We ought to place a tariff on our Congress members, too.
They flood our lives with nonsense and they stick around like glue.
Make them pay a hundred ev'ry time they give a speech,
and double down that duty if they want to shout "impeach!"
Consorting with a lobbyist should generate a fine
that puts them in the poor house or at least a deep salt mine.
Whenever they appear on TV or the world wide web
they need to be deported to Croatia, Zagreb.
And when they're still and humble they can carry on at last
with minding their own bizness as each honest vote they cast.
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11:55 a.m.
A slow start today. I was up early -- at 4:30 in the ever-lovin' morning, but I had a thousand words to write for Adam on the benefits of drinking lots of water and cooking with a microwave. He has a blog called Harcourt Health, which needs constant replenishing --- so he has me do basic health pieces. They bore me. But I made fifty bucks this morning for a few hours work, and I needed it to buy more white distilled vinegar. That vinegar pool of mine evaporates pretty fast. I rarely do any subtraction shopping when it comes to food and condiments, but this morning I put a bottle of Angostura Bitters in my cart, costing $9.89, but took it out again -- even though I'm dying to find out what kind of flavor it will give my next pot of vichyssoise.
Then I did laundry. Fifty cents for the washer. Fifty cents for the dryer. The laundry room is just past my front door, which makes it a lovely convenience. Some residents have to lug their laundry baskets down a long hallway to the laundry room, and then have to stick around to make sure nobody comes along and removes their wet duds to start their own load. Me, I just poke my head out the door every once in a while to make sure the building simpletons are not messing with my socks and garments. There's an ancient couple who roam the halls looking for anything that's not nailed down to take back to their tatterdemalion apartment, including laundry. They once swiped a stack of linoleum tiles sitting in the lobby. They don't do anything with the stuff; they just hoard it. Then there's a bald headed guy who talks to himself and always dresses in a fluffy blue parka, even when it's a hundred degrees outside. He's knocked on my door several times to ask wistfully if he could have some of my laundry. Nonplussed, I've always answered him politely -- saying that I only wash items I really need and want to keep, but he's welcome to whatever's in the lint trap when I'm done. A gal I call the Toothless Wonder because of her disregard for dentures will sometimes surreptitiously drop some of her flimsies into someone else's wash and then show up to reclaim them and hang them up on her patio to dry. Lovable eccentrics, the lot of them.
While my laundry was churning and then tumbling I emailed today's poem, the one at the top of this chapter, to 87 journalists -- one at a time. I loathe mass emails -- besides, I don't know how to do 'em. So far I've only heard back from one of 'em -- Jon Talton of the Seattle Times, who replied "I'm for that."
Two years ago I started keeping track of reporters who replied to the verses I emailed them about their stories. I compiled 200 names, and then started sending each one of 'em the same poem each day. But it got too boring, and hardly any of 'em ever replied, unless it was their story I was rhyming about. So now I email maybe six reporters a day with my latest poem. But I thought today's effort was extra smashing, so I took up a good part of the morning sending it out to journalists on the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. My vanity is going to bring me only carpal tunnel syndrome.
*********************************8
(News Flash! I just checked w/Amazon.com and my book, 'A Clump of Trump,' has now sold a total of 8 copies!)
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A notice on my apartment door this morning reads:
Dear Resident;
Due to cold weather expected throughout the remainder of this week, we will be switching the building from air conditioning to heating for the remainder of the season. Beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, October 3, 2018.
If you do not want your furnace to blow hot air please turn your thermostat to the OFF position. Do not turn your thermostat to COOL, as the will cause the furnace to blow constant HOT AIR. Should you need further cooling in your apartment please open an exterior door, or window. Thank you for your cooperation.
Dean R. Clement.
 |
| My thermostat, which I don't actually control |
Mr. Clement must be a mighty important poobah, to be able to quash the ac of hundreds of people for the year with a single crisp command.
*********************************
2:54 p.m.
Mark Twain had a habit, a bad habit, of padding some of his books, like 'Roughing It' and 'Innocents Abroad' with extraneous material he brazenly plagiarized from other authors. This was meant to give his work that overloaded, hernia-inducing feel that Gilded Age Americans wanted in their books. They weren't for reading; they were for display on the pump organ in the family parlor. Availing myself gladly of this peccadillo of Mark's, I'm going to paste and copy a piece of writing into my story right here -- the difference being that it's not by a different author, but by me. From three years ago, when a Church missionary historian by the name of Sister Carol Teruko Harada-Smith up in Salt Lake, from the Acquisitions and Receiving Department, contacted me to ask for stories and anecdotes about my mission in Thailand during the mid-70s. Apparently I am considered one of the pioneer missionaries in Thailand. At the time I was living in a friend's unheated basement, recovering from a bladder stone operation. So I had lots of time on my hands. I sent her several reminiscences, of which the following explains in a bit more detail the concept of the Thai Muu Baan, which I have mentioned in previous chapters:
The Mormon missionaries do not go door-to-door anymore in Thailand. My understanding is that this sort of hit-or-miss proselytizing is frowned on by Salt Lake as a poor use of time and effort. Amen to that. I never enjoyed it, but felt duty-bound to do it.
Housing tracts in Thailand are meant to keep out the tropical shabbiness of shedding coconut palm fronds, mangy dogs and peddlers, and the inquisitive eyes of khamoys – those mysterious dim presences that come in the night to steal whatever they can get their hands on. Thus in America you might gauge the wealth and security of a person by the wide expanse of open lawn and shrub and garden that surrounds a palatial home bursting with French windows and balconies; but in Thailand the better-off people rear walls around their homes that would baffle Godzilla, topped with broken glass, nails, barbed wire and possibly land mines. The only glimpse you have of the house is through the peephole in the huge metal front gate that looks like something David O. Selznick would use for Gone With The Wind. The gate is always painted black with bronze sunburst outlines that give you the feeling that slaves from H. Rider Haggard’s novel King Solomon’s Mines will presently troop out to push it open. The houses are solidly built of dazzling white concrete and stone, with driveways laid out in pink brick. The dinky windows are shuttered or barred, or both. The heat of the tropical sun bounces off all that concrete to create narrow streets sizzling with broiling waves of heat. A few hours in a muu baan in the middle of the day and you’d find two Mormon Elders nicely roasted, ready to be served up with some barbeque sauce and coleslaw.
The utter inanity of it was that no one was ever home in these muu baans during the weekday. Mother and father went to work; the kids were in school or at special lessons. Only the maid and the family pug dog inhabited the place between seven in the morning and eight at night. The quiet was unsettling. I remember feeling like one of those poor schmucks in a Fifties sci-fi movie, who wakes up to find himself all alone amidst the towering, empty buildings of some Gotham. My companion and I could do up an entire muu baan in a few days if we walked fast and knocked hard. It was meeting a mindless quota, imposed by our own Pharisee-like conception of what missionaries were supposed to do.
On weekends, of course, the whole muu baan took on an entirely different aspect. Mom and Pop were sure to be home, exhausted, and the kids moped about the house, wanting to go out for ice cream or pizza or see a movie. Grandma sat in the corner, her lips a thin, disapproving line as she surveyed all this decadent luxury that a really faithful Thai Buddhist didn’t need to indulge in; a wooden house on stilts near a klong with a large clay pot full of rice grains was good enough for her generation! With a little betel nut and lime to chew on.
The problem on weekends was that we were almost killed with kindness. Literally.
We’d bang on a door, the father would saunter out, we’d give our spiel about wanting to help him be a better father would he like to hear our message please? Without further ado he’d crack the gate open and motion us in. Before we could even mention Joseph Smith or The Book of Mormon he’d say “Of course, you’ll have something to eat first?” Thai etiquette demands that you accept such an offer without reservation, which inevitably led to a full-course meal being laid out before us. The first two or three banquets weren’t so bad, but even a glutton would be hard-pressed to keep eating after the rice starts pouring out of your ears. I never knew a Thai householder who didn’t try to stuff us insensible when we were tracting in a muu baan. And if, by some miracle, we were offered just a piece of fruit and glass of hibiscus tea, we still had to compete with the TV and the kids. Thais keep the TV going full blast no matter who they’re talking to or what the subject may be. You can ask them to turn it down, which they’ll do, but immediately one of the kids will rush up to the infernal machine and send the volume soaring again. Thais indulge their children enormously, so that puts an end to all moderate dialogue. You can either scream your lungs out or start miming.
The very last muu baan I ever tracted out before coming home, I had a greenie companion. I patiently explained to him that we would be spending the next five hours striding from one gate to another, never being admitted and having our brains nearly baked out of our skulls from the heat. That is what the Lord wanted. My greenie innocently asked if we couldn’t say a special prayer, asking the Lord to please put a family in our way. I humored the lad and let him offer up his plea. Wouldn’t you know it, the very first gate we hit, the family was actually home on a Monday. Well, I would show my greenie that Elder Torkildson knows how to take advantage of such an unexpected situation. We ate some mangosteens and guzzled Fanta politely for ten minutes, then I dramatically asked for a glass of pure water. The wife brought me water in a beautiful cut crystal glass. I said that we would now demonstrate the necessity of a Savior. I solemnly explained that we wanted them to know that sin, any sin, leaves you separated from God. To illustrate I took out my fountain pen and plopped a drop of ink into my glass of water. See how it spreads, darkening everything, I told the family. The mother gently took the expensive crystal glass from my hands and went to rinse it out while I told the rest of the family about the Plan of Salvation – but my eye kept straying to the kitchen, where it was obvious that the ink was not coming out of the crystal glass. I’d ruined it. My head of steam dissipated rather quickly; I let the greenie struggle through the rest of the discussion in his halting, toneless Thai. We bid the family good day and went back into the white hot street.
"Maybe we should pray the next family uses paper cups" my greenie said. The twerp.
Although I love to tell stories, I don't enjoy repeating them over and over again. This got to be a problem when Steve Smith and I were the Advance Clowns for the Ringling Blue Unit back in 1974. We did a lot of newspaper, radio, and television interviews, and after a while I got sick of repeating the same old tale about how I joined the circus and how much fun it is to make people laugh and blah blah blah kill me with a shotgun blast to the head.
 |
| Me and Steve Smith, as Dusty and TJ Tatters, with Ringling |
So I started to improvise. In the morning I'd tell a newspaper reporter that I had grown up an orphan, shuttled from one distant relative to another until at last a drink addled cousin sold me to the circus for the price of a six pack. In the afternoon I'd explain to some drive time DJ that I came from a long line of circus performers -- the Torkilinis were famous throughout Europe and we actually owned a small tented show that toured the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains during the Goulash Season.
And that goes a long way in explaining why I insist that this work is NOT a memoir, although it contains more of my life story than you can stick a shake at. Because, you see, I'm not telling my story as truthfully as I can. No, I'm bored to tears with that -- I'm reinventing myself as I go along. As I try to emulate Ben Franklin with his 13 virtues. As I attempt to find me an Asian wife. As I seek for fame and fortune. As I lie through my teeth to you, dear reader. Familiarity, after all, breeds contempt.
But I do have a decent regard for the truth, when it doesn't ruin a good story. So I'll end my efforts today with another bit of narrative I sent to Sister Carol Teruko Harada-Smith about my Church mission in Thailand. It skates pretty close to the truth, and so you can read it and I won't have to think up anything wild and fantastical about my missionary work in Thailand in forthcoming installments. That period of my life can be put behind us, like an artichoke souffle that etiquette demands we tactfully acknowledge and then ignore in the future:
I would like to preface the memoir of my mission in Thailand by narrating just how I got the funds to enable me to go. I was, at the time, a member of the University of Minnesota Student Branch, even though I was not a student. The branch met in a cavernous former Christian Science church building on University Avenue, across from the University campus. I lived just a few blocks away, with my parents.
When I told my branch president, Lewis R. Church, that I wanted to go on a mission, his first question to me was “How much do you have in the bank?” I reported that I had exactly twelve-dollars. He gently told me I would need much more than that in order to be called. My parents were not members of the Church, and they made it known in no uncertain terms that they would not contribute a dime to my upkeep as an LDS missionary. They both told me it was a foolish pursuit.
Having completed a season with Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus as a clown, President Church suggested I might advertise myself as available for birthday parties. I did not own a car, nor did I know how to drive at the time, but with his help I put together a flyer and stuck copies on every telephone pole in Southeast Minneapolis.
As I was laboring in an area called Prospect Park, a woman called to me from her front door, to know what I was doing. I told her I was advertising as a birthday party clown. She came over to me, looked at the poster, looked at me (pretty scrawny and homely at the time) and asked if I would perform at her daughter’s birthday party. I gladly agreed. She asked me how much I charged, which floored me – since I hadn’t given that any thought. I asked if twenty-five dollars would be all right and she agreed. The party would be the coming Saturday.
I walked to her house on Saturday, carrying a suitcase with all my costumes, makeup, and equipment – a distance of about three miles. At the party I played my musical saw, made animal balloons, and did a silly little pantomime with a golf club and a marshmallow. This good woman had been inspired to call a friend of hers who worked on the Minneapolis Star newspaper, to ask if she, the reporter, would be interested in covering her daughter’s birthday party with the clown there. As a favor to her friend, the reporter showed up, with a photographer in tow. The reporter interviewed me about my career as a birthday party clown; I made sure to mention that I was doing it to save money to go on an LDS mission. This lady reporter then did something that to this day I can only explain as being directed by the hand of the Lord – she asked me for my telephone number to include in her newspaper article. This, I later learned, was strictly against the newspaper’s policy, as it smacked too much of free advertising.
The piece appeared in the Minneapolis Star newspaper the next day, with plenty of photographs, and my phone number. My parent’s phone rang like a fire alarm all that day. I had more offers than I could handle. But since I did not drive, I decided to knock down the price of doing parties to twelve-dollars, if the client would give me a ride to and from the party. I did dozens of parties, and was even hired to do a few weddings! Larry Lopp, the owner and operator of Paul Bunyan Land up in Brainerd, Minnesota, hired me for several weeks in the summer to clown at his theme park.
I had made a good start on my savings, but by late summer the work fell off – since I did nothing more to publicize myself, not wanting to spend any of my money on advertising. By the end of August my career as a birthday party clown had ground to a standstill. Dusty the Clown was not the hot commodity he had been back in May!
I hit the streets, looking for any kind of a job, while I put up more birthday party flyers, but found no one willing to hire me.
In early September, just before my twenty-first birthday, I was contacted by an old circus friend, Steve Smith. We had performed together as clowns on the Ringling Blue Unit, and had then gone down to Mexico to study pantomime with Sigfrido Aguilar in Patzcuaro, Michoacán. Steve had been offered the position of advance clown with the circus – traveling ahead of the show to perform at hospitals, schools, and libraries, as well as to do media interviews. But circus management didn’t want him alone – they wanted a clown duo out ahead of the circus. Once again, the Lord intervened; moving Steve, who was completely irreligious, to reach out to me to see if I wanted to work the season as his partner, our salary to be split 50-50. I was overjoyed to accept such a wonderful offer, but made sure he knew upfront that I could only commit to one season. After that, when I had the money saved up, I would be at the beck and call of my Church leaders to serve a mission wherever they happened to call me. He was fine with that.
And so the team of Dusty & TJ Tatters was born. The circus provided us with a handsome salary and gave us a large motorhome to travel and live in. We crisscrossed the United States for the next nine months, having a hilarious time doing our own pantomime routines at hundreds of schools, colleges, hospitals, libraries, even prisons!
I saved my salary like a miser, eschewing eating out or going to movies. I even turned down the few pretty girls I met along the way (sometimes at church and sometimes through work) who indicated they would like to go out with me. Like Scrooge, I could not bear to part with a penny. Not even for a date. (Truth be told, that is the only part of my savings program I now regret!)
After the season was over, with a fat bank account, I proudly went back to my old branch and told president Church I was ready to go. The papers were filled out and soon I received my call to Thailand – a place I had never heard of before in my life.
I have no doubt that once I had made up my mind and committed myself to serving a mission as the Lord wanted me to, He made it possible for me to earn the necessary funds.
When I arrived in Salt Lake City to enter the Mission Home, I was first greeted by a professor from BYU. I am sorry to say I no longer remember his name, but he taught a correspondence course on Missionary Preparation, which I took while on the road as advance clown. He welcomed me into his home and took me through my first temple session at the Provo temple. He drove me back up to the Mission Home, with a passenger in the front seat, another professor at BYU. This one I DO remember by name: Hugh Nibley. When my professor friend asked Dr. Nibley to explain his latest project to me during the drive, the good Doctor gave me a long and hard look, then dismissed me by saying “I doubt he would understand it.” Having dipped into some of Nibley’s books, I silently concurred.
At that time the mission home, where all missionaries received their initial training, was located in Salt Lake City. It was a large converted mansion, belonging, I believe, in the past, to some mining magnate. I arrived with my one missionary suit, which I had purchased out in Burbank, California. It was a robin’s egg blue seersucker.
The president of the mission home was a gruff old specimen, not much given to coddling his eager young charges. Needless to say, I stood out amidst the sea of ZCMI-bought dark suits like a zircon in a pile of coal. I was immediately called into his office on my first day there. He looked at me with thunder in his visage, then asked me to tell him something of myself. As I narrated my story, his visage softened. At the end, he told me, in a kindly tone, that my suit was not appropriate to my calling as a representative of the Lord, and I would have to buy a regular dark suit. He reached into his pocket, offering to pay for my new suit, but I told him I had sufficient for such a purchase, and thanked him. I went to ZCMI and bought the ‘missionary special’ suit – dark navy blue, made of indestructible fiber guaranteed to last through Armageddon. It cost $129.00. In the event, I never used my suit coat. When I got to Thailand we were told to hang up the coat in a closet at the Mission Office, to retrieve when we went home. It was just too hot and humid to ever wear a suit coat. We worked in our shirt sleeves.
We spent most of our time paired off to learn the discussions, which, we were told, should be learned by rote and then recited to investigators – during recitation the Spirit would take over at some point, hopefully make it less deadly dull than I initially thought it was.
We also heard from many General Authorities, as well as some practical lectures on how to live without our parents cooking and fussing over us. Since I had been on the road with the circus for the past several years, that part of it didn’t really interest me. I knew how to take care of myself. The one lecture I do remember was on driving safety. It was given by a blind man from Holland.
The LTM (Language Training Mission) for all Asian-bound missionaries was located on the BYU campus in Hawaii. President Snow ran it with scriptures in one hand, a lei in the other, and a laid back smile that proved more infectious than measles.
Most of our time was spent learning the Discussions in Thai, by rote. We also received a smidgeon of Thai grammar and vocabulary, with a dollop of Thai culture. But the days droned by mostly with recitation. We took one break to climb a nearby inactive volcano, another break to attend the Hawaii temple for one endowment session, and, at president Snow’s request, I did an hour pantomime show for the entire LTM one Monday evening. We also attended a performance at the BYU Cultural Center. But otherwise it was strictly business, with no breaks except to eat and sleep. Many a pretty girl walked sedately by our windows, some walked by as if they were soldiers on sentry duty, but we never took our eyes off our studies. Except, of course, in the evenings, when the geckos liked to hang on our screens and gobble up unwary moths attracted by the light – that was pretty entrancing to us entertainment-starved Elders!
Eventually our eight weeks of study were up and we boarded our 20-hour flight to Bangkok. President Morris met us at Don Muang Airport, escorted us to our hotel rooms, and let us sleep for the next eighteen hours. We then had dinner at the Mission Home with his lovely wife Betty and their kids, and were given our assignments. I went to Bangkapi, a part of Bangkok, where my senior companion was Elder Barton J. Seliger.
We hit it off right from the start. His two passions in life were preaching the Gospel, and golf. Mine were preaching the Gospel, and clowning. President Morris had given me a special assignment before I had even arrived; he had charged me in a letter to use my performing abilities to create goodwill for the Church in Thailand. Elder Seliger was pretty long-suffering with me when we had a show to do --- he would basically tag along, moving my props for me, while I was in the limelight. He never seemed to mind.
We did manage to spend one P day doing what he wanted, playing golf. At the time there was only one main golf course in Bangkok. It had been built by the British while they were building the Thai rail system in the 1890’s. Never having played golf before in my life, I was somewhat of a trial to Elder Seliger, who had gotten a golf scholarship in Texas to go to college. My balls consistently went into the klongs, or canals, or else wound up in the tall grass – where signs warned the unwary duffer that cobras did not take kindly to their tramping about. Determined to make at least one decent shot, I at last took a vicious swipe at my ball, causing it to slice like a boomerang and bounce off the bell of a steam locomotive that was permanently parked nearby as a monument. The peal of that bell, which had not been rung for the past fifty years, caused a dozen or so members to pop out of the clubhouse to see what was amiss. For some reason, Elder Seliger became discouraged at this point, so we went back to our rented quarters early . . .
In addition to all this, Elder Seliger had to put up with my apparent allergy to the tropics. The first six weeks I was in Thailand I had to stay in the hospital twice. Once for a severe gastrointestinal attack of some kind that left me unable to eat so much as a spoonful of rice. The second time was for a scorpion bite, which caused my foot to swell up until it looked like a pale watermelon with toes. This took a very long time to heal, forcing Elder Seliger to spend long, long hours at my bedside, reading the scriptures and reviewing the discussions. I never heard him murmur about my indispositions. He was a great Elder to have as my first companion. He and I are still good friends to this day.
If you find any discrepancies between the above narrative and other pieces of information I have hinted at earlier in this work, please remember what was said in that great Western movie, 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:' "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
