Novel. The Old Funeral Home. Chapter Three. Conclusion of Part 2.

 

The Beloved's hands on her keyboard in our bedroom,

where she is working on rewrites for client blogs. We

do five of these each week day. I find them boring.

But the extra money is needed to fund our smoothie

crusade.

I remember a field of chokecherries off a roadside while I was courting the Beloved while she still lived with her parents and siblings in the old funeral home in Tioga.

There was one particular day I remember in late summer. The sun caressed the weedy fields as she and I drove to the chokecherry patch. I knew she was going to marry me when I asked her. And that anticipation made me so happy I thought I might become ill with impatience. 

I had not felt such an intense and puzzling sense of joy since the missionaries had taught me the LDS discussions back on the Iron Lung at Ringling Brothers during rehearsals back in 1971. When they got to the part about the War in Heaven, my heart almost gave out on me and I had double vision. When I told the missionaries they would have to stop because I was ill they wisely replied that I was not ill at all -- I was experiencing the Holy Ghost testifying to me of the truthfulness of what they were telling me. 

And so we arrived at the chokecherry patch. Where I unwisely asked the Beloved if one could eat chokecherries raw. With a masked smile she assured me they were sweet.

They were not. The first taste nearly caused my tongue to leap out of my mouth and run howling away like a dog who has sat on a cactus.

But then, my Beloved has always had a puckish sense of humor. Today whenever I ask her to make me an omelette she immediately replies "Poof! You're an omelette."

There is nothing in the world I love so much as to hear her laugh, whether at her own humorous japes or at something we are watching together. I had a glorious time when we watched the TV series Monk together. Her screeches of glee at the introverted detective's many foibles were like medicine to my heart. The sound washed away years of sorrow and doubt like a river of warm honey washing over me.

This day I have not heard her laugh very much. It makes me wish I had a magic artifact that I could rub or shake to cause her to giggle and chortle on command. 

I don't think I ever did anything as a professional clown that ever made her laugh . . .

( I feel a certain pull to interject and say that he does make me laugh. He did make me laugh when we were courting. I laughed till I cried! – That is a title to a book written by the wife of Jerry Lewis, the comedian. She refers to the things that he did that were aimed at her to make her feel badly and actually hurt her and they were not funny any more. – There was a little of that going on with Tim and me. It feels like telling those things would not help anyone yet so it will be another time we might talk about some of those things.

He certainly did make me laugh. And he does make me laugh. Clouds of sadness did overtake me when we were married the first time so it happened like his selective hearing about the sweet/ sour berries. I learned from a study about human behavior that it takes ten times of doing goodness about a memory to overcome one bad memory. It holds true for me. I watched that formula work for my children in many instances too.

So the times I laughed at things he did as a professional clown… let me see. )

(Shock and awe are the things that usually get a laugh. The first time I heard his story about Mishu, the smallest man in the world, I laughed. The first time I saw his “sleepy man at church” routine, I laughed. When I hear him tell a new “did I ever tell you about the time. . .” , I laugh. He is always thinking of ways to make things new. And so we both laugh at bungles, foibles and mishaps. I think I really love to laugh. I smile at almost everyone as an automatic response to seeing a person. Keeping my smile – or keeping their smile – is dependent upon how receptive people are to me over time.)

I remember my covenant

 

"And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant."

Exodus 6:5

God remembers covenants while man forgetful stays/The Lord redeems his promises in all these latter days/The arm of flesh is nothing when compared to Heaven's might/And God will be a-coming down to win the final fight!

Frogs

  And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs . . .

Exodus 8:3

There's a frog in the oven/a frog in the stew/there's one in the bedding/and in the car, too/Are we holding anyone in bondage raw/with our deceit and unwise martial law?

Novel: The Old Funeral Home. Chapter 3. Part One.

 

The Beloved on her way to work as a tax consultant at

H&R block across the park from our apartment. She

works in the evenings, until the middle of April.

This photograph was taken during an earthquake.

As the (my)Beloved fries me some hamburger, onions, and potatoes this afternoon I'm reminded that the memory can be a good servant or pleasant entertainer, but is a cruel master.

So as I remember the old funeral home in Tioga I determine to think of that time and place as happy, bright, clean, and full of opportunity and fun. 

Because, you see, I have developed a default setting over the tumbling years for my memory -- which is not happy or carefree, but rather brooding and blame-seeking. When I allow my mind to wander where it will it automatically goes to unhappy places. And since my remarriage to the (my) Beloved I have found that such memory mucking is counter-productive and not in the spirit of harmony that we need in order to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous marriage snafus. Of which there are plenty. And which are all my fault. All the time, Without exception. One-hundred percent. No excuses offered. 

[I'm hoping the Beloved will interject something ameliorating here . . but you never know . . . ] 

(He is hoping for an interjection and I have a few things. I see this “memory time” a little differently. I understand the blaming mentality to which he falls prey. Taking blame when it is squarely on one's shoulders is an important thing for responsibility sake. It takes a person of good character to own mistakes and do something about them. It’s a small person indeed, who takes the blame for things and does nothing but wallow in self-pity. Or worse, seeks to blame someone else for things.

My husband and I still create things together. We created children and meals and mistakes in our relationship the first time around. Now we create meals and written word combinations and we foster good in our relationship, in spite of mistakes. Our marriage this time is different because I am different and He is different. My actions gave me cause to make decisions, both those in my memory and those yet to be. Indeed, he has cause for the same types of decisions. It would be wonderful to teach something about those decisions so people can benefit from this writing. Benefit is a wish and a prayer I have for all readers. Though you, dear readers, are the ones to choose your benefit. 

Somehow launching into my “soap box” seems pretentious. I will wait.)

Homes have their own personalities. Just ask James Whitcomb Riley. My parent's home was a brooding iceberg with four walls, right out of an Ingmar Bergman movie. The(My) Beloved's home, on the other hand, the old funeral home, impressed me from the get go as a happy busy hive of confused activity and unpretentious but filling meals at all hours of the day. You were as likely to find a pair of muddy gumboots on the sofa as a warm basket of home-made scones -- made from winter red wheat ground by the (my) Beloved's own mother -- in the sewing room. With chokecherry syrup or wild plums on the side, bottled by the mother. Who we have decided to call Alberta. The mother, not the scones. (Chokecherry picking is about the best way to get chokecherries with flavor. You can buy chokecherry jelly or chokecherry syrup but unless you experience the hunt for the berries it’s just not the same. Chokecherry trees don’t lend themselves to transplanting. They grow wild in North Dakota and parts of the rest of the plains states. I have heard of people trying to grow the bush/tree in the city, but unless it is there in the first place it won’t grow. I was lucky and found a house in town with one chokecherry bush that had grown to a considerable size so it was nearly as tall as the trees in the yard. The yield from the bush was enough for about a pint of syrup. That’s pure gold to my family! The coulies on Grandpa’s farm had some chokecherry ‘trees’. Also on Grandma Pete’s, my dad's mom's farm. I could tell a little about Dad’s dad here. Grandpa Manley died when my dad was 4 years old. Dad is the middle child of 5 boys. So Grandma Pete raised their boys with the help of the farming community at Beaver Creek. She was a strong woman! I didn’t find out about Grandpa Manley’s business skills until very late in my life but I have several brothers who are showing the inherited skill. Grandpa Manley had lots of land by the time he died and Grandma Pete was able to survive with the money from the land for about 5 years. By that time the three oldest boys were able to be hired hands for farmers in the area and help with their own meager existence. One of the things they did was pick chokecherries every fall. We got to carry on the tradition because the trees are still there. I remember many hot August days filling several ice cream pails full. You think of berries and automatically you think there is some pilfering, right? Well, unless you get a bunch of chokecherries and coat your mouth with the natural pectin from them you don’t do much pilfering. I watched my little brother do it every year though. 

Then you wash them and clear out the leaves and sticks and spiders and ticks. Once there is enough in the biggest pot you have then you cover them in water and boil them. You pour the water in another pot through a colander. The experts have a berry sieve. It’s a cone shape with a fitted mashing stick. That you can use to mash the berries till all that’s left are the seeds. We used a cotton flour-sack cloth. Mashing the berries gets the natural pectin into the juice and makes the best syrup and jelly without using the added pectin you can get in the store. And THAT’S good jelly!)

And to top the chokecherries or the wild plums, (wild plums are similar in finding them but they are a very different flavor. And you can actually preserve the plums) there was always thick unpasteurized and unhomogenized cream from the Hartsock farm (10 miles) down the road from the old funeral home. Collected each week in plastic one gallon mayonnaise jars by Alberta. (You have to skim the cream off the top of the milk if you want to have the thick stuff. Otherwise it gets stirred in with the drinking milk and you have to wait for the next batch of milk or go to the store.)That cream was as thick as library paste. The fact is, I have been daydreaming about those luscious preserves covered in cream so much that I let my lunch scorch on the Stove while the(my) Beloved was working on something in the bedroom. So it'll be Cajun food, that's all. Blackened for flavor.

There's much more to write, but I'm going to stop and eat my lunch while it's still hot [before it carbonizes completely.]

I believe that my Beloved will be interjecting quite a few things here abouts, to pad out this first part of Chapter Three.

But then again, you never know . . . 

(Everyone comes to this earth with a story. The one they get from the family that made them. Several facets make up that story. Then the story is added upon by yourself. Some people call the story baggage. It can be baggage unless you learn what to do with it. Some people are able to teach their children what they have inherited and what to do with it. Others, most of us, just muddle through. We get by. Still others observe what the taught people have learned and they pick up some skills of what to do and life is better. I love the people who have learned to share their learning. My life is better because I decided to listen to some of them.

If a person has learned to like the feeling of self-pity there is room for thought, reflection and action. Pity parties are nasty things to attend. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…” is a cliche we all know. The counsel is to learn to mourn the loss of the thing and decide to do something better. This is a trait of the people who observe. I wish to speak freely of the important things. I will mention here that the most important thing is Jesus Christ. He taught us what to do with our bag and baggage. He gave us the chance to make mistakes and learn from them.)

When Pharaoh Knew Not Joseph.

 

When Pharaoh knew not Joseph and made the Hebrew slave/a mighty man named Moses was sent  all them to save/His staff became a serpent; yet Pharaoh shook his head/Never would he let them go, until his son was dead/When prophets give a warning we'd better heed them quick/To fight against their sacred word is work for lunatic.

Narrative Poem: The New Ice Age

 

Well, the experts were wrong.

Like always.

There was no universal global warming after all.

What happened was the Earth's

weather patterns are completely

on the fritz.

Like, for instance, Greenland.

It's full of monkeys and coconut trees now.

South America is snowed under.

Permanently.

Here in Utah the ice pack just keeps growing.

We live in tunnels carved out of the ice.

Wear animal furs and mukluks. 

I myself have learned how to subsist on

shaved ice, Eskimo potatoes,

 and baked Alaska.

It's not so bad. Once you get used to it.

All the bugs are gone. Not one cockroach left.

No one sleeps alone. You get hypothermia if you do.

So everyone bundles -- like the Colonials did.

But I have to admit I'm saving my pennies

so I can buy a condo on the beach in Greenland.

Novel. The Old Funeral Home. Conclusion of Chapter 2.

 

Me, Tim Torkildson, on our patio at Valley Villa. 

650 West  100 North Apartment 115.

Provo  Utah. 

Sunday, March 20. 2022.

The Beloved. Amy Lynn Anderson Snyder-Torkildson.

On the same patio on the same day as me.

She is holding a mask made by our daughter

Sarah in high school.

[If you recall, we were talking about cows and farming up in North Dakota in the first part of this chapter.]

All this talk of cows reminds me of the Red Owl there in Williston, back in 1980.

When I was a kid my mother always took us shopping on Tuesday mornings to the Red Owl in New Brighton. And by the way, I’ll get to why I associate cows with the Red Owl in just a moment.

As I was saying, my dad would take off work from Aarone’s Bar and Grill, where he poured suds, every Tuesday morning, to take mom and us kids to the Red Owl ' for the weekly grocery run. My mother bought groceries only once a week. She would be aghast at the way my beloved and I do our shopping today. It’s pretty much whatever comes to mind each day . . . we go shopping. If we want organic sweet potatoes for instance, or I crave a cheddar/jalapeno bagel,  we stop at the store for it. Whether it’s on our shopping list or not. I personally don’t feel guilty about this. And I'm sure my beloved is not biting her nails over it. But my mother was raised during a sterner time. During the Great Depression. Every penny had to be carefully delegated. There was no room and no money for buying a bagel on a whim. Or even a postage stamp.

But getting back to the Red Owl in New Brighton. I remember they had a gigantic hand cranked coffee mill. It was painted fire engine red and it seemed to my midget eyes to loom up at least two stories in front of me. I dearly wanted my mother to buy some coffee beans so she would turn that giant wheel to grind them. I imagined the machine would emit a groaning chorus  of “Yo heave ho” in a deep Russian bass. But she only bought Folger’s in a can. Or was it Hills Brother’s? (My dad made Mom get Hills Brother’s. She didn’t drink coffee, since she joined the Church in 1962. We taught everyone in the small communities within 100 miles of us about the fact that we didn’t drink alcohol or coffee or smoke cigarettes. North Dakota is like that. Farmers are all spread out. Everyone is related somehow or other. We went to the Red Owl in Stanley when I was growing up. It was 7 miles from us, as opposed to the 65 miles to Williston where our meeting house was. When we moved closer to Williston by moving to Tioga, the store there was the “Piggly Wiggly”. By that time new ownerships were taking over and the first oil boom was a bad memory. The next oil boom was gearing up and happened in 1983-88.)

The other thing I remember about shopping with Mom at the “Red Owl” is the vast array of gumball machines. They not only dispensed candy but also little plastic or latex trinkets in a clear plastic egg. I always wanted to get one of the clear plastic eggs that had a green latex skeleton in it. When the gumball machine finally spit it out and I opened it, the smell of that cheap Japanese latex made me gag!

But getting back to the Williston Red Owl. That place was wonderful to me, because you could buy a pre-cut packaged slice of steak (here we have the link to cows and “Red Owl”), and they would grill it for you right there. I loved eating my dinner there with a side of potato salad. A carton of chocolate milk. And a package of Hostess Suzy-Q’s. 

And that leads us, patient readers, to the subject of my weight. 

Today (2022) I am proud to say I am under 300Lbs.  This only happened because of the help and faith of my beloved. When I was a child I was referred to as “beanpole”.  I was so thin because I was such a picky eater. But once I got back from my mission to Thailand, I ate so voraciously that my weight ballooned. I could not fit into any of my clothes. I was determined to lose weight. And I did. When I enrolled in the Brown Institute of Broadcasting I would walk there and back everyday. It was 6 miles one way. So I was walking 12 miles each day Monday through Friday. And that took the pounds off during the 6 month course. I also gave up things like mashed potatoes and gravy, and Suzy-Q’s.

When I got to Williston I still had to walk or ride my bike everywhere. So that gave me some exercise. But not enough. Those steak dinners at the Red Owl and my serious Hostess relapse, started putting the pounds back on my slender frame. And I have struggled with my weight ever since. 

But I don't much care for Hostess products anymore -- I'd rather have sour pickle or a juicy anjou pear for dessert anytime.

My dad was always a fat man. He looked and acted like W.C. Fields in his later years. He never worried about his weight. It did not bother him. Back then, bartenders were supposed to be fat. You couldn’t trust a skinny bartender. When my mother was mad at him, she would refer to him as “you fat toad on a stove.” 

********************************

(I’ve known a few bartenders in my life but they weren’t fat. They were regular ladies that worked for my parents.  And now it comes out. 1964 Dad bought the bar in Ross. Mom and Dad with 7 kids moved in and set up housekeeping in the top part of the Hilltop Bar. The upstairs used to be the motel part. New owner, new face to the business. It was now our house. A set of steel cabinets and a sink were put in one of the rooms for a kitchen. A wall was removed to be the living room next to the kitchen. As you came up the stairs the first door on the left was the boys room. The door on the right was the bathroom and laundry room. Then the next two rooms had been opened up for the kitchen and living room. The last door on the left was for my parents and was also the only way to get to the girls room.  We lived in that apartment situation for 11 years. Added to our family were the next four children. 11 years. 11 children. And so many prayers that were very strange. I remember hearing Mom tell God that we don’t drink or smoke and we don’t want to teach others to do that but if people want to do that please let them come here where friends meet. Mom was a strong woman. She taught us the lessons for the children’s Primary each week for those 11 years. She taught us each to sing and also to sing together. We had piano lessons in Stanley from her High School piano teacher Sibyll MacDonald. I remember 6:30 AM mornings practicing on the piano in the bar. There were 5 of us who were up that early. The bus came at 8 so there was enough time for three a day to practice. There was no way to practice after school like normal people. I remember going to sleep many nights listening to Mom’s piano music as she played and the people in the bar would sing and dance. Some guys would even play guitar with her. Sunday mornings were strange too. We cleaned the bar before we held church.

The bottom of the building was a Cafe if you entered the building on the north. And a bar if you entered the building on the east or west. And how did we access our house you ask? There was a shed to the north of the east bar entrance and we went in there. You could go in and then up the stairs or across the landing to the kitchen of the cafe. For a couple years Mom tried to run the cafe and keep up with the family but it got to be too much. She did experience a miscarriage of a baby during that time. So the cafe was closed in our house and that opened up an opportunity for one of Dad’s cousins to put a cafe in the little store in town. It was good for a time. It also opened up an area for more sleeping rooms! Two bunk beds in the boys room. A double bed, a single bed and a crib in the girls room. I got the first bedroom downstairs after the cafe closed.

Back to the bartenders. Ida, Belinda, Mom and Bonnie all ran the bar. Dad would work mornings sometimes too. He got work with the garage down the hill and then Mom took over the mornings until she had babies. Then for a couple months she would be home and soon she would be back at work in the mornings.  Ida was a cousin of Dad’s. Ida had two kids and I babysat them sometimes. Belinda was from Syria. There was a whole settlement of Syrians in our area. The older people all spoke the strange language to my ears. The kids were friendly and I was glad they were my friends during high school. They knew the pain of ridicule and sometimes it was nice to have someone to commiserate with. Bonnie was another of Dad’s cousins. Bonnie had 5 kids. Her husband died of cancer a year after we got to Ross. They and a couple kids that were the same age as my brother and me. When I say “cousin” you should understand that in North Dakota we can know our 3rd and 4th and even 5th cousins. That’s the kind of cousins that Bonnie and Ida were.)

Haiku: 詩人は食べる鶏しかありません Pinatas.

 

beaten to a pulp --

bleeding tootsie rolls and gum;

kids have all the fun.

start jumping around --

swing a blind stick at your friends;

grow a year older.

the lighting in malls

makes even the toys and games

seem way too grown up.

Narrative Poem: What's holding us together?

 

Ever since I learned of atoms as a child

I have been obsessed with disintegration.

I mean, c'mon -- what's holding all those 

atoms together?

Magnetism? Gravity. Electricity? What?

Some people are marked by an experience

with spontaneous combustion --

where a person just goes up in flames

for no reason.

With me, it's spontaneous disintegration.

And not just of people. Of things.

I have a memory as a small boy

of seeing a red fire hydrant near my house

slowly disintegrate before my eyes one

summer day. It was horrible.

Since then, I have worked at keeping

myself together.

I take collagen supplements.

If you take enough of it,

Elmer's Glue tastes rather sweet.

When I feel a loosening of my atoms

I immediately lay down in a tub of 

warm mucilage. 

So far, it seems to be working.

Of course, everyone else seems fine;

there's no reports of spontaneous disintegration

in the news.

Not that it would ever be reported

if it's been happening since the beginning

of time.

Something that happens all the time,

like dandruff,

is not newsworthy.

So I keep my eyes peeled.

And have placards printed that read:

"Keep yourself together!"

I just sent a shipment of 'em to

Lviv -- with rolls of duct tape.

One does what one can.

Narrative Poem: The Scooter

 

The scooter lay there. Abandoned.

Sadness welled up in me like bad clams.

I couldn't go on, but returned home.

Opening my vault, I took out a wheelbarrow

filled with money.

Then I wheeled it down to the abandoned scooter.

I announced in a loud voice that whoever

could tell me about the child who rode that scooter

could have my wheelbarrow of money.

A few people stopped to stare at me.

But otherwise they scurried about their loathsome

business like cockchafers on a banana peel.

I called 911 to report the scooter as evidence of

a terrible crime.

"Ah, some kid just left it there" said the 911 voice.

He sounded weary and jaded. "Call when you find a body."

I turned back to the sinister scooter --

only to find it was gone!

Someone had taken it while I was calling.

And they had snitched a wad of bills

off the top of my wheelbarrow, too.

So I went home and cleaned the kitchen floor.

Waxed it down with Turtle Wax. 

When you have a big heart like mine

you have to make things shiny.