Every Clown Has a Mother

Without mothers, how could you have clowns? That’s assuming, of course, that clowns are human -- and not cloned. Some of the clowns I knew at Ringling may very well have been products from a defective test tube.

Swede Johnson told me that after he was shanghaied at the tender age of 14, he never saw his mother again until he was 34. He had enough money to go back to Copenhagen and look her up. She thought he was dead, and fainted when he walked into the modest apartment where she took in laundry to wash by hand to make ends meet. He had saved up some money to give to her. She wouldn’t take it, so Swede bought a washing machine and had it lugged up four flights of stairs to her apartment to make her wash days easier.

Prince Paul told me all he remembered of his mother in Germany was the time she used all their hyper-inflated paper money, a basket of it, during the Weimar Republic, to make a bed for his nap. He slept on thousands of worthless marks.

Chico said his mother helped his father run a grocery store in Brooklyn, and grew to hate the sight of broccoli and spinach -- so he never had to eat those evil vegetables as a child.

The Little Guy described how his mother made a special dish every Sunday. Potato Chip Casserole. It was horrible. It glued his teeth together.

Holst’s mother and father came to visit the show in Champaign, Illinois. She darned all his socks during their 3 day visit, and then offered to mend anyone else’s socks. I was the only one to take her up on the offer.   

My mother didn’t even drive – she depended on my father to take her places that she couldn’t reach by bus or by walking.  She did not attend to the affairs of state, and didn’t like the limelight one little bit. She never understood how I craved it so very much.

On summer weekends in my childhood it was the practice of the Torkildson tribe to drive to Lake Johanna, ten miles from home, for a day of picnicking and swimming.  It’s no Coney Island, but it was plenty good enough for us.  My dad always found a nice, shady tree to set up his folding lounge chair under and snooze away the hours, awaking only long enough to pour a Hamm’s beer down his throat before sinking back as if he’d been shot.  My mother worshipped the sun; she slathered on the coconut oil and broiled happily on a blanket on the beach.  We kids, of course, turned into naiads and manatees, splashing and floating in our native element, refusing to come out even for lunch.

There was a whitewashed wooden pylon set up for the lifeguard on the public beach at Lake Johanna.  He, or she, wielded a large tin whistle, frequently tootling on it to gain the attention of some freshwater malefactor who was swimming outside the roped off area or otherwise acting the maritime scofflaw.  The year I turned eight Ramsey County decided not to stock the pylon with lifeguards anymore, no doubt as an economy measure, and neglected to inform patrons of the public beach, outside of a teeny weeny sign, the size of a flyer, that was tacked briefly onto the whitewashed wooden pylon, and fluttered away in the breeze soon after being posted.

That was the year I decided I could swim out to the wooden platform anchored in about twenty feet of water – and nearly drowned in the attempt.  Luckily, there were some adult swimmers nearby; they hauled me back on shore, vomiting water like a disgruntled geyser, and turned me over to my mother – who was incensed to suddenly learn there was no longer any lifeguard on duty.  Ever.  

Her fury at this perceived dereliction of the Ramsey County Park Board’s duty was grim and determined.  After making sure I was reasonably responsive, she clouted me on the ear for being such a dumming and strode over to the concessions shack, where sandy hotdogs and lukewarm soda pop were vended by bored teenagers.  She found the most likely-looking boy in the group, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and frog-marched the astonished youth over to the white pylon, where she instructed him in the kind of motherly tones that no one who values their life ever ignores to climb up and keep an eye on things until she relieved him of his duty.  The teenaged boy, seeing the dangerous sparkle in her eye, meekly obeyed – and once again Lake Johanna had a lifeguard, albeit a shanghaied one.  He stayed up there until it started to get dark and we packed up to go home.  Then he quietly slipped off the pylon and skedaddled for all he was worth.  I’d like to know what he told HIS mother when he got home that night.

Word must have gotten back to the Park Board, for the next weekend there was an older man glumly perched on the white pylon, gazing about him with bitter resignation.  I can’t say for sure, but I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that he was a member of the Park Board itself.

From the New York Times:    . . . China’s gender gap remains huge. There were 33.59 million more men than women in China in 2016, according to figures from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics that were issued last month . . .

In China the males dominate

Ev’ry aspect of the state.

On Valentine’s Day

They get in the way

Of each other just for a blind date.

A Smile

Love is the remedy for ailing families, ill communities, and sick nations.  Thomas S. Monson.

Big questions seem to melt away when I can show my love

To friends and fam’ly, even strangers in this world of shove.

What I need to pray for is not health or wealth or grace

As much as just the power to keep a smile upon my face.

Conflict Resolution in Clown Alley

“Take it outside the alley!”

Such was the cry of the peacemakers in the Ringling clown alley during the years I worked there.

Whenever a major conflict arose between parties, with increasing volume and threats, the disputants were invited to remove themselves and settle their differences outside. If they ignored this request and continued their wrangle inside the alley they were forcibly ejected. Very few ever broke the Pax Comici. It was hard enough to keep a lid on 30 paid lunatics all crammed together, without hotheads making the whole shebang go up in smoke.  

My personal hot button were the smokers. Back then it was still a Constitutional right to puff away wherever and whenever you wanted, despite the health and fire hazards. Asking someone to put out their cigar or cigarette was tantamount to asking them to give up their right to bear arms. The clown alley nicotine fiends heedlessly threw their butts way with careless abandon: I had lit cigarettes land on my costumes and even on pizza slices! It was damaging and disgusting, but the more I hollered the less anyone heard me -- since fully two thirds of clown alley were heavy smokers. One of the worst offenders was Chippy, who specialized in making dozens of black powder squibs for each show. Squibs were used as blow offs for numerous gags; anytime an explosion with a large mushroom cloud of heavy black smoke was needed, you just rigged one of Chippy’s squibs up to a battery with a simple on/off switch, and your comic detonation was ready to go.

Chippy shed cigarette ashes like dandruff; they got on everything. Plus he rolled his own, and whatever brand of tobacco he used must have consisted largely of shredded horsehair and rubber tires -- one whiff was enough to telescope my nose back up into my sinuses. But Chippy was big and cranky. He didn’t take criticism well. So I was forced to mute my protests into vengeance-filled daydreams. But Chippy taught me an important lesson about getting even with your enemies. One day a live ash from his cigarette fell onto the squib he was working on. He had it in his lap and the flash explosion sent him hobbling off to the the ER howling in agony. His misfortune gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, and after that I didn’t loathe him quite so much. So I learned the age-old lesson that if you want to get even with your enemies just wait for life to do something cruel to them. It always does, to everyone. So you don’t have to lift a finger or take any of the blame. That philosophy has served me well, and kept me out of jail, for many years.

We called troublemakers ‘heat merchants.’ There were a number of them. Dougie Ashton was always sniffing around the alley, looking for disagreements he could fan into a blaze. As a new convert to the LDS faith, I wanted to share my newfound beliefs with others, but Holst, also LDS, advised me to keep quiet and preach by example, not by word. But Dougie liked to draw me out with outrageous statements about Mormonism. Come to think of it, he may have been one of the first purveyors of fake news . . .

Strolling up to my trunk, he once said “I hear your church doesn’t let members eat Twinkies -- aren’t you in big trouble?” I happened to be eating a Twinkie at the time, and shouted back between bites that it was a lie and he was full of dritt! That’s all he was waiting for.

“Oh yeah, you little twit? C’mon and make me eat those words you bloody church boy!”

“Take it outside the alley!”  came the familiar refrain from a dozen throats.

“Sorry Dougie. I didn’t mean to yell at you” I told him quietly.

“Yeah, mate. Same here, I guess.” Many clown alley contretemps blew over quickly, like a summer storm.

There were occasional powder sock fights. After applying the heavy greasepaint, clowns used an old white sock, full of baby powder, to set the makeup and keep it from smearing. One day a major rift developed in the alley when the older clowns discovered that the younger clowns, including me, thought then President Nixon was a crook and a war monger; the sooner he was impeached and the sooner we got out of Vietnam the better. Prince Paul, a stalwart political conservative who thought Barry Goldwater was a hippy, threw the first sock right into Racoon Face’s kisser. After that it quickly developed into a dusty Donnybrook. When the talcum powder settled, clown alley looked like a pale white moonscape. Without anyone saying a word, we reached a consensus that Nixon and the Vietnam War were conversationally off limits in clown alley from then on.

Another heat merchant was Mama. So named because he pretended to a solicitous concern about his fellow joeys, he was only after scurrilous information he could retail to Charlie Baumann. Offering a hungover clown some aspirin, Mama would learn of his unpaid bar tab. The next day Baumann would saunter into the alley and sandbag Mama’s victim with a dire threat to pay his local bills or he’d be cut loose from the show and handed over to the local cops. Mama was universally loathed as a stoolie. When he became boss clown a few seasons later his trunk mysteriously developed the ability to acquire dime bags of pot and other illegal items. Baumann was informed of these amazing appearances but chose not to investigate. Still, it kept Mama on his toes and was probably the reason why he retired from clowning at the age of thirty-five to become an evangelical pastor in Michigan.  

I suppose this is as good a place as any to mention my unfortunate altercation with Michu, the World’s Smallest Man. He received star billing in the program and from the publicity department, keeping Art Ricker hopping to find new ways to exploit his stature without ruffling his dignity. But he never had his own dressing room. Circus management put him in clown alley. He was an ornery cuss, and one Sunday afternoon as I was minding my own business reading the Book of Mormon at my trunk he came over and poured a bottle of beer over it. Without hesitation I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, threw him inside his own wardrobe trunk, and locked it.

I have never apologized for my actions. The little pisher deserved it. But if I had it to do over again I would probably take my sodden scriptures to Charlie Baumann, tell him what happened, name the clowns who were witnesses to the event, and then ask for reimbursement for a new Book of Mormon.

In the event, once they got Michu out of his trunk I was allowed to finish the season, but then was blacklisted from Ringling. I spent several years in the wilderness, working for mud shows, but eventually, mostly because of the good offices of my pal Holst, who was by now Vice President of Talent at Ringling, I was pardoned and reinstated. Michu went on to animate Alf in the hit TV series.

And, by the way, we never threw pies in clown alley. That kind of stuff only happens in the movies.

There was an old man who was crazy

(or else all his doctors were lazy.)

His meds did include

A bunch of quaalude

It kept him both docile and hazy.

The questions of Jesus

How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

How is it that we seek him in the universe so vast?

How contact him when he is just a figure from the past?

How often must we speak of him, his image to maintain?

How will we understand his love and sorrow, might and pain?

About his Father’s business, he is here among us now.

About his Father’s business, his dominion makes us bow.

About his Father’s business, he wants us all to learn

His Father’s business is just us -- his only true concern.

The Hats of Clown Alley

A clown without a hat is like a bird without a beak; practically useless.

A hatter never instructed us at the Ringling Clown College, but it might have been a nice academic touch. Can you picture Laurel and Hardy without their bowler hats? Or Chico Marx without his pointy hat? Or Harold Lloyd without his straw boater? And those towering, garish stovepipe hats that W.C.Fields sported were sight gags in and of themselves!

No, hats play a vital part in maintaining a clown character, as well as being one of the most versatile props a comedian can posses.

I never cared for those miniature top hats or peaked hats that whiteface clowns attached to the top of their bald wig. Too cutesy for me. And you couldn’t do anything with it, because it didn’t come off. As useful as an air horn to a cat burglar.

The pointy hat is a good, all-around headpiece for active circus clowns. Made properly, they have a fine balance so you can juggle with them. Here’s how they are made in clown alley:

Take a used men’s felt hat. Cut off the hatband. Dye it whatever outlandish color you wish. Soak the hat in sugar water for stiffening (one part sugar to two parts water) for about an hour. Remove from the sugar water and immediately pull the crown of the hat over a football until it forms a point. Let it dry a few hours. Voila! A pointy hat is born. When it gets dirty and starts losing its shape, you can wash it and resoak it in sugar water, then pull it over a football again to make it look practically brand new.

But for my money the bowler hat is the top performer when it comes to comedy. It looks funny; it sits securely on the head even during the most frantic chase; it’s sturdy; and it lends itself perfectly to a myriad of mixed up possibilities. To see bowler hats put through their paces by master clowns, just watch the beginning of Laurel & Hardy’s silent two-reeler ‘Bacon Grabbers.’   

A bowler hat makes a satisfying “thunk!” when you hit another clown over the head with the brim, and it won’t cause a concussion. And it’s the perfect head piece for the old hello/goodbye routine. One clown meets another and politely raises his hat to him, while the other clown just as politely holds out his hand in fellowship. Seeing their mistake, they switch tactics; the first clown putting his hat back on and extending his hand, while the second clown puts down his hand and lifts his hat in greeting. It can go back and forth like this ad infinitum.

You can balance the brim of a bowler hat on your nose, then let it fall gracefully in place onto your noggin; this never fails to delight the kiddies, and even the grownups think it must take years of practice. It took me all of ten minutes to master, and I’m a Grade A klutz.

Costume shops stock rather cheap and flabby bowler hats. Most of the professional clowns I worked with bought their bowlers from expensive haberdasheries in New York or Chicago. They were silk lined and stiff as the British upper lip. Consequently, they were not to be messed with in the slapstick rough and tumble of the circus. Dougie Ashton, the Australian clown, bought his directly from a department store in Brisbane and had them shipped out to him. His elegant black derby was a startling contrast to the rest of his outfit, which consisted of a purple jacket patched like an old fashioned inner tube, a collarless shirt, a necktie that appeared to have gone through a paper shredder, baggy pinstriped pants, and a pair of Army boots that dated back to the Boer War.

It took him three months to get a new hat whenever he ordered one, so he was particularly finicky about it.

“Which one of you bahsterds got baby powder on me hat?” he’d roar in vexation if he found a few grains of talcum on it. Since we all used baby powder to set our greasepaint by applying it in great billowing clouds each day, that was rather a moot question.

The other standard headgear in clown alley was the top hat. A universal symbol of dignity and elegance, it never failed to raise a laugh when perched on the head of a zany. Swede Johnson always wore one, when he was not playing a Keystone Kop. In fact Swede went all the way, also wearing an elegant cutaway tailcoat and black dress trousers with a black stripe down the side. He offset this with white nurse’s shoes. With his stark white face, he looked like a small town undertaker during the McKinley administration. One of his favorite walk around gags, which Irvin Feld hated and kept trying to get him to drop, was to simply walk around the arena dolefully carrying a large suitcase on which was stenciled SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATOR. I don’t know why Swede thought this was funny, but he did. Audiences pretty much scratched their heads over it. When I asked him one day what was supposed to be so hilarious about it, he told me graciously “Aw, go to hell, you pinhead!”  

Steve Smith, who we nicknamed ‘The Little Fellow’ in recognition of his resemblance to Chaplin’s ‘The Little Tramp,’ wore a crushed top hat, much like Harpo Marx. It had originally been an opera hat, one of those contraptions that is flat and then pops up like spring snakes in a peanut brittle can. But the springs broke so that it was only half open. It gave Smith’s clown character a rakish winsomeness.

For my headgear I initially chose a cotton twill bucket hat, because I could buy them at any five and dime for fifty cents. I always bought two; one my size and one a size larger. That way I could put the bigger hat over the smaller one and whenever I greeted someone in the audience I lifted the bigger one, leaving the smaller one on my head. It always got a laugh. I used to throw one into the audience and then have the audience members throw it back at me, to see if I could catch it on my head. This was a good stretch gag, or accordion gag, when Baumann would whistle out the clowns during a wardrobe malfunction or some other glitch that prevented the next act from going on. The gag had to be flexible, timewise, since we never knew how long we would be needed as a diversion -- anywhere from twenty seconds to twenty minutes. Most of the time I would get my hat back, no problem. But occasionally some wisenheimer would think it funny to keep it. Or someone would throw it smack into a pile of unsavory sweepings. Either way, I just went out the next day and bought another one.

Later in the season I read about the Chapeau Act in a magic catalogue and sent away for one. The Chapeau Act was a Vaudeville staple before moving pictures arrived. It’s a thick black pancake of velvet, with a hole in the middle. With various twists and turns the chapeau can be turned into a turban, a Napoleon hat, a tricorn, a nun’s wimple, a pirate hat, and various other kinds of hats. It came with an instruction booklet, and soon I was “amazing my friends and family” by suddenly becoming a gun-toting cowboy with the flick of my chapeau. It was a very effective routine, and I thought I could add chapeaugraphy to my act, like the musical saw I was also learning to play -- but the inside rim of the chapeau rubbed my clown white completely off at my forehead; so every time I used it I had to run back to clown alley and repair the damage before appearing again. That was too inconvenient, so I regretfully put the chapeau away in my clown trunk for a future day when I would do comedy without makeup -- maybe as a stand up comic or as a movie character actor.

Out of curiousity I just went online to see if they still make them today. They do! The Abbott’s Magic Company sells ‘em for thirty bucks. (And NO I don’t get anything for mentioning their company.) I just might invest in one -- it might come in handy if and when my Social Security checks stop coming and I have to go back to street performing to make a living!  

Foodies Know: Boulder Has Become a Hub for New Producers

From the New York Times:  Up-and-coming food companies like Purely Elizabeth, Made in Nature and Good Karma Foods have relocated to Boulder to take advantage of the city’s deep bench of food executives, a food retail environment that prizes innovation and experimentation, and a growing pool of money for investments in food companies, among other things.

I’m moving to Boulder today,

Competing with old Frito Lay.

I’m making a chip

From all of Trumps lip;

I call it Bologna Souffle.

The Questions of Jesus

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

If reward you’re looking for in this life or the next

You must cherish those you hate, who keep you always vexed.

Though it goes against the grain to think of them each day,

Jesus Christ commands that for their souls you need to pray.

The Savior died for all your foes, as he did so for you;

So we the good in them must strive to always keep in view.

The Questions of Jesus

Art thou greater than he?

I suffer, Lord, I suffer; is it not enough that I

Am suffering in agony and wish that I could die?

Release me or defend me; keep thy promises to me!

Am I to be abandoned though I’m serving only thee?

My little one, I know thy pain and all that hurts thy soul.

What if I have thee taste an atom of benighted sheol?

I went there long before thee and the bitter cup did drain;

Are you now ready to embrace my misery and pain?

There's Something Rotten in Clown Alley

The romance of the circus could never overcome its enervating stench. That, at least, is what my nostrils remember about their years of being rubbed with red rouge at Ringling Brothers.

I do not subscribe to the Proustian belief that a brief taste or smell of something can take you back decades to a fully textured and 900 page memory. Not the smells of the circus, anyways. When I try to recall those fragrances my mind recoils in revulsion back to some distant Neanderthal ancestor who liked to smell daisies -- and then eat them.

A barnyard smells of manure and spilled diesel. A candy factory smells of melted sugar. A bar smells of beer and cigarettes. A baby’s bassinet smells of talcum powder. And a men’s locker room smells of congealed sweat and ripening jock straps. Taken individually, such odors will become bearable in time. But the heady mixture of all of these, combined into a miasma that soaks through your consciousness into your very soul is no longer just an olfactory sensation but a physical affront, like a blow to the solar plexis.

The first time I caught that full aroma was in Tampa, the first stop of my first season on the road with Big Bertha. I had been strolling about the parking lot in the morning sunshine, marveling at the warm inviting fragrance of mimosa and fiddlewood, enjoying the swooping white gulls on their everlasting reconnaissance for fast food wrappers. Girls in sports cars, wearing bikinis, drove along the nearby parkway, and I was convinced they were tossing me smiles like they were beads at Mardi Gras. Life was unfolding before me, a tantalizing clambake. Then I walked past Backdoor Jack into the arena.

Holy Grandma Moses! The funk made my stomach do flip flops. I shook my head and took another deep breath. This could not be. Civilization had not yet descended to such malodorous depths. But there it was again -- and I could see where part of it was coming from, as a roustabout shoveled up steaming piles of elephant dung while smoking a ratty cigar. The llamas were spitting their cud at each other, while outside the heavy blue curtains of clown alley Swede Johnson was slurping up a bowl of pie car soup, flipping out the carrots onto the cement floor, where they were trod upon by the heedless candy butchers shuttling their first crop of cotton candy up into the stands.    

Some have said they grew to enjoy that smell, and to miss it in later life when they had settled down to more normal pursuits. They lie. That omnipotent smell made my eyes water and rattled my digestion right up until the very last day I performed at Ringing. The veteran clowns, who remembered playing under canvas, said they never had any such stink to contend with back then.

“You worked in the tent and you were walking on wild sage and honeysuckle, and the ground absorbed all the animal pee” Prince Paul told me. “These cement floors play hell with the animals. How’d you like to stand around all day in your own crap because it won’t drain off like it does on plain dirt?”

“Yeah, but remember how dusty it got?” interrupted Swede. “All that manure would dry out in the sun and then crumble into dust. I bet I’ve breathed in a ton of dung in my day, and that ain’t healthy!” He paused to take a deep drag on his Chesterfield.  “Or else it would rain cats and dogs and we’d be up to our keisters in mud.”

Mercifully, Backdoor Jack usually kept the arena gates wide open all day so the elephants could come in and out with ease; letting in whatever refreshing zephyrs were handy. This somewhat mitigated the fetor. But when it grew cold and stormy the pachyderms remained inside the building all day and the gates were sealed tight. Then the stench welled up like something out of a sci fi flick. You talk about the smog of Beijing or Los Angeles; the horse flies donned gas masks of an evening when visiting the circus!

I used to welcome a head cold as a respite from the noisome odors. It troubled some of the other First of Mays as well, but they didn’t let it upset their appetite the way it did mine. Whenever the aroma grew too overpowering I completely lost the desire to eat. That damnable odor seemed to coat my tongue like oral thrush. I found some relief, when I could eat, with strongly scented items like sardines and Limburger cheese on crackers; the outlandish fumes drove away the normal fug to some extent. But it didn’t make me a popular character in clown alley.

As the season wore on I came to accept the evil smell as just another bump in the road of circus life. And, truth be told, sometimes it would completely disappear for weeks on end. This happened especially out West, in places like Arizona and Oregon. Was there some microbe in the air that fed on those nasty vapors? I don’t know -- but it might be worth having M.I.T. or NASA look into it. But then, I keep forgetting that Ringling Brothers is gone the way of the mastodon and 8-track. The enchanted environment that created that perfidious smell is no more. Had scientists been able to synthesize it in the lab, it might have been of more use in the Vietnam War than napalm.  

 

How Smart was Clown Alley?

It should be mentioned in these chronicles that high intelligence was not a prerequisite for the Ringling clown alley. Oh, there were a few Rhodes Scholars and high IQ’s scattered amidst the motley crowd, but such individuals never blended harmoniously with their coworkers in the alley. They seemed to be slumming, or on an expedition to examine and perhaps capture specimens of the native circus wildlife. For the sake of narrative flow I will amalgamate these several into one, and name him Waldo.

As we got ready for come in, Waldo would invariably set aside a heavy tome on philosophy or physics to tell the clear blue air that the dichotomy of Nietzsche was most intriguing. On the one hand . . .

At this point Prince Paul would likely butt in with “Is dat zo, Sharlie? You vanna buy ein quacker?”  I think he was mimicking some radio comedian of long ago, but just exactly who I have never been able to honestly figure out.

Then Mark Anthony would begin rhyming. He actually was quite an intelligent guy, but his knowledge was rather scattershot, and not confined to any one particular discipline. And he never self edited himself. He said just what was running through his mind. He could belch and break wind simultaneously, which made him a hero to most of clown alley.

“Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Barbara Frietchie -- eating peanuts, wanted lychee!” he would croon.

Slightly nettled, Waldo would try to regain his train of thought: “As I was saying, the German existential mindset was probably influenced by . . . “

At this point Swede Johnson would rise majestically from his camp stool to declaim “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”  

“I resemble that remark!” Holst would holler at him. Holst, too, was quite well educated; but he took great pains to hide it. He was after a management job with Ringling, and knew that too many brains spoil the broth. Or something like that (hey, I never said I was saddled with a high IQ!)

Waldo would subside, muttering academic footnotes to himself.

It was an axiom in clown alley that low intelligence meant high trust. You could always depend on a dummy to do what they said they were going to do.

JoJo the Dog Eared Boy was a good example.

As our mouser he faithfully discharged his duties as gofer, picking up whatever we wanted from the outside world when we couldn’t get out there ourselves. Groceries, dry cleaning, you name it; JoJo took our money and came back with the goods, and with every bit of spare change we had coming. It would have been easy to nick a dime here and there, but he never did so. You could give the guy a thousand dollars for a pack of gum,and he’d be back in an hour with your Juicy Fruit, and full change.

However, he was a sucker for Chinese fortune cookies. He believed in them implicitly.  

“Those Chinese sagebrushes know what they’re talking about, yes they know what they’re talking about!” he would aver when pressed to explain his gullibility.

It turned into a game; we would send him out for something and include a few bucks so he could grab some ham fried rice for himself. Inevitably he would return with some startling revelation about his prospects and/or love life as revealed in his fortune cookie.

“Lookit!” he would squeal excitedly. “Says here I’m to stay calm to avoid confusion and then riches will fall on me like a rockslide. Just like a rockslide!”

Shaking our hands one by one, he would thank us effusively for all our kindnesses towards him during his days of poverty. Now his ship was about to come in and he would wave at us from inside his limousine. He packed his meager belongings in a cardboard suitcase and sat up all night on the train vestibule waiting for Wall Street or Rockefeller to come calling.

When he came back into the alley the next day, nothing daunted, we innocently asked about his millions. Had he invested it all in buggy whips already? No, he replied cheerfully; sometimes those Chinese sagebrushes didn’t get things exactly right, but still he was going to stay calm to avoid confusion -- that much, at least, had come true!

Another time the little white slip told him to marry the next blonde he met. That happened to be Aricellie, Charlie Baumann’s wife. She took pity on the simpleton and didn’t report his romantic advances to her husband, who doubled as the tiger trainer. Holst told him that she wasn’t a real blonde anyway, but dyed her hair. That seemed to mollify JoJo, and he let up on her.

Getting back to Waldo for a moment; he always loved to display his grasp of foreign languages, speaking familiarly with the Hungarian teeterboard act in what he told us was fluent Hungarian. Or quoting Nietzsche in his native German to the dour Baumann. This didn’t garner him any brownie points in clown alley, where we prided ourselves on knowing every scurrilous swear word in a dozen different languages and nothing more. When Waldo began to expand on the intricacies of the German umlaut, Prince Paul and Horowitz would start up a loud conversation in Yiddish, and I might add a little something in Norwegian (learned from my father) such as “Ga til helvete!”

Still, there’s no denying that having some smarts could have saved me spondulicks and embarrassment in the long run. One day I was on my way to the arena when a guy in a flashy Cadillac pulled up to the curb and motioned anxiously for me to come over to the driver’s window.

“Whatcha want?” I asked.

“You need a good watch, buddy? I got lots of ‘em in the trunk. Brand new, never been worn. I got a Rolex you can have for twenty dollars!”

I massaged my chin, remembering my mother’s warning that if something is too good to be true you’d better take advantage of it right away. So I ponied up the twenty and showed up in clown alley with a shiny new watch. Which I showed immediately to Holst.

“Lookit this brand new Rolodex I got today. Only paid twenty bucks for it!” I boasted.

Holst glanced at it briefly, then shook his head in disgust.

“A Rolodex is a filing system, you jughead. And if that’s a real Rolex then I’m a Baptist. You got rooked, Tork. That thing will stop running in a few days and leave a green band around your wrist! You shoulda flushed that twenty bucks down the toilet instead.”

Incensed at his boorish attitude towards my good fortune, I retorted with a crushing bon mot:  

“Oh yeah?”

Then I strode away in high dudgeon. Nearly stratospheric. He thinks he’s so darn smart, I said to myself; we’ll see who has the last laugh when I take my Rola-watchamacallit down to the pawn shop and get a couple hundred for it!

Which I didn’t. The pawnbroker laughed me out of the shop, saying he wouldn’t pay a nickel for such drek if it were in a gumball machine.

And it took me nearly two days to get that dratted green band washed off my wrist.