarry Amy. Every time I see them now they ask first thing “Are you going to marry mom again?” I’m working up to a ‘Hell no!”, but have not quite got there yet.

I know you are just dying to find out what I have eaten today, so here goes:

For breakfast I had two slices of Texas toast, on which I sandwiched two eggs scrambled with a tablespoon of cottage cheese and then nuked in the microwave. With a side of coleslaw. I drank a large glass of Tang, into which I squeezed half a lime. I thought about having a Hershey almond bar for dessert, but took a long nap instead.

When I woke up it was noon, and I felt hungry again. But I had only eaten three hours earlier, so figured my mind was playing tricks on me. Instead I started to reread C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra -- I don’t know what I ever saw in him as a writer; his prose is as pedantic as the lectures he gave at Cambridge and Oxford. As a Christian apologist he needs his own apologist. But I’m going to finish reading it anyway, because I’ve forgotten how it all turns out.

Today on my walk to the Rec Center in the early morning I brought along my digital camera and took thirty-five photos -- mostly of common ordinary things like fire hydrants and weeds. I was then going to post them one at a time on Twitter, accompanied by profound zen sayings, and become an instant social media star like https://twitter.com/jonnysun But after posting six of them I got bored with the whole idea and began to feel guilty because I hadn’t written any poetry yet for the day. So I did a poem based on a phrase by Boyd K. Packer.

I finally decided to eat at 4, because I really was feeling hungry. But I didn’t want to cook anything, since I had just cleaned up my stove real good -- using Mr. Clean and everything. So I opened a can of Progresso Split Pea Soup for the microwave, and made a lettuce and onion salad with Italian dressing. This combo tasted good but my stomach is now gurgling like the plumbing in the Lubitsch movie “Cluny Brown.” I’ve made some lemon/ginger tea to drink, in the hopes that my innards will not become unstuck at an untimely moment. Bad cess to my menu planning!

I actually discussed your google message with my daughter Virginia and her husband Andy yesterday. I blew up the whole thing with enough helium to launch a second Hindenburg -- telling them there was this rich Chinese lady with gorgeous looks who would marry me the minute I stepped off the plane and then we’d have great sex while I taught her English before we settled down in our own condo on the beach at Waikiki. We talked about the whole thing as a rational proposition, instead of the ridiculous fantasy it always was. First we listed the cons -- I’d miss seeing my kids/grand kids (but then Virginia and Andy are planning on moving to Texas asap to be near his family, and Sarah’s husband Jonny wants to move back to Washington state to be near his family -- so there wouldn’t be that many family left for me here in Provo anyway.); there was nothing in writing, so the whole thing could go south in a flash; and what if I got real sick again with kidney stones or my prostate? Then we listed the pros -- I would be living in Hawaii; I would be married again; and my wife would probably be an excellent cook of Chinese food, which I dearly love. So it almost balanced out. But then you had to spoil the fun by telling me she married a homeless bum. So the whole thing was over by the time we had our root beer floats.

Excuse me while I go get my tea -- it’s steeped long enough . . .

Bleah. I hate herbal tea. But all my kids drink gallons of it and swear it cures everything from scurvy to blood poisoning. So just to humor them I drink a few cups a day. It’s better than Mountain Dew, I guess.

Tomorrow, Saturday, I’m going to eat out. I won’t poison myself with my own cooking again till Monday. Cuz Sunday the kids are having me over for Father’s Day -- I demanded grilled salmon as the main course and a chocolate cake for dessert and they said they’d do it. There’s a place just off Center Street in downtown Provo that makes really good sliders and fries -- and they’ll cook ‘em for you for breakfast, so I think I’ll go there tomorrow after the Rec Center. For dinner I’ve got a Red Baron three-meat frozen pizza I can put in the oven -- those babies never upset my stomach.

The crowning achievement of my day was finding an old office chair next to a dumpster on my way home from the Rec Center. Perfectly good, except for a few tears in the seat. I wheeled it home, rubbed it down with some diluted Mr. Clean, patched the tears with duct tape, and now have another comfy chair for when visitors come calling. It only goes to prove that all things come to him who waits -- especially junk.