Horsing Around with the Circus

Ringling Brothers was always identified with its elephants. But just as prominent were the show horses. And let me say right up front that I never met a horse I didn’t hate as a clown.

Circus historians are agreed that the first real circus was created by Philip Astley in England around 1770. Astley had been a cavalry soldier, and he doted on horses. His show was mostly horses, and was so well-received that eventually it went on tour as far as Washington D.C., where the Father of our Country took in a performance. (The historical record is silent on whether or not he was able to chew a bag of popcorn with his wooden teeth.) As other circuses popped up around our lusty new nation they all emulated Astley’s, featuring horses by the dozens -- and even the clowns had to have a mule to jest with. Elephants were a much later addition, starting around 1880.

My feud with horses started right at the beginning, during my first ‘Spec’ performance. Spec is short for spectacular. It is the parade-cum-bacchanal that ends the first half of the show. That first season I began the Spec parade in a rhinestone-encumbered marching band costume, complete with a shako that weighed no less than twenty pounds; it relocated my center of gravity, putting it near my Adam’s apple.  

I tottered behind a pair of Clydesdales that had every appearance of docile gentleness. But they had it in for me. As they clopped around the arena with me behind they dumped a steaming load that I didn’t see in time to avoid. My brand new fancy ballet slippers were engulfed in a fragrant loaf that left its mark and odor for several months after.

But that was not the end.

After marching around the track, desperately trying to keep my shako from toppling me over like a bowling pin, I had to make a quick costume change and come back out to the Spec promenade dressed as a girl rabbit, complete with checkered tutu and a huge papier mache head that narrowed my vision down to a tunnel of light obscured by a fine mesh screen. All but blind, I was led by one of the horse handlers to a spot in front of a fine pair of milk white Arabians and told to hold their halters and lead them around the arena. When I attempted this the nags threw a hissy fit; one of them bit my rabbit head, taking off a goodly chunk of ear. And the other one head butted me on the shoulder, sending me spinning into a guy wire and then onto a metal elephant tub. Badly shaken, I gamely got up and tried to lead those creatures again. This time they reared up, ready to squash me like a bug; only the timely intervention of a horse handler saved me from a permanent quietus.

“I guess they don’t like your costume” he said nonchalantly as I waited for my heart to cease beating out a rapid tattoo. “Just walk over by the llama and wave at the kiddies.”

I took his advice with alacrity. I’m not sure of my zoology here, but llamas must be related to horses, since the one I sidled up to greeted me with a gob of spit the size of a golf ball. I realized at that moment that quadrupeds and I were not fated to be good buds.

45 years ago Ringling had around forty horses on the Blue Unit. They were caparisoned with ornate blankets and saddles, to be ridden in parades by the aristocracy of the circus. The show featured several dressage acts, stately and synchronized down to a nanosecond. The days of Poodles Hanneford and his rowdy horse shenanigans was long gone. Those horse trainers and handlers considered themselves the ‘ancien regime’ of the circus world, their position of superiority usurped by parvenu lion tamers and trapeze artists. They lived in a world of their own, mostly British-flavored and so horsey that even the roustabout who shoveled out the horse dung carried a riding crop.

Tommy Tomkins, who had headlined on the Bertram Mills Circus in England as a lad, was the head equestrian handler. He sported a huge Colonel Blimp mustache and is the only person I ever knew who actually used a monocle. His riding breeches were high, wide, and handsome. He appeared to be perpetually ready for a fox hunt; going so far as to gulp a generous stirrup cup of Pimm’s No. 1 Cup each morning, and repeating this fine old English foxhunting tradition several more times during the day, and into the evening, until his ruddy features took on the glow of a blast furnace. He addressed every clown the same way: “You there, fellow.” His manner was so baronial I had to resist the urge to knuckle my forehead when in his presence.

The trainers and handlers all enjoyed some special perks with the show. Horse lovers flocked to their side before, between, and after the shows, to discuss the evils of boxwalking and who was running at the Preakness that year. These tony visitors always brought large hampers of smoked salmon, imported cheeses, a large selection of digestive biscuits, and plenty of wine. More equestrians came down with gout than were ever injured by a horse while on the show. In return, several of the dicier handlers sold the visitors the cream of the crop for amazingly discounted prices. When the buyer would show up on moveout night to collect his or her bargain, both the handler and the hayburner would be long gone back into the bowels of the circus train. As the concessionaires were fond of saying, “Yez pay yer money and yez take yer chances!”

I attempted detente with those blasted horses several times, trying to bribe them with apples and carrots. But their lustrous eyes never held any sympathy for me. Halfway through the season I got too close to the back of an Andalusian and was kicked in the chest so hard that the imprint of the horseshoe lingered like a bad tattoo for several years.  

During all my years with the circus the horses continued to nip at me and try to step on my clown shoes. They shied when I was near and shook their manes at me in a disparaging manner when I was yards away. I learned to give them a wide berth. To this day I won’t approach a horse, not even a Shetland pony, without wearing a Kevlar vest and carrying a halberd.

In Bhutan, Happiness Index as Gauge for Social Ills

From the New York Times:  Mr. Ura, 55, is perhaps one of the world’s leading experts on happiness, at least as seen through the lens of development economics. It has been something of a preoccupation for more than two decades as he has developed and fine-tuned Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness indicator, a supplementary, sometimes alternative, yardstick to the conventional measure of development, gross domestic product.

Happiness cannot be rated

without many standards debated.

Perhaps honesty,

or a sugar daddy.

(A pizza would make me elated)

To Reason Out the Gospel

Let us reason even as a man reasoneth one with another face to face.

Doctrine & Covenants. 50:11


To reason out the Gospel takes a humble attitude.
Not shouting or oppressing; there's no room for being rude.
A man may study many years the doctrines of salvation;
but if he can't be reasoned with, he's headed for damnation.
Reasoning together is a duty that the Lord
has given us in lieu of forcing others by the sword.
A gentle tone and artless smile are angel's tools indeed,
by which from prejudice and faction we can all be freed. 

Bill Ballantine, Wheat Germ, and Me.

(Uncle Bill is in front, sprawled next to the circus logo; I am on the back row, third in from the left)

The noted writer and illustrator Bill Ballantine was invited by Irvin Feld to run the Ringling Brothers Clown College in Venice, Florida, during its formative years. It was my good fortune to matriculate under “Uncle Bill,” as we students called him.

He was, for the most part, an easy-going and flexible administrator.

Except when it came to yoga and wheat germ. In those two areas he was an implacable fanatic.

Our curriculum under Uncle Bill consisted of makeup, acrobatics, juggling, pantomime, and a basic grounding in all the ‘schtick’ or ‘lazzi’ of staple clown gags. How to take a slap; do a pratfall; do a double take; drop your pants; and make your hat spring off your head (as done so often and so nimbly by Chaplin and Stan Laurel). There were optional courses in playing the musical saw, balloon sculpting, and clown prop construction (the last taught by the kindly George Schellenberger, whom I have written about elsewhere).  

No one can dispute that these kinds of skills are essential for professional clowning. But to this intriguing smorgasbord Uncle Bill added an hour of yoga each day in the late afternoon, and mandatory evening lectures on the importance of yogurt, wheat germ, and other dietary curiosities.

I found the yoga class impossible to get through without falling asleep at the halfway mark. The hard physical work of practicing a human pyramid and wobbling around on a unicycle prior to class, the dozy Florida afternoon heat, and my own extreme boredom with the instructor’s chanted monotone of “Breath deeply, in and out, in and out” worked like hypnotism to put me under. I would spend the last half of the class sprawled on my bamboo yoga mat like a corpse, inanimate and senseless.

Uncle Bill kept an eagle eye out for yoga slackers; more than once I was awakened from my coma by the not-so-gentle tip of his sneaker against my rib cage -- “You going to sleep away your chance for a lifetime of serenity, Torkildson?”

Our instructor was a yoga teacher at the New College in Sarasota. Her age was indeterminate; like many other contemplative crackpots, she had an ageless aura of granola about her. She dressed all in black. I never heard her laugh, and her smile was a chilling whole grain rictus. She had us do breathing exercises and stretching exercises and sitting exercises and wanted us to stand on our heads. It was my opinion then, as it is now, that if God wanted man to stand on his head he would have put a large cushioned suction cup on top of it. I toppled over with depressing regularity when attempting this stunt.

Uncle Bill, on the other hand, spent an hour a day up in his office, standing on his head, dressed in nothing but a loin cloth that often failed in its duty. He regularly called students in for a chat while in this position, and invited them to join him in the topsy turvy position. As far as I know, none ever acceded to his invitation, and several of the younger girls bolted out the door a few moments after going in.

To this day I am not exactly sure why he insisted on having clown students learn yoga.

“It purifies the body” I remember him saying. He was also fond of intoning “Mens sana in corpore sano,’ which is Latin for ‘A sound mind in a sound body.’ Today there’s probably dozens of ‘boffo’ Buddhists out there doing stand-up, but forty-five years ago if you were pursuing a comedy career, inner peace was not a good motivation -- you needed those inner demons to be active to drive your sense of humor.

I think Uncle Bill, as a writer, felt that yoga helped him concentrate and focus, and that he thought this would be a good thing for embryo clowns to learn. But it wasn’t. The best clowns have always had the attention span of a mayfly.

As soon as we hit the road with the show we all pretty much forgot about deep breathing and the lotus position.

From day one at Clown College Uncle Bill insisted we eat lots of Kretschmer’s wheat germ. This is a sort of gravel that food faddists have been foisting upon the American public since 1936, when the Kellogs up in their sanitarium in Michigan began torturing patients with it. Uncle Bill kept us supplied with it, free of charge, and suggested we eat it with yogurt or sprinkle it over our eggs. Since I was still the complete Minnesota naif back then, I honestly tried to choke the stuff down every day for several weeks before giving it up as a bad job. Not only did it taste rotten, it made my bowels as frisky as a lamb in springtime. I had to keep a bathroom within a hundred yards of me at all times.

Uncle Bill was also big on bean sprouts. He force fed us bean sprout sandwiches on whole grain bread for several school picnics. Washed down with spinach and blueberry smoothies. As a stubborn Scandinavian raised on meat and potatoes and Wonder Bread, I found this dietary tyranny intolerable. I vowed that as soon as my clown salary kicked in I would glut on White Castle sliders until they came out my ears.

There were also raw carrots and radish leaves and a host of other unprocessed foodstuffs that Uncle Bill insisted would keep us funnier than the old veteran clowns, who, apparently, subsisted on canned chili, beer, and 7-11 hot dogs. They were not long for this world, prophesied Uncle Bill sadly; but when they had kicked the bucket it would be us, the Young Turks, who would take over the merrymaking and live to a ripe old age with our bones intact, our lungs clean, and our ‘sans corpore’ or whatever the heck it was running at full steam ahead!    

There were other culinary outrages perpetrated on us during our two-month stay at the Clown College. Cider vinegar tonics. Dried apple peel chips. Lecithin wafers. Tofu butter. It was, if you’ll pardon the half-baked pun, a bitter pill to swallow. And swallow it we did; for it was hinted in no uncertain terms that those who followed the wheat germ trail with fervor would be rewarded with a circus contract, while those who continued their hedonistic dance with burgers and fries would soon be cast into outer darkness where they could gnash their greasy gums in despair.

I was never more than a lukewarm acolyte to Uncle Bill’s dietary philosophy. I could stand bean sprouts in egg foo young or chop suey, and yogurt wasn’t so bad if you slurped it down fast. But I harbored unholy dreams of msg-drenched tater tots. So it came to pass that the night diplomas and contracts were handed out I did not expect to be hired on as a First of May.

But I was. Years later I discovered that the main reason I got a contract was simply because I was so thin back then that I could fit into any of the expensive show costumes already created -- thus saving the circus the expense of having to make new costumes for their elaborate Opening, ‘Manage’, and ‘Spec’ displays.

As for Uncle Bill, he and I stayed in touch over the years. When I was around him I would dutifully order a tofu burger and swill wheat grass juice. This charade pleased him, I think, and when he wrote his magnum opus, entitled “Clown Alley,” published in 1982, he included a flattering drawing of my clown character and wrote that I was “one of the zaniest kids” he’d ever had to deal with. I felt that was high praise indeed, coming from such a distinguished and intelligent writer and illustrator. So what if he had some hobby horses he liked to ride? Who doesn’t? I’m still on a quest to find the perfect anchovy pizza!

Lindsay Lohan

Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan has fueled speculation that she has converted to Islam after deleting all of her posts on the social media platform Instagram, simply leaving her account bearing an Arabic greeting.

from the Jerusalem Post

When Lindsay her posts all deleted,
with bushwa her actions were treated.
She's now LDS
or wears a headdress,
or has the marthambles untreated. 

Marriage is ordained of God

And again, verily I say unto you, that whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God, for marriage is ordained of God unto man.   

Doctrine & Covenants. Section 49:15

God ordains that marriage be a part of mortal life,
even though it sometimes leads to sorrow and to strife.
Nothing worth the having ever comes too easy, so
the state of matrimony sometimes makes a man feel low.
But those that stay the course and don't give up will find at last
that marriage trains the heart and soul to always be steadfast. 

For LDS Readers Only -- Clinical Notes on the Returned Missionary

THE IMPULSE that propels a returned missionary (RM) to make a fool of himself with women is of mysterious origin. Doubtless, Hugh Nibley could solve the mystery in a moment; but he was too busy explaining Egyptian graffiti. It seems quite likely, however, that the initial impetus can be traced back to the Understanding (always capitalized) most missionaries in the field have with some sweet young thing (SYT) back home. The SYT unfortunately understands the Understanding somewhat differently than the missionary. While the missionary is either frying in the tropics or freezing in some arctic region, constantly urged on by a dog-eared photo of

himself and the SYT, the SYT finds herself widowed at an inconvenient age and does not long remain deaf to the entreaties of other men (usually RMs). The upshot of all this is that the poor fool (PF) out in the mission field receives a wedding announcement one day, on expensive cream-colored paper, telling him that his Understanding has been misunderstood. Moreover, the SYT artlessly scrawls on the announcement that the PF needn’t feel bad about not sending a present mMr. SYT’s daddy is loaded. His final slap in the face occurs a year later when Mrs. SYT writes to the PF, still toiling away in distant regions, saying that they are going to name their first child after him. (Bishops know that this is the self-sacrificing stuff of which Relief Society presidents are made.) He starts lifting weights and attending social events where he giggles witlessly when he spots a former mission companion with his wife. The foolish compulsion toward the opposite sex blossoms when the dupe returns home as the celebrated RM. After two long, dry years, he finds himself yearning for tieless companionship. He peruses the home ward and decides that unless he wants to marry for spirituality alone, he’d better check out the nearest University Ward. There, instinctively, the RM immediately begins looking for Miss Right. (If he happens to obtain an education at the same time, so much the better.) He flings himself on all available females with the wild abandon that drew praises from his mission president when he applied it to breaking tracting records. In his mind, the RM begins to misperceive the merely polite response of female ward members and thinks himself irresistible. At this point, he feels obligated to formulate a systematic plan of action and draws up a document listing all the qualities he desires in his mate. Such documents are kept carefully hidden from the public view and are never openly discussed by the author, unless he is invited to address a fireside audience of over five hundred. The RM’s list mandates that the longed-for mate be a superb cook, an excellent musician (i.e., she can play Primary tunes flawlessly on any piano), thrilled by the thought of babies by the dozen, able to stay thin even during pregnancy, and unable to utter a cross word. Ivlost of these lists omit good looks--but that is only because the RM assumes that only diaphanous beauties will be coming his way. While the RM is carefully matching his list with the women he dates, he undergoes an interesting transformation. Hair sprouts from every pore of his face and Levi’s are worn like a second skin. Ties are almost uncompromisingly avoided, as are shirts of white or any other color found in nature. The RM’s dating patterns become predictable. His first date is with a cousin. This is to get into practice again. The second date is usually with a chance acquaintance in the University ward, arranged on the spur of the moment. The woman thinks it mundane, but the RM is convinced that a new Understanding has been reached. For the next two weeks, he flushes in her presence, hums old Bread tunes incessantly, and sells his car to buy the rings. Upon discovering that his Understanding is the woman’s Irritation, he goes into shock for at least 24 hours. When he recovers, he does not remember anything between the time he got off his mission and when he came out of shock. Only the fact that his car is missing makes him the slightest bit suspicious about the events in between. The RM soon feels up to dating again. He has a short fling with an attractive, earthy woman who cooks only organic food. He gags down soy milk and nibbles on tofu-carob casserole before fleeing. After a large antidote of pizza, he generally runs into the female owner of an over-used Kodak Instamatic. She has slides of every single unimportant event in her life, from the Heritage Halls Preference Dance to her recent pilgrimage to New Jersey, where her ancestors once farmed. The RM endures several thousand of her photos before he comes to his senses. He then hides in someone’s attic for a month, giving out the news that he has perished at sea, or is waiting for a lady missionary. He emerges from his enforced imprisonment a sadder, but wiser, fellow. This is usually when he falls in love with someone he home teaches. Though love may be the byproduct, home teaching in a student ward is designed to provide RMs with physical exercise. Called upon at least once a week to move yet another female home teachee out of one apartment into another, the RM strains every muscle while cramming the home teachee’s solid mahogany dresser into his compact car. While recuperating from back strain, this helpful RM realizes that he is deeply in love with the home teachee. Not puppy-love, like the previous affairs, but the Real Thing. The Real Thing lasts exactly one date--during which the female home teachee burns dinner, has an embarrassing fight with her latest set of roomies, and spends the rest of the evening sporting a broad grin which does anything but hide the bright green pieces of broccoli casserole lodged between her bicuspids and incisors. Doubtless, Hugh Nibley could solve the mystery in a moment; but he is busy explaining Egyptian graffiti. Unless the real Real Thing happens at this crucial time, the returned missionary now desires nothing so much as a long bachelorhood. He starts lifting weights and attending social events with other RMs, where he giggles witlessly when he spots a former mission companion with his wife. This final stage lasts anywhere from a few months to several years, depending on the humidity. It is marked by vain attempts to avoid the judgmental gaze of a marriage-minded bishop and to cover a gradually receding hairline, thinning tresses flapped over his scalp from just above the left earlobe. Soon the RM abandons the University ward (except for an occasional visit to look over the new crop of Freshman co-eds) and joins the swelling ranks of Special Interests in the nearest Singles ward. His natural habitat.

 TIM TORKILDSON hails from Minneapolis. After a thoroughly middle-class childhood and adolescence, he kicked over the traces and joined Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus as a clown. After several years traveling with the circus, and a brief jaunt to Mexico to study pantomime, Tim served a mission in Thailand, from 1975-1977. Upon his return, he again joined up with the Big Top, but unfortunately had an argument with Michu the Midget, billed as the World's Smallest Man. Tim had the great satisfaction of shoving the World's Smallest Man into a nearby wardrobe trunk. Circus management took a dim view of this, however, and Tim found himself free to pursue another profession. He chose the field of broadcasting, and currently is employed by KBTO radio, in Bottineau, North Dakota, as their news director. Tim has authored several plays, dozens of short stories and poems, and one novel. This is his first piece to see the light of day. If he doesn’t get a raise soon, he’ll probably write some more. (Editor's" Note: How does one shorten such a bio?) 22 Sunstone

China’s Poplar Trees: A Spring Nuisance That Snows White Fluff

From the New York Times:  Here’s the trouble: Every spring, the female poplar trees and their willow tree cousins blanket the streets of Chinese cities with cottonlike balls of fluff known as catkins. They get into everything, clogging car radiators and irritating people’s eyes. In some places they come down so thickly that they can disrupt traffic and even cause fires.

There was a young man from Beijing

whose thoughts, when it came to the Spring,

did not turn to girls

but rather great whirls

of catkins that made his eyes sting. 

The Good Samaritan at Ringling Brothers (Not Me)

Years enough ago, I was a cocky young first-of-May with Ringling Brothers Circus, spending my first season in clown alley trying to learn all I could from the old slapstick masters while thinking I was hot stuff.

“I quickly fell in with the circus hierarchy, which decreed that the roustabouts — those weary and abused men who scooped up the animal droppings, and who put everything up and then pulled it all down again — were the only thing lower than clowns. The roustabouts were, indeed, a motley crew — wasting their slim earnings on nothing but carnal and bibulous pursuits. I spoke to them only when it was absolutely necessary.

“Their circus uniform was dark blue Levis and a light blue cotton twill shirt with the Ringling logo embroidered on it. Each man had three sets of clothes, which were gathered and washed once a week — leaving each roustabout in an extremely fragrant condition during the warmer months. They bunked together in one train car, and their breakfast was coffee and doughnuts. For lunch they got a dukey box — a baloney sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and a mushy apple. They had to get their own dinners.

“That year, the show played Madison Square Garden for two months in the spring. The train was parked about 10 blocks away. So I walked to the Garden each day.

“One morning as I was making my way down the street, I noticed a man lying in an alleyway. He was dressed in the Ringling roustabout uniform. I assumed he’d been out drinking the night before and had gotten rolled and dumped in the alley.

“Serves him right, I thought self-righteously, as I arrogantly stepped over his legs. He can sober up by himself and get down to the show under his own power.

“I had not gone more than a few yards when I heard a melodious voice shout: ‘Somebody give me a hand here, please!’

“I looked back and saw a very, very elegant lady stepping out of a limousine to rush over to the roustabout.

“My conscience, never a very active organ before, smote me, and I turned back to help. I told her I was one of his fellow workers with the circus up at the Garden.

“We put him in her limo, where she used her silk hanky to wipe some of the dried blood off his face. He had come to while we were helping him into the vehicle and weakly explained that he had been on his way to the show early that morning when he had been robbed and then pistol-whipped.

“He insisted on going to the show and refused the lady’s suggestion that he should be taken to a hospital. She then handed him all the money she had in her purse, plus several complimentary passes to the Metropolitan Opera, where she was singing.

“As we drove up to Madison Square Garden, she gave me a quizzical look and asked: ‘Why didn’t you stop to help him?’

“I had no good answer to give her. Instead, I blushed furiously.

“After we had been dropped off, I helped the roustabout into a side door and over to the elephant tubs where the roustabouts congregated before each show. His comrades took him from me and were about to thank me for helping him out, but I couldn’t stand their misplaced gratitude and fled to clown alley as if pursued by fiends.

“I’d like to use my extreme youth at the time — being only 17 years old — as an excuse for my callow and unfeeling behavior. But I know that I have had to struggle against a cold and callous and judgmental heart all of my life.

“I do remember that roustabout’s name, some 45 years later. Vlady. From Poland.

“I hope he doesn’t remember anything about me.”

The Doctrines of Devils

. . . that ye may not be seduced by evil spirits, or doctrines of devils, or the commandments of men; for some are of men, and others of devils.
Doctrine & Covenants. Section 46:7


The devil has doctrine indeed,
confusion and hatred to breed.
Seductive to hear,
it never brings cheer
to those who will give it much heed.