What is the sound of
one can of expensive soup
out of old folks' reach?
の音は何ですか
高価なスープ1缶
老人の手の届かないところに？Black asphalt white snow
brown sparrows with green pine trees
no mountains just clouds
黒いアスファルト白い雪
緑の松の木と茶色のスズメ
雲だけの山はありません
white white white white whitewhite white white white white white whitewhite white white white shitホワイトホワイトホワイトホワイトホワイト
ホワイトホワイトホワイトホワイトホワイトホワイトホワイトホワイト
ホワイトホワイトホワイトホワイトたわごと
Chapter Two.
This novel so far, this roman a clef, is completely lacking in action. Let’s wake things up a bit.
How about this? On a cold dark night, a Catholic church bursts into flames. Before the fire department can get there the nave is blackened with flames. The holy water boils away in the silver chalice. The bees wax candles evaporate in their red glass votive cups. The highly polished pews blister and crackle like popcorn and collapse into smoldering heaps of carbon.
A catastrophe! And it happened in Williston the year I arrived there. On a Saturday night. But I didn’t cover it. Even though I walked by the smoldering ruins of St. Andrew's Catholic Church on my way to Sacrament meeting and Sunday School.
Because why? Because it was the Sabbath, and I did not work on the Sabbath. In fact, considering the blatant hostility of the Catholic priests I had met, I couldn’t help thinking, briefly and smugly, “That’s one for our side.”
I repudiate that odious sanctimony today. And I wonder why my boss at KGCX, Oscar Halvorson, didn’t fire me right away for ignoring the biggest news story in town in years. But he seemed okay with me giving the insipid second hand details on my news broadcast on Monday. (I recall a little of this incident but it didn’t really mean anything to me. As Tim indicated, feelings from people in the pious religious realm were not kind to people of the LDS faith. In my upbringing I was taught “to be kind to everyone for that is where kindness begins.” Living through mistreatment in a small town was not easy. Trying to get along as a teenager was very much like walking a tightrope. I didn’t realize it until much later that I was preparing to be a circus clown’s bride all my life. We learned to let people be who they wanted to be. To invite them to do things and smile when they refuse. Above all, don’t get your feelings hurt because of their choices. I had pretty deep feelings and I learned to turn off my sad feelings. That was really not a good thing. It turns a body into some pretty yucky diseases if left too long without facing them.)
Oscar Halvorson had a huge wen on the side of his nose. It made hime look like a troll. A Norwegian farmer who won the radio station in a poker game. And since he had been some kind of radio operator in the Army during WWII he knew how to run a radio broadcast station. And he also knew how to put up a repeater. I still don’t know just exactly what a repeater is. But it allowed Oscar to have the real radio station in Sidney, Montana and somehow beam the radio waves to this gizmo in Williston, North Dakota so it was also a Williston station. The real radio station was actually located in the basement of a downtown hotel in Sidney. Right next door to a cattle corral. Or at least it smelled that way the one time I went there to visit.
********************
My Beloved’s grandparents had a farm right outside (five miles south of the highway that goes by the turn that also goes two miles north to the town) of White Earth, where they kept a few (a hundred) head of cattle. The cows fascinated me, but I kept my fascination at a distance. Because in the circus I had had far too many big lumbering quadrupeds step on my feet.
(The cattle were in the south pasture most of the time. And also, they kept to the coulees because it was protection from the elements of the plains on which the farm was located. Grandpa had inherited from his family the homestead of 360 acres. In 2005 it was granted 100 year homestead status with the US government. It was still in the original family who homesteaded. Grandpa had passed away 17 years before but had deeded the land to my uncle Jim. Uncle Jim deeded the land to his grandnephew and so it is still in the family. No part of the land has been sold so the homestead rules still apply.
There is a natural spring in the south pasture. We used to walk down there on the summer days when it was not too hot to take a walk there. The cattle were not unfriendly, kept their distance. They had worn “cow paths” to the spring so we easily found it. Grandpa used to take old broken machinery out to the knoll above the spring. An old combine and other equipment were great “toys” until we got too big to fit in the nooks and crannies of the machines. Grandpa raised enough alfalfa and wild grass for hay to feed the cattle in winter. He also raised wheat, barley and oats to sell at market. I spent many summer stints (two weeks at a time) out at the farm helping grandpa and together with my siblings (two of us at a time) as we picked rock to prepare the fields for planting. He mowed the hay and bailed it and we helped haul bales. (idiot blocks) at $.02 a bale. It seemed like top pay to us when we got a $10 bill for our work. Branding the calves in midsummer was more fun than something to get paid for but the boys did get paid. They, along with Uncle Jim, had the work of wrestling the calves to the ground and holding them while Grandpa or Uncle Allen or my dad branded, castrated the bulls, and vaccinated them. That process was upgraded to a “calf table” so the women could help when the boys were all grown and gone.
Tired, sweaty, dirty, hungry, we came in and cleaned up in the basement of the old homestead house. The house had running water and It had a cistern for water to use but not drink. The cistern was not really big so showers were not a thing. If we didn’t get really clean with the washcloth at the sink (Grandma was a stickler! She had been the school teacher for many many years at the one room country school house west of the farm) then the wash tub on the floor was the next option. But there was an indoor toilet installed when I was 15 years old. Before that it was the three seater outhouse. Two tall seats and one short.
Grandpa hauled water from the north spring (not the south one because that was in a coulee. The cattle could use that but it was not a good place to try to get a pickup or tractor.) once a week for the cistern. He hauled water from the same spring in separate containers for drinking. The north spring was on top of the plains and we could see lots of things from there.
The farm changed over the years as I was growing up. Grandpa had 5 milk cows for many years and we used to help with milking when we stayed. Grandma was in the “pumphouse” washing the milk buckets and putting the milk in containers to sell. She separated the cream right there with the old cream separator. It was a work of art, that machine! I loved to watch her pour the fresh milk in at the top bowl which held 3 gallons of milk. I get ahead of myself, she had to set up the process first. There was the set of 40 disks to clip in place and secure the rigging for the clip. There were the spouts, one for cream the other for the skimmed milk. There was the holding bowl with the controlling spout. There was the filter placed in the top bowl held above the control bowl by a wooden fashioned square where she poured the milk. I loved the cream. I ate it on my pancakes at grandma’s lovely breakfast table. Grandma cleaned up the separator every evening but during the day after first milking it was kept in the refrigerator in the pump house until evening.
The old cream separator had a story to it. That was the pride of the family when it was new back before my grandpa was old enough to think about chores. His older brother, Thor, was 16 and there was a fire in the house. The cream separator had been bolted to the floor of the house but he knew how much that machine meant to the livelihood of the family. He yanked the thing from the floor and carried it out to safety. Great-Uncle Thor told me the story himself in his old age. Even at 89 years old he was still a hulking big person. Not overweight, just a big guy. He moved his wife and family away from North Dakota in the 1940’s and was very happy that his little brother, Martin, had the homestead place.
Sometimes we would pick the eggs while grandpa and grandma did milking. Grandma had up to 50 free range chickens at times and we could pick the eggs if we had a mind to. My older brother has a story of the hen who would not let you get her eggs. She was a brooding hen and sometimes there were chicks from her brooding ways. Once we brought to the house some of the chicks who were struggling in the hatching. Grandma lit and opened the wood stove and had the chicks in eggs on the open door surrounded with towels between quart jars of hot water. The chicks hatched over a couple days and were a sight! I still remember the smell of them too.
One year Grandma had a goat. She milked the goat. Grandpa was too tall for that. I was grateful for the experience of watching her do that. One year my nephew, being 6 months old, was showing signs of intolerance to cow's milk so my sister asked if I could locate a goat. I was in the Salt Lake City area at the time so I found one and brought it to her in my brother’s pickup. I helped her know what I knew about milking the goat. She was a natural and the milk worked very well for her son.
Grandpa had horses too, and cats and a dog. Us kids were so glad there was a barn for the riding of the horses to be complete. The horse tack was kept in the barn. The cows' stanchions were on the south side and the horse stalls on the north. In the back of the barn, the west end, were a couple holding pens for calves if there was a need. It was also where the wall ladder to the hay loft or “haymow” as Grandpa used to say. Many great times were spent in the haymow. Swinging from the rope and pulley when the hay was not too tall. Lots of kitties were born up there. Lots of snuggle time with them.
Riding horses was an activity that required Grandpa, Auntie Janice, Auntie Carole, Uncle Jim or Mom to help until us older kids were old enough to manage the saddle of the horses. So riding horse was not a frequent activity in my younger years. The horse of choice was Smokey. A dapple gray gelding. He was on the farm all my years of knowing the farm. He died when I was in college and it was a sad day. The other horses were mares and they came and went over the years. Grandpa rode Smokey in the White Earth Valley Rodeo Parade every year that Smokey was alive. Grandma’s mare was a palomino named MayDavis. She was a high-spirited horse and one day she tried to get somewhere and the barbed wire fence cut her hind quarters badly and she had to be put down. Grandma took a long time to decide that it was the thing to do. The vet and Grandma fought over the right thing to do for her. It seemed like months for the choice to be made but in reality it was most likely a couple weeks. Lots of drama.
We would ride Smokey around the “pond” we called the slough (pronounced “slew”) . There was a cow path around the slough and it was a great ride! Took about 15 minutes to get around it. Grandpa had a boat too for a while. That was fun for a diversion after riding horse.)
There were some strange trees in front of the old funeral home. On a small slope or hump.
I have never seen trees quite like those anywhere else. They were small and twisted. Good climbing trees. What kind of trees were they? Over the years I looked up at their black agonized branches to the watery winter sun. I sat beneath them in the benevolent summer with my beloved to watch our children cavort on the stunted lawn. In the fall their leaves fell in a dull heap. They never blossomed. There was no fruit on them. I came to think of them as Funeral Home Trees. A new species. I wonder if those trees are still there? (They are not. Dad cut them down one at a time as they became diseased to the point of danger to the community. They were box elder trees. There were three trees altogether. One on the top of the ridge by the house. One on the left below the ridge in front of the house and the other on the right both closer to the sidewalk than the house.)
***************************
I guess I might as well admit my memory no longer retains the exact date of my first visit to the old funeral home.
Before that time, whenever it was, I had never been inside a funeral home or funeral parlor. And the only time I had ever been to a cemetery was with my old Minnesota friend Jim McCabe. He was a photographer, and he loved to spend time in older, well established cemeteries around the Twin Cities, taking photographs. I would go with him sometimes. We would talk about the girls we wanted to date. And console each other over the way none of them ever wanted to date us. This was never a lustful conversation. It was always rather mournful and pious. Because we knew what outstanding husbands we would make for any girl (on the planet). We were convinced that because our hearts were pure and our aim was noble - temple marriage - that women would swoon at the thought of being hitched to us for time and all eternity. Which just goes to show how often folly is linked with religion.
It’s not that I was uncomfortable with the concept of the presence of death. I had seen several deaths with the circus. A drunken roustabout crushed between two elephants. A Russian trainer whose throat was torn out by his bear. I had even seen a camel brutally put down because it would not stop biting everyone within reach. It was hit on the head with a sledge hammer, which brought it to its knees. Then it was shot point blank in the head with a rifle. The show brought in several local butchers to chop up the carcass to feed to the big cats.
So when I learned that my beloved lived in the old funeral home in Tioga I had no qualms about visiting her there.
The Haroldson family had moved in to the old funeral home in July 30, 1977. (Our neighbors were to the right, the Johnson’s. To the left was the street/ highway state road 40. It was a main road before 1960 when Federal Highway 2 was resurfaced and rerouted. The clinic and hospital including the nursing home were located up the hill from there. The hospital complex was run at that time by three doctors all named Patel, from India. Across the street to the east were the Biklers, the Thingvolds, and the Rosencrans’) My beloved was the 2nd child of 12 in the Haroldson family. With so many children Albert and Alicia Haroldson were happy to get the old funeral home in Tioga to lodge their huge brood in.
Memory can be a useful and comforting servant, but it makes a terrible master. So I am not obsessed about whether or not my memories are accurate. Rather, I am recording my impressions of a world that was new and intriguing to me. It was much more noisy and confused than the glacial environment I grew up in back home.
And then there was the dog Putt-Putt. I am not really sure that she was a dog. I suspect she had the blood of Hades in her. She was small, elongated, and seemed to spout puppies on a monthly basis. She wore a perpetual sneer, etched on her canine face like the terrifying sneer on the face of Gargantua, the famous Ringling gorilla. She would bite anyone or anything that came into her view. (not really, but I’ll let him have his memories) Sort of like a rhinoceros that charges anything that comes into view of its poor eyesight. How the Haroldson’s put up with that creature for so long is a mystery even Adrian Monk would be hard pressed to solve.
(Putt-Putt came to our family when we lived in Ross about 25 miles east of Tioga. She was such a cute little lovely brown turd! Dad and my sister, a year younger than me at age 14, laughed so much at the antics of the puppy. My sister claimed her and taught her so many things. She was a smart dog. The name Putt-Putt came from a line in a TV commercial at the time about little toys for kids. The line was “The what-what’s?? the Putt-Putt’s!!” Putt-Putt was beloved to all of the family. She was a good mamma dog to all her puppies. We were able to find homes for all of the puppies she ever had. Once she was hurt by a miscreant teenager with a b-b-gun. Her hind right leg was shot. My boyfriend, Jeff, rushed her and my sister to the vet at 9 o’clock at night. Jeff was a hero, even if he was from Tioga. If Jeff would have been true to me (I was 17) we would have been married. Dad thought Jeff was “an alright guy.” The leg healed and she forever after had a turned out foot and a limp.
By the time we moved to the old funeral home Putt-Putt was very past her prime for bearing puppies. She only had a few litters there in Tioga. The year Tim met Putt-Putt was 1979. Four years after I graduated from Stanley HS. Stanley was the closest large town for kids from Ross to attend HS. Big rival with Tioga. My siblings faced a bunch of ridicule for moving to the bane of existence for Stanley HS musicians and athletes. Our family had all musicians and many athletes and competition was brutal those first couple years in Tioga.
Anyway, Putt-Putt was a gentle soul who could sense a person’s heart. My sister knew it. Our heritage was very thick and did not allow for animals to have choice in who they were nice to. It did not allow for children to have a choice either. And if the child grew up without learning about how to choose then the child was left to society for teaching. So we were nice to everyone and if the dog didn’t like someone then the dog was kept away from that person to the best of our ability.
I don’t mean to imply that Tim had a black heart. He did have things he was hiding at the time. The dog sensed this part of him and had no way to communicate except to lash out at the misguided ankle. The rest of us just did what we could to try to keep the peace in the situation. I don’t think that anyone will fault a person for having things hidden. We all have things we keep to ourselves. I have since learned about animals and the role they play in keeping us grounded. They help us face our hidden things so the mystery doesn’t overwhelm us or cause damage to ourselves or others.
Tim didn’t know that his hidden things would significantly hurt feelings later in our lives. I didn’t know either. If I had known I may have made a different choice.)
Back in June of 1980 I received a letter from my old pal Tim Holst. We were First of Mays together with Ringling Brothers Circus, and he was instrumental in introducing me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I discovered this old letter today while going through some circus photographs. So here it is, unabridged and unedited.
Dear Tork,
Jeff & I are rattling around this ol'show, disturbed& frustrated cuz there have been few lines penned from Provo. It concerns us . . . Have you taken marriage too seriously??? Are you dead???
Have you changed friends??? Do we have bad breath?? Are we mere mongrels by comparison to those in the academic world? Or, does your wife have you tied to household chores or gardening? Have you been forced to do something against your will? Like, like, like . . . now let me see . . . . Aw nuts, we just plain miss hearing from you . . . Have you heard of more than one baby Holst?
All the Polish folks have been drunk for three days since the strike ended.
Clown college starts Sept 15th. Contracts are coming, and so are the Saturday Blues.
Till you hear from me again,
Your friend,
Tim
Alone in the cold rain
is the most alone there is
next to under the ground
冷たい雨の中で一人で
そこにある最も一人です
地下の隣Hungry brown sparrows
will not eat red gummy bears --
a nature note.
空腹の茶色のスズメ
赤いグミベアを食べません-
ネイチャーノート。
The song of the snowis long and slow and placid --white on white on white雪の歌
長くて遅くて穏やかです-
白地に白地に白
All the fam'ly meets on Zoom,
as the winter storms go boom.
No more travel by air plane,
sled or car or even train.
Omicron keeps us indoors,
safe and sound, stuffed with s'mores.
Grandma's house is isolated;
yuletide cheer is constipated.
Currier & Ives be damned;
have your Netflix pre-programmed.
Cleaning house no longer matters,
as on Zoom one gaily chatters.
To all you folks who travel still,
acting as pandemic's shill:
Season's Greetings, nincompoops.
May your jets fly loop-de-loops!
vast whirlpool of wealth
sucking in green money
while drunks go sober
富の広大な渦
緑のお金を吸う
酔っぱらいが地味になりながら
falling off
the edge of the universe
into a black hole
落下
宇宙の端
ブラックホールに
the squirrels chewthe electric wires untilthey taste like fried chickenリスが噛む
まで電線
彼らはフライドチキンになります
O if I could live upon a boat
and on the water gently float,
I'd be as happy as a clam
in Angkor Wat or Amsterdam.
The vapors blowing on my face
would all my cares quite soon erase.
With kelp and duckweed I'd consort,
and seining eels would be good sport.
Yes, I would wear a skipper's cap,
while studying an ocean map.
No mortgage would I pay the bank;
I'd force those guys to walk the plank!
My crew would be a salty bunch,
who never heard of soap or brunch.
They'd swab the deck and hoist a mizzin,
and to me they would have to listen.
I'd fish all day and dance with squid,
and know just what was meant by 'fid.'
Environmentally, you know,
I'd strike a green-flecked counter-blow!
A boat, a ship, a barge, a raft --
if I could have just any craft
that kept me off of terra firma
there'd be a glow upon my derma.
And like Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
I'd feel that I was suzerain!
the cold winter snow
creeps underneath green pine trees
dusting brown pine cones
寒い冬の雪
緑の松の木の下に忍び寄る
茶色の松ぼっくりをまぶすthe cold winter snow
white in the slow-moving sun
the sparrows puff up
寒い冬の雪
動きの遅い太陽の下で白
スズメが膨らむ
the cold winter snowcannot displace memoryof green spring perfumes寒い冬の雪
メモリを置き換えることはできません
緑の春の香水の
Hung with crepe, the people mourn
North Korea's unicorn;
Kim Jong's dad, that noble steed,
died ten years ago indeed!
So with great austerity
the nation bans hilarity;
no one laughs and no one smirks --
from generals to humble clerks.
If a chuckle is detected,
that poor fool is soon corrected;
he or she in durance vile
sits and frowns for quite a while.
Once a nation bans the laugh
you can write their epitaph.
Glad I am the USA
still can laugh its cares away!