Cousin Doris Visits the Circus

As a young clown with Ringling I was full of myself. Greatest Show on Earth -- Largest Clown Alley -- Youngest Performer from Minnesota. I had all of that, and more. What a peachy-keen guy was I!

But no one in my family ever came to see me perform. Not my mom; not my dad; not my sisters; not my brothers; no uncles or aunts.

Only cousin Doris.

Every family has them; distant, or not so distant, cousins that seem to spring up occasionally like mildew under the carpet.

Our family had Cousin Doris. She intruded on my childhood like a case of recurring measles.

She lived over in Northeast Minneapolis, or, as the denizens of the area itself called it, 'Nordeast'. She had an apartment on Central Avenue directly above a Latvian delicatessen. She worked at the Polovny Cabinet Works -- makers of fine coffins since 1898. Her job, as I understood it, was to steam clean the red velvet interiors of the expensive coffins about once a month, and to distribute moth balls where they might be needed.

She was dumpy and her drab dresses always reeked of rancid garlic. She was the only member of the Torkildson clan to ever have a snub nose -- everyone else sported beaks of varying lengths and sharpness. Her moon face was permanently wreathed in a buck-toothed smile reminiscent of Mortimer Snerd.

The reason we disliked her so much was because she always insisted on being HELPFUL.

My mother had her over for Sunday dinner once every two months, and Cousin Doris was so grateful for this bit of kindness that she always looked for ways and means to help our family out -- with resulting calamities that shook our belief in a just God.

One particular summer Sunday when she graced our table she decided that we should have a batch of good, old-fashioned root beer -- the kind her mother used to make back in South Dakota.

She claimed the ingredients were cheap and handy, and the process was easy enough so that a blind simpleton could put up a dozen bottles in under an hour.

My mother tried to explain that at the moment we were plumb out of blind simpletons -- there were none to be had at any price -- but Cousin Doris was not to be put off.

The very next day she brought over all the equipment and ingredients and set to work, while my mother retired to the back yard with a brown bottle of something she told me was 'stress medicine', but which smelled awfully like my dad's breath when he came home late on a Saturday night.

Amazingly enough, Cousin Doris was true to her word, and the bottles were filled and capped within an hour. She then washed up and cleaned the kitchen to a spotless glare.

The bottles were lined up along the basement steps to 'work' for a week or two.

"Don't mind if they gurgle a bit at night" she told us cheerfully as she left. "That's just the yeast workin'."

The yeast turned out to have nuclear properties.

A few nights later the whole Torkildson household was rudely thrown out of their beds by a series of gushing explosions that emanated from the basement steps.

You guessed it; every single bottle of Cousin Doris' root beer had detonated like a sugary land mine.

And yours truly was deputized to clean up the bubbling mess toot suite by parents who obviously relished crushing a young boy's dreams of undisturbed repose.

Two months later, like clockwork, my mother had Cousin Doris over for Sunday dinner. As we sat down to pot roast, potato rolls, three-bean salad, and corn harvested straight from a Green Giant can, she asked brightly how we liked the home-made root beer.

"You'll never find anything like it in a store!" she exclaimed as we collectively scowled at her.

"It was explosive" my dad said shortly, as he jabbed the pot roast viciously with his fork.

"It does have a tang, don't it?" Doris replied. "Myself, I think there's a bit of alcohol formed."

That would explain the quasi-hangover I had the next morning, after inhaling the fumes while cleaning up the basement steps.

Nothing more was said about the volatile root beer as the dinner proceeded in sullen silence.

Afterwards, as Cousin Doris helped my mother with the dishes in the kitchen I could hear her telling my mother that pickling fish was a cinch, if the fish were fresh-caught. And since little Timmy liked going fishing all the time, she would be happy to help my mother put up a big crock of pickled crappie or sunfish . . .

At this point I sped out the front door as if my keister were ablaze.

Mostly because I didn't like to hear my mother swear.

As you can imagine, I was not exactly thrilled to see her years later when she showed up, ticket in hand, at the building in Des Moines, to greet me with a moist embrace.

“My, how you growed!” she marveled, as she began a long convoluted explanation of why she had relocated to Iowa. Apparently they took their coffins more seriously in Des Moines, and she was now involved with the actual sale of them instead of just mundane maintenance.

“I can get you a good deal on one anytime you want” she told me, as I unwillingly escorted her to her seat prior to come in. She thrust some colored brochures into my hand as I excused myself to go perform my buffoonery. I was hoping to avoid her for the rest of our stay in Des Moines. When I got back to the alley I tossed them on top of my clown trunk.

In clown alley any open talk of death is verboten. It’s bad manners and bad luck to recount the demise of any circus personnel while at your clown trunk. But talk of coffins is a hearse of a different color.  Veteran clowns like Prince Paul and Swede Johnson were in a sort of Coffin Race. They were constantly bickering about the pros and cons of a cedarwood coffin as compared to one made of stainless steel. Was a satin lining better than a silk lining? So when Sweded discovered Doris’ brochures on top of my trunk he immediately wanted to know where they came from. I told him they were from my cousin Doris.

“Hey Prince, lookit this price for the Mahogany Bed of Eternal Rest!” he yelled across the alley to Prince Paul.

Several of the older clowns were soon engrossed in perusing price lists and warranties around my trunk, and I was bidden to produce cousin Doris after the show for further queries.

I did so, and she got more attention from Swede and Prince and Mark Anthony than I ever did. For the rest of our stay in Des Moines cousin Doris was an honored guest in clown alley. I believe she sold Sparky an Economy Model that featured a nitrogen filled plastic pillow, and gave Mark Anthony, our producing clown, some valuable pointers on moisture proofing plywood -- since Mark was intent on building his own casket as economically as possible. I have to admit I was a bit jealous of the fact that she was the only Torkildson clown alley seemed to care about.

At the end of the Des Moines run cousin Doris gave me another moist hug, saying “I’ll see you next year!”

“Over my dead body!” I THOUGHT that -- but didn’t say it. Since I didn’t have my own sarcophagus bought and paid for yet.  

Marine Le Pen

Marine Le Pen is not aquatic

Nor is she a bit robotic.

She’s dyed-in-wool conservative,

And rules with an iron nervative.

What she wants for L’Hexagone

Is that it should  stand all alone.

And if she thinks the earth is flat

Who would defy her caveat?

Since when she’s President of France

She’ll smoke a pipe and wear the pants.

Amy Schumer

If ev’rybody weighed the same there’d be no conversation.

Mankind would descend into a listless automation.

Calories would die upon the cross of apathy,

And clothing stores would disappear just like the honey bee.

But me and Amy Schumer keep it real upon the scale,

With cheeseburgers and french fries and Blue Bunny by the pail.

Clown Alley Gets Psychoanalyzed

Clowns are not normal people; if they were, they wouldn’t be clowns. This seems like a simple straightforward conclusion, needing no further explication. But the eggheads can never leave clown alley alone for very long. Ever since the days of Grimaldi and George Fox, writers and intellectuals have been burrowing into the clown psyche to figure out what makes it tick. But, in the famous words of E.B. White, “Trying to dissect humor is like trying to dissect a frog -- you may discover some interesting material, but the whole thing dies in the process.”

My second year as a clown with Ringling we played Boston in the early spring. One day a youth nearly my own age was escorted into the alley by Charlie Baumann. He wore a cream colored silk shirt with a deep purple necktie. He reeked of classy. His bespectacled face showed a keen interest in what was going on around him, which at the time was a somnolent attempt by several hungover clowns to nudge a cockroach under Chico’s trunk with their feet.

“Dis is Herr Jenkins. He vill study you. Behave!” was Baumann’s curt introduction.

“Ron Jenkins” said the youth, going around the alley and shaking hands. “I’m a third year Psych student at Harvard. I’m leading a study on the comic ego and its antecedents. You know, how clowns like to think of themselves and what keeps them at the job. That kind of thing.”

He seemed a harmless loon, unobtrusive and respectful. So clown alley let him poke and prod. That week in Boston he showed up after the matinee and singled out several clowns for a group interview. His first group consisted of Prince Paul, Swede Johnson, Dougie Ashton, and Mark Anthony. They sat in a solemn semi-circle around him as he adjusted his glasses, flipped through his clipboard, and drew a pen from his plastic pocket protector.

“Please tell me where all of you were born, to begin with” he asked in a pleasant voice.

“Me mother said I didn’t get born, I was hatched” replied Dougie, giving his bushy auburn eyebrows a Groucho Marx waggle.

“Germany” said Prince Paul.

“Where in Germany?”

“How the hell should I know, schmendrick? I was a bastard, so she just gave me to her relatives to raise. I came to America in 1920 and bin a citizen since ‘35.”

“Okay. Thank you. And you, Mr. Johnson?”

Swede gave him an appraising look before launching his taradiddle.  

“That’s a strange story, that is” he began. “My folks was off the Cape of Good Hope in a subchaser during the First World War when a tidal wave washed the whole crew overboard onto a dessert island.”

“You mean a desert island, of course.”

“I don’t mean nothin’ like it, kid. Half the damn crew was smothered in coconut custard and the rest had to run for their lives from the creeps suzette. My mother had me while hiding out in a rice pudding swamp . . . “

“Dammit, Swede” interrupted Mark Anthony, “just tell the kid you was born in Copenhagen so we can get this over with. I gotta go out and buy some flanges for the prop boxes before the next show!”

Much relieved that someone had at last shown good sense, Jenkins turned to Mark and asked him where he had been born. Unfortunately, Mark had just discovered Helena Blavatsky and Theosophy; his murky reply was to the effect he had not yet been born but was scheduled for enlightenment somewhere in Tibet by the year 1991.

Jenkins tried a few more clinical questions, but it was easy to tell his spirit had fled from the proceedings.

The next day he renewed his efforts to unlock the complexities of the clown mind with me, Roofus T. Goofus, Spaghetti Joe, and Smitty. Smitty sat down with a bowl of cornflakes.

“Scuse me while I have some dinner” he said in a genteel manner, then poured a can of Budweiser over his cereal. Jenkins visibly gagged at this. It was old news to the rest of us. Smitty couldn’t function if his blood alcohol level fell below .080.

“Uh, where were you born?” he started with me.

“Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Minnesota” I replied promptly. Then felt impelled to add: “My great grandfather Ole Stuhlsted was born in Trondheim, Norway.”

Jenkins winced slightly, mastered his emotions, and continued. Roofus came from Champaign, Illinois. Spaghetti Joe from Brooklyn. And Smitty from Redlands, California.

“What basic needs do you think clowning provides for you?” he asked Spaghetti Joe.

“Chicks” shot back Joe without hesitation. “My long red rubber nose is a real turn on for those chippies once I . . . “

“Shut up, you perving liar!” the rest of us chimed in, sick and tired of his mythical sexual exploits. It was all he ever talked about.

“No, no -- that’s okay. I need to know what each of you really wants out of your clown career” said Jenkins soothingly. So once again we had to listen to the fictitious and puerile sexual adventures of Spaghetti Joe. This was becoming an annoying waste of time. I could have gone out to one of any of a dozen used book shops nearby. And there was an Italian guy just outside the backdoor selling crab rolls from a pushcart.

Jenkins filled several pages with Spaghetti Joe’s piffle before turning to me.

“What is it you want from your job as a clown?”

I had my glib answer ready, when suddenly I realized that he had just asked me substantially the very same thing my mother asked me the night I left for Clown College. She was in tears -- not from sadness but rage. What did I want from this insane idea? She told me I was throwing my life away. I’d be dead in a few years. Homeless. Coming back to beg for help, but it would not be her problem anymore. I’d made my bed, now I had to lie in it.  

“It’s to get the hell away from you!” I yelled at the perplexed Jenkins. Then I stomped out of the alley, got some crab rolls, and spent an hour at a used book store while trying to piece together what had just happened to me. But I couldn’t face it down, not yet. Trying to analyze it took away my appetite and my lust for belly laughs. So I decided to follow Dougie Ashton’s sage counsel whenever things turned upsetting.

“Buck ‘em all!”

************************************************************************

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A Kid at the Circus

What strange influences impelled me to don the greasepaint and motley of Ringling’s clown alley? I’ve gone over that question a thousand times these past decades. A seminal guide to taking up the comic cudgels was John McCabe’s wonderful biography of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy. The movies of the Marx Brothers also pushed me towards the merry anarchy of the circus clown. My own instinctive use of humor to protect myself from school bullies is another reason I wound up trading affectionate insults with Swede Johnson in the Blue Unit clown alley. But the one thing that definitely DID NOT influence me to become a circus clown was the circus itself. My memories of attending the Zhurah Shrine Circus in Minneapolis back in my misspent youth are not at all pleasant. Why? Well, it’s complicated -- but it goes something like this:

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, Chuck Sidlow

A reverent ‘xiexie’ to readers who liked my mini-memoir ‘The Rules & Regulations of Clown Alley.’ You are the trampoline beneath my feet!

Joe Giordano

Giuseppe Garibaldi

Matt Kaminsky

Leo Acton

Robert E. Handley

Gabriel Romero Sr.

Tony Chino

Mike Weakley

Greta Burck

Judy Earnest Rhodenizer

Franklin Erich Hotzel

Randy Brake

Randy Jackson

Andrew Donovan

Valerie Hanson

Chuck Sidlow

Jane Caligiuri

Richard Schmitt

Steve Ellis

Kenneth L Stallings

Raymond Deller

Dave Letterfly

Carol Prohaska

Terry Ricketts

Michael Meinhart

Craig Nelson

Andrew Alexander McHattie

Sara Howey Glore

Matt Salgado

Anna Lima

Glenn Godsey

Mary Pat Cooney

Kyle Waldeck

“Fiction is the truth inside a lie”

Thank you, Andrew Fronczak!

A hearty “eskerrik asko” to readers who liked my latest mini-memoir “Remembering Emmett Kelly.” Your faith not only moves mountains, but it moves ME greatly!

Mike Weakley

Hubert H. Humphrey

Joe Giordano

Stephen Korrodi

Trevor Whittow

Gabriel Romero Sr.

Andrew Fronczak

Chris Twiford

Robert E. Handley

Sandy Weber

Paul Dymoke

Mike Johnson

Leo Acton

Candace Howard

Glenn Godsey

Mary Pat Cooney

Jj Blackmire

Dan Lyon

Vicky Keller

Darlene Sturm Doodlebug

Jennifer Clendennen McBride

Greg Johns

Ronald Hathaway

Linda F Vogel Kaplan

Kenneth L Stallings

Pat Graves

Rusty Thomas

Kent Mercer

David Denmon

Matt Salgado

Tim Cunico

Larry Clark

Tim A Dolan

Robert Sielski

Kevin Richardson

Fred Baisch

Rey Sandoval

David Pitts

Erik Bartlett

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality can’t destroy you”

Robert Osborne

A movie ain’t a movie unless Osborne’s on the scene,

Explaining filming history and when it hit the screen.

A man so steeped in movies that his blood was celluloid;

His intros were so snappy, and they never ever cloyed.

But God was getting tired of Roger Ebert’s long critiques

And so he called home Robert despite TCM’s loud shrieks.

Shinzo Abe

Shinzo Abe thinks that Trump

Never will his country dump.

But from Maine to Guadalajara

It is plain it’s ‘sayonara.’

Tow-key-oh must be prepared

All its teeth to keep full bared

At those nuts in North Korea

Who for brains use a tortilla.

Otherwise Shinzo will find

There’s nothing safe in ‘nonaligned.’

Remembering Emmett Kelly

The face of a professional clown in repose, sans all the gaudy colors, grows inconceivably sad over time. His features settle into a weary, wary, haunted expression, because the jokes and japes he throws out to the audience seem to rebound onto his own head, and into his own personal life -- and that just doesn’t seem cricket.

The melancholy visages of old clowns that I knew, such as Otto Griebling, Swede Johnson, and Lou Jacobs, suggested hearts not only broken but missing whole pieces. And never was there a more forceful example than Emmett Kelly, Ringling’s celebrated ‘Weary Willie.’ He spent a few days at my 1971 Clown College at the invitation of Bill Ballantine, our ‘Dean.’ By then Kelly had retired, spending his days fishing, granting interviews, and whittling napkin rings out of pieces of cypress knees he picked up at the Sarasota Flea Market.

He did not deign to instruct us in anything technical, but would come over in the evenings to reminisce, in his flat Midwestern voice, about the great days under canvas when the Ringling name was at the height of its intoxicating magic. Squatting on the makeshift ring curb, he remembered blowdowns, hoof and mouth disease among the livestock, the Hartford Fire, his vain attempts to woo ill-fated circus star Lillian Leitzel, and a host of other depressing circus subjects that left me feeling orphaned in a sinister universe. He just was not a happy camper. He would take questions from us, but inevitably his answers involved train wrecks and other disasters. One night I asked him who he thought the greatest clown ever was. He looked off into the distance for a good long while before answering.

“Slivers Oakley” he finally replied. “He came along before Chaplin, worked with Ringling, and finally blew his brains out when he couldn’t make it in Vaudeville.”

Kelly paused to brush cypress shavings off his lap; he inevitably whittled while he talked with us.

“Buster Keaton stole several routines from him in his movies -- never even gave him credit. Like his one-man baseball routine. Best damn pantomime bit I ever saw -- always brought the circus crowds to their feet, stomping and cheering. Maybe he killed himself over a woman -- I don’t recollect exactly anymore.”  

He was not gentle and understanding with us tender young students, either. When one of the girl students asked him, apropos of nothing, what his favorite food was, he snapped back: “Chocolate covered rutabagas.”

The one thing that reanimated his deadpan face was to talk about fishing. Then his eyes would light up like those in a jack-o-lantern, glowing with the true faith of a fanatic. Nobody but me seemed to pick up on this -- perhaps because none of my fellow students had the good fortune to grow up in Minnesota, the Land of Ten Thousand Fishing Stories.

So one night, summoning up my courage, I waited until our depressing Q&A was over and accosted Kelly as he was leaving.

“Mister Kelly” I asked, “you ever caught a channel cat?”

He displayed an angelic smile and said “We caught some monsters when I was a kid in Missouri!”

“We lived just three blocks from the Mississippi up in Minneapolis. I had one break my cane pole.”

“Do tell! You ever go fishin’ on Lake Minnetonka? That used to be swell for bass.”

“Naw” I said, my chest expanding like an inflated balloon. “Minnetonka is strictly for crappies nowadays. No limit. I can reel in a dozen in about two hours.”

He gave me a shrewd look, realized I was lying through my teeth, but that I WAS a dyed-in-the-wool fisherman, and sat down on a bleacher seat, motioning me to sit down next to him.  

For the next ten minutes we ranged over a host of aquatic hotspots, from Lake of the Woods to Lake Okeechobee. I told him quite frankly that the only effective stinkbait for any kind of catfish was a piece of Velveeta cheese with a kernel of canned corn molded into the middle of it. He told me that whenever the show played Minnesota he and Lou Jacobs would pull out a huge two-man papier mache giraffe smoking a cigar and use that in their last appearance during the Finale so they could get out of their makeup unobserved and save some time -- then run out the back door to the nearest fishing hole.

When he got up to leave he gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“Nice talkin’ to ya, kid. Good luck with the show.”

This was heady stuff for a 17 year old greenhorn like me. A private chat with the greatest living circus clown! And, like a typical greenhorn, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I was soon boasting to everyone at Clown College that Emmett had invited me to go fishing with him next Sunday, probably so I could give him a few pointers. I strutted about with this whopper for a few days until Bill Ballantine called my bluff in front of the whole student body during a training session with the lean-to shoes. These are a pair of sturdy Army boots which are soled with T-bars; when a clown slides the T-bar into a metal slot installed on a thick plank of lumber, he can actually lean his entire body at an impossible angle as long as he keeps his legs locked straight. The wooden board keeps the clown from falling over, giving him the appearance of defying gravity.   

As I was practicing this stunt under Ballantine’s watchful gaze, he casually asked me:

“So, I hear you and Emmett are going out fishing this Sunday?”

“Yeah” I replied nonchalantly. “Probably just off the public pier for a coupla hours.”

“Well, that’s strange -- since he told me he’s going to Chicago tomorrow for three weeks.”

My face a crimson fireball, I inadvertently unlocked the boots from the board and fell into a crumpled heap. The derisive laughter that greeted my fall from grace sounded harsh and cruel to me. Not the kind of belly laugh I was hoping to create when my clown career started.

I think that’s when my profile began its long slide down to the homely glower that now greets me each morning in the bathroom mirror.