Reminiscences of a Rambler

It was drummed into me at an early age that I had three choices of transportation:

I could ride my bike.

I could take the bus.

I could walk.

My parents bought my my first Schwinn when I was seven; thereafter they considered me on my own, as far as covering any distances were concerned. The bus was only a quarter, when I needed it.

Being a middle class family we did have a car, but it was reserved for my dad. Children were not welcome in it; and even his own wife was more an imposition than an honored guest inside it.

So I grew up walking. Grade school was a block away. High school was eight blocks away; but in those medieval times an eight block walk was not considered any kind of a hardship. I walked it through cloudbursts and blizzards and the numbing arctic temperatures that a Minnesota winter can concoct. My long johns were snug and rubbed like a cheese grater.

And when I grew old enough to get a driver's license, I ignored the opportunity. Never took Driver's Ed. Never wanted to own a car. For by then I was not only inured to walking, but actually enjoyed my rambles. Besides, getting a license meant getting a car, and getting a car meant earning money, and I was dead set against such a demeaning expedient. I had better things to do, like watch John Gallos introduce Laurel & Hardy movies on WCCO TV.

When I joined Ringling Brothers Circus right out of high school they provided me a room on the train and a bus that took performers back and forth between the train and the arena. So I still didn't need a car. I banked my thin income as a clown, saving for a rainy day and a new pair of sneakers -- as I kept wearing mine out at regular intervals.

As the years rolled by I found one position after another that did not require a car. I depended on no machine to move me about -- just shank's mare. It gave me a wonderful feeling of independence, as well as keeping the weight off.

One of my favorite walks was to and from Brown Institute of Broadcasting on Lake Street in Minneapolis. I was studying to receive a broadcast certificate, and lived some six miles from the school. So I walked along East River Road, from University Avenue to Broadway, and then cut through some neighborhood streets to arrive at the school bright and sweaty each morning.  The dappled greens in summer, with the playful aroma of sewage and disintegrating carp, made the walk more therapy than exercise. And during the stern winter months, when plows threw up banks of snow nearly as tall as I was along the city streets, I savored the challenge to my progress as a mountain climber does the glacier that bares his way.

But then I got married. And learned to drive. And bought a series of cars to tote the wifey and the kiddies around in.

I pass over those frenetic years, gratefully. Suffice it to say I drove carefully and steadily, and never received a single ticket or was involved in a traffic accident in over 30 years.

Retiring at last to my one-bedroom apartment in Provo, Utah, to be close to a flock of developing grand kids, I once again eschewed owning any motor vehicle and reverted to my old tramping habits. I ambled up and down the Provo River Trail during the torrid heat of a desert summer as well as during the mild winter months, nothing like Minnesota, when the clouds and mist screen the mountains like a curtain of dirty cotton. It is pleasant to run across a tarnished plaque by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, attached to a ruined millstone, or discover an abandoned set of concrete steps that lead nowhere in particular. There are horse chestnuts to collect in the fall, as they drop from the trees. I don't know what they're good for, but I collect 'em anyways.

But now the gods of perambulation decide to toy with me. I have osteoarthritis in both my knees, and my walks have perforce become truncated. A few blocks is all I can manage. Still, that is enough to get to the supermarket, the Rec Center, and the Provo Library. So though my physical boundaries may have shrunk, I don't feel as if my world is circumscribed at all.  

Besides, I always wanted an excuse to carry a cane like Charlie Chaplin . . .

Going to the movies as a kid

My mother and father differed in many, usually rancorous, ways.
None more so than their approach to taking the family on an outing.
The major divide was that my father never wanted to take his kids anywhere. Period. He slaved all day at Aarone's Bar & Grill, and held a second job at the Minneapolis Athletic Club as a towel jockey -- and so he felt entitled, in his free time at home, to settle into a comfortable chair. light up a Salem, and watch Bonanza; not drag a bunch of yowling brats around to the movies or the circus.
It took a titanic effort on the part of my mother, or the deepest bathos on the part of us kids, to move him.

But . . .
When he did move and did take us to the movies, it was as if Diamond Jim Brady had swaggered into town. He gave us enough money to buy the biggest Coke and the most capacious tub of popcorn, along with oodles of Raisinets, Jordan Almonds, Nonpareils, and Mason Crows licorice. After the show, if there were pinball machines in the lobby, as there were at the old Apache Chief in Columbia Heights, he allowed us to squander his coins on them until steam came out of my mother's ears and she stomped off to the car to await our descent into pauperism.  

My mother, on the other hand, was extremely conscientious about taking us places -- like the dentist or to Mass on Sunday. But I have to admit that she also took us to a fair number of movies and to the Zurah Shrine Circus every year.
But the thought of paying through the nose for any sort of concessions was anathema to her.
When she took us to the movies she brought along a bag of bridge mix in her purse, and if we wanted something to drink we could darn well go out into the lobby and lap up all the free water from the fountain that we wanted. This was not really fair, I now think, because the water fountain at the old Apache Chief was purposely kept in disrepair; it dispensed nothing but dust. I discovered early on to be sparing on the bridge mix, because after several mouthfuls it glues your tongue to the roof of your mouth if you have nothing liquid to go with it.
But it was our annual trip to the Shrine Circus that really showed her miserly mettle.
She would make her own popcorn the night before, stuffing it into brown paper bags from the Red Owl and fill up the big clunky red and white thermos with anemic powdered lemonade. Then tuck those minute paper Dixie cups, the size of a thimble, into her purse for the next day's outing. We always went with several of the neighborhood families and sat together to watch Tarzan Zerbini's lion act and juggling clown Carl Marx.
While the other families caroused with hot dogs and cotton candy, bought balloons and coloring books, my mother would apportion out the cold stale popcorn and pour out a few drab drips of lemonade for us. A circus programme book was out of the question -- we were not related to the Aga Khan.
Inevitably an usher would come up to her, reminding her that outside food was not allowed.
This produced such a cold glare from my mother that the usher would stumble backwards as if poleaxed, then turn and flee back down the concrete steps.

When my own kids came along I always made myself available to take them to shows and whatnot. But, like my mother, I found it very hard to pay through the nose for concessions. So we compromised. I brought an apple for each kid; after they ate it, if they wanted some junk to snack on from the candy stand, they could have it.
But now that my kids are all grown up, I rarely go out to see any kind of a show. I prefer to snuggle up with a good book or see what's happening on Netflix. But when I do go to a show I revert completely back to type; I buy a bag of chips and a can of Shasta to smuggle into the theater. No way am I going to pay those predatory concession prices while watching the next Star Wars or Jurassic Park.  

Thank you

Thanks to:
John Smith
Randall Digby
Tom Groome
Aditya Singhal
Dan Knudson
Dennis Carver
Steve Miller
Jay DeVivo
and
James Moseman
for their support of my newspaper poetry this morning in the Wall Street Journal. 

Living in a Shipping Container

The market for housing is rough;
to make it you gotta be tough.
A shipping container
would be a no-brainer;
for cozy, just put up a ruff.

Washington Post Reporter to Poet: "Get Lost"

((Ms. Margaret Sullivan, of the Washington Post newspaper))

Well, you can't please everyone.  This email just came in from Margaret Sullivan at the Washington Post:

Sullivan, Margaret via washpost.onmicrosoft.com	7:02 AM (7 minutes ago)
to me

 

Dear Tim,

 

Thank you. I do get a great deal of email so although I appreciate your talent, would ask to come off your list. 

All best wishes. 

MS

 

 

This blog is sponsored by The Colombia Journalism Review. 'Encouraging Excellence in Journalism'.

Why seest thou this man

 " Why seest thou this man, and hearest him revile against this people and against our law?"

Helaman 8:2

When we see and hear the prophet of the living Lord,

it might be his words are not too gentle, but a sword.

If all we want is honey drizzled on our impure ears,

we might end our lives in naught but ashes and salt tears.

The kindly words soft-spoken by our prophet here today

still contain stern warning that we'd better mend our way.

Because if we don't harken to his gentle spirit now,

like Nephites our bruised heads in sorrow we may someday bow. 

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.

Helaman 7:8

  "Yea, if my days could have been in those days, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my brethren."

Helaman 7:8

My days are now, my place is here;

and so I must attend with cheer

to all my duties this day brings

no matter how my yearning swings.

For I do dream of better times,

of sweeter days and softer climes;

Good places I was meant to be,

but for my God's economy.

But since no time machine exists

and I've no time for vain sophists,

I'll focus on what present ways

I can serve in these dark days. 

Helaman 6:3

"And they did fellowship one with another, and did rejoice one with another, and did have great joy."
Helaman 6:3

When the clouds are rolling up and thunder echoes deep,
there is comfort in the joy of fellowship's wide sweep.
 For though the world may hasten to its bitter tawdry end,
the Saints will gather and rejoice that Jesus is their Friend.
Despite our diff'rent languages and cultures, we are sure
that happiness is part of life for those both clean and pure.
And if we slip and stumble it is good to know that others
will not judge but strive to be our sisters and our brothers. 
 Won't you join our lively ranks, and learn the mystery
of how those favored by the Lord obtain such pristine glee? 

Altercasting

To make people act as you wish

use lather from any soap dish.

Just tell them how warm

they seem to perform;

they'll stop being such a cold fish.