My Unfinished Clown Gag

Schubert had his unfinished symphony. I have my unfinished clown gag. I’ve been working on it for years, and still haven’t come up with a satisfactory blow off.

It all began back in the Ringling clown alley when I was a novice joey. I loved prowling around thrift stores in the down and out neighborhoods of the cities we played. I found wonderful cast-offs, including a pure wool tam-o-shanter, a silk top hat, duck calls, wooden train whistles, a pair of pince-nez complete with attached black ribbon, a trombone case for my musical saw, a ceramic ocarina, a patched up squeeze box, a parking meter (I took it into the audience and tried getting quarters from the audience for expired seats), and golf clubs.

I especially doted on golf clubs. I saw myself as another Bob Hope, strolling casually around the ninth hole with a putter. Used golf clubs, all bent, nicked, and twisted, cost fifty cents a piece back then at a Goodwill store or St. Vincent de Paul. I collected a round dozen of ‘em, along with a narrow canvas golf bag to keep them in. But since I didn’t ever play golf I just threw the bag into one of the blue clown prop boxes until boss clown LeVoi Hipps complained about how they were taking up room and not being used for anything.

Fine, I told him, I’d think up a clown gag for them.

There are many precedents. W.C. Fields has a celebrated golf routine that he included in several of his movies. Both Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges placed several of their two-reelers on golf courses. Harpo the Clown made a good living just carrying an oversized golf club around at golf tournaments. And my favorite Our Gang comedy, Divot Diggers, was nothing but a series of bizarre slapstick gags with golf clubs, golf balls, and a chimpanzee. I could work up a mashup of golf gags as easily as kiss my hand.

I began by loading up the golf bag with an eclectic blend of strictly non-golfing items -- such as a garden rake, a bamboo fishing pole, a skein of red yarn, and a shotgun loaded with blanks. After discarding the rake I would keep stepping on it, bringing the handle up into my face. I kept one of Mark Anthony’s handmade foam rubber fish attached to the bamboo pole, so I could mime a terrific struggle in landing it. The red yarn just kept coming out of the golf bag in an endless stream until I got tangled up in it like a spider web. And I used the shotgun to blast my hapless golf ball when it refused to take off for the horizon after several futile strokes.

I also added some traditional schtick to my golf routine. My hat kept falling off whenever I bent over to address the ball, and when I would step up to retrieve it my clown shoes inadvertently kicked it ten feet away. When finally retrieved I would place my chapeau on a golf club I was holding over my shoulder, instead of on my head, and then look around in mounting anger for the missing headgear. I took spectacular pratfalls by stepping on the little white golf ball.

But I couldn’t come up with an adequate ending, a blow off. I put the gag in the show, just to get Hipps off my back, but it lacked something to bring it to life, to bring it to a rousing, hilarious close.

Prince Paul suggested I keep a rabbit in the golf bag, and when I was done with all the golf clubs just pull it out, pet it, and wave to the audience as I walked off. That made no sense to me, but Prince pointed out “Who the hell needs a clown gag to make sense? You just pull out the damn rabbit so the kids can ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over it and then get the hell off.”

Mark Anthony offered to make me a sexy foam rubber mermaid to pull out of the golf bag for my blow off. He had a thing for mermaids, and was always trying to put one or two in every ring gag we did. He was especially painstaking about carving and painting their bosoms. I told him thanks, but no thanks.

“Use a bowling ball instead of a golf ball, Pinhead” Swede Johnson said cryptically.

“What earthly good would that do, you old buzzard?” I asked irately.

“You could drop it on your foot -- that would get a big laugh.”

I never got the gag to my complete liking that season. I put the clubs and bag away at the end of the season and didn’t think about it again until I returned from pantomime school in Mexico to begin working as an Advance Clown for Ringling. I needed a lot of material for school shows, so I dusted off the incomplete golf gag, hoping that I could improvise something that would tie the whole schmear together. And I almost did.

It came to me in a flash -- use a marshmallow instead of a real golf ball! Then eat the darn thing at the end of the routine. When I tried it out it only got a moderate titter. Even from crazed kindergartners, who were so excited to see a real live circus clown that half of ‘em had accidents when I just waved my hat at them.

Once again I packed away my golfing paraphernalia, completely stymied. As the years trickled by I would pull out the old golf bag for mud shows and Shrine circuses occasionally -- but it just never clicked. It didn’t make sense and at the same time it wasn’t nonsensical enough. Maybe I should have actually learned to play golf and joined a country club -- but there was never that kind of money in the Torkildson piggy bank.

I threw the whole frustrating mess away when I moved out here to Provo. It was just junk, anyways -- the heads were rusty and cracked and the handles were riddled with beetle holes. Nowadays when I’m browsing for bargains at Deseret Industries I avoid the outdoor section where they sell the derelict golf clubs. Who needs that kind of aggravation? But every so often, when sleep is as elusive as a plastic shopping bag in a gale, I sit up in bed and wonder if maybe, just maybe, a tennis racket is what that gag needed all along. Or perhaps just a simple pants drop?