You make your own problems

My dad was Norwegian, and so, by definition, morbid and moody.

Unlike the go-getting dads in our Southeast Minneapolis neighborhood, my dad would never dream of telling me "You make your own luck". He believed instead, and rather strongly, "You make your own problems." So I grew up with a timid and diffident mindset when it came to luck.

I was always the class clown in grade school and high school. And so when Ringling Brothers announced the opening of the Clown College in Life Magazine, I surreptitiously cut out the article and mailed away for an application. I told myself I wouldn't be lucky enough to ever hear back from them. And I was almost right.

A few months later, after graduating from high school with mediocre grades, I heard back from Bill Ballantine, the Dean of the College. He invited me to attend that fall.

But I didn't find out about the real luck behind this break for me until years afterwards, when Bill's secretary, Linda, told me that when my application had come in Ballantine had glanced at it and then thrown it in a wire wastebasket, where it languished for two days (the janitor was rather dilatory). Then Irvin Feld, the owner of Ringling Brothers, happened to pass by the secretary's desk, saw the mashed up application, and demanded "What's this?" She pulled it out, smoothed it down, and handed it to him. He read my application, she said, with deep interest, and then commanded "Invite him down; he sounds like just the kind of nut we can use!"

My winning streak continued at the Clown College in Venice, Florida, when it came time to audition for Mr. Feld and a select audience he invited to the barn-like Winter Quarters building to view each clown doing a solo act.
My solo act, juggling straw hats, lasted all of forty seconds, when one of my inflammable hats rolled over to the hot footlights and caught on fire. I hastily stamped it out, and then, completely flummoxed, took my bow and exited.
The luck came when I accompanied another clown for his solo act. He juggled fire torches, and I came out with him dressed as a comic fireman, holding an old-fashioned brass fire extinguisher canister. I was not supposed to do anything, just stand there; but I decided to put down the canister and let it tip over. Next thing I knew there was foam fizzing out of the hose all over the place. When I tried to pick up the hose I squirted myself right in the eyes, becoming temporarily blind. And then I turned blindly around with the hose in my hand, spraying the audience, including Mr. Feld in the front row.
For that I got a tongue lashing from Bill Ballantine, but a few hours later I also got a contract to appear as a First Of May on the Blue Unit of Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows. The Greatest Show on Earth. As Mr. Feld handed me his gold Waterman to sign the contract, he chuckled: "You're a natural lunatic, Mr. Torkildson -- I like that!"
My streak of clown luck continued for the next 6 years, from the circus in the US to gigs inMexico and Thailand and then back to the circus, where I got into a fight with Michu, the World's Smallest Man. I was blacklisted from the circus after that, and my clown career went to hell in a handbasket.