A Cup of Premium Coffee Costs How Much?

Eight dollars a cup for some joe

Would give my billfold lumbago.

Just why should I spend

On premium blend

Enough for a box of bordeaux?

Mutiny in Clown Alley

The Ringling clown alley where I started as a First of May back in 1971 patiently put up with a lot of things. Bad lighting. Dirt. Lack of decent chairs to sit in. Fluctuating temperatures that left us freezing in one town and broiling in the next. Rats in our trunks. Pigeons in the rafters dropping their soft white regards on our heads. The smelly proximity of elephant manure piles.  Obnoxious guest clowns. Chiggers. And once, in South Carolina, an arena management that put up signs on all the men’s rooms reading “NO CIRCUS PERSONNEL ALLOWED!” But we did come close to mutiny once -- over balloons.

We were doing a spirited balloon chase that season -- wherein an annoying balloon vendor up in the stands has his balloons stolen by a nimble clown. The vendor gives chase as the first clown passes the balloons to a second clown, and so on -- until the final clown takes a spectacular header with the balloons grasped to his chest, popping them all in a glorious burst of noise. Naturally, this required a new set of balloons for each show. The circus paid for our balloons but we had to blow them up ourselves. Which was considered a task more abhorrent than working on a chain gang. Boss clown LeVoi Hipps knew better than to ask any of the veteran clowns to blow up balloons, so he charged the First of Mays -- all twelve of us -- with the onerous job. Eager to show our worth as part of the alley, we at first took turns inflating the balloons with pride and zeal. That lasted for about one week. Then no one would do it.

LeVoi finally had to get tough. He made blowing up the balloons a punishment for minor infractions such as tardiness or excessive drunkenness (in those more elastic times a tipsy clown was not considered incapacitated, just selfish if he didn’t share his bottle of hootch.) That made the chore even more despised. Looking back, I think the main reason we hated it so much was that the show provided us with the cheapest balloons possible -- made in China of a latex so chintzy it exploded in our faces more often than not. Why we didn’t just all pitch in to buy an inexpensive foot pump to blow them up with a minimum of fuss and bother I don’t know. But then, clowns are not known for their analytical skills or cool, dispassionate reasoning. Things got so bad that at one point we had to drop the balloon chase entirely -- we refused to blow them up at all because inflating them ruined the makeup around our lips. Then Performance Director Charlie Baumann got into the act.

“Get that verdammt balloon chasing back into the show -- schnell! Or I dock your salary -- Verstehst du alle?” he roared at us one afternoon before the matinee. His message was very clear and precise, so we drew straws. Chico drew the short straw. He was stuck with blowing up balloons for the rest of the season. But, being Chico, he managed to get out of the job by the simple expedient of having his marks do it for him. For Chico was a loan shark of sorts. Many of the roustabouts, and some of the new clowns and showgirls, often fell short of funds a day or two before payday on Friday. And Chico was always glad to lend them five or ten dollars to tide them over -- for a considerable vigorish. I had to borrow from him once or twice myself. Those debtors who had trouble paying him completely back on time were offered a merciful reprieve -- if they agreed to blow up the balloons for a week. Sort of like a mafia version of Tom Sawyer’s whitewashed fence . . .   

The connection between clowns and balloons goes back to the inflated pig bladders on a stick of medieval court jesters. Or perhaps even further back -- apparently ancient vendors in Greece and Rome offered inflated sheep intestines to those with a drachma or two burning a hole in their toga. I like to think that the comic playwright Aristophanes couldn’t resist inserting some business with an inflated bladder or intestine into one of his lost Athenian comedies.

British scientist Michael Faraday invented the first latex balloons in 1824. He liked to fill them with helium and let them float away over the Kentish countryside. His balloons had to be powdered inside and out with flour to keep the tacky caoutchouc from sticking together into a flaccid uninflatable sheet.  

Modern colored balloons were first introduced at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933 -- where patrons could purchase balloon zeppelins, espirals, dollies, mouse heads, and bunny heads. My researches have not yet pinpointed the exact date when pencil balloon sculpting  became identified with clowns. Magicians were using them by the late 1940’s in the Midwest. By the time the Tillotson Rubber Company came out with an improved latex pencil balloon in the 1950’s, circus clowns and balloons were already verging from the iconic to the cliche. Today the best quality circus balloons in America are made by Qualatex. In England most clowns use Betallatex brand balloons.

My favorite clown routine with balloons has always been Bigger & Bigger. You can see a masterful version of this old routine in the Laurel & Hardy movie ‘Saps at Sea.’

Another great balloon movie for clowns is the French film “The Red Balloon” by Albert Lamorisse.

The symbiosis of clowns and balloons seems to be kaput nowadays. The balloons have floated away to other venues, and clowns have become corrupted archetypes exploited for horror movies and sadly prominent in police blotters . . .

Confederate Monuments

If you are a statue with Confederate cachet

You will be torn down in haste and quickly thrown away.

Your dreams and social policy were bankrupt long ago,

And so off to the landfill your brass butt we now must tow.

It’s been a long time since you lost the War Between the States --

If it wasn’t for Abe Lincoln you would all have been inmates.

Let bygones now be bygones, and away resentment cast --

Our present troubles ought to make us overlook the past.

Why I Hate CEO Leslie Moonves

If you are a CEO

You can watch your paycheck grow.

Though you are a drooling clod,

You make more than even God.

And the work is very light --

Playing golf both day and night.

Stockholders don’t give a hoot

If their shares you should dilute.

And the SEC will wink

When your company does sink.

And before you meet discharge

You will get a bonus large.

How I wish all CEO’s

Snorted ground glass up their nose.

The Marriage Conspiracy (and email response)

It began a few weeks ago when my daughter-in-law Brenda took me out to lunch and asked between the pupusas and the tamales if I’d ever get married again. I told her frankly I really didn’t know -- it would depend on circumstance, and, of course, the gal involved. She only smirked in reply. I always get uncomfortable when women smirk at me -- it means there’s a conspiracy going on around me that I am not privy to.

This was confirmed yesterday when my daughter Sarah and the kids came over for a dinner of cold fried chicken and potato salad.

“Mom is moving back here in July” she told me matter-of-factly.

“What for?” I naturally asked.

“Oh, I think you know . . . “ she replied coyly.

Gadzooks! The noose is beginning to tighten. Later that night Amy sent me a cryptic email -- something about taking my diet in hand so my health will improve to the point where I can ‘live a full and active life again.’ She also urged me to buy a life insurance policy, naming her as the beneficiary.

The writing's on the wall. The stars are aligning themselves. Romance, or pollen, is in the air. The lark is on the wing; the snail’s on the thorn; God’s in His heaven -- and all is definitely NOT right with my world!

Don’t I get a say in all this?

All right, all right -- forget about my moony poetry and turgid prose about loneliness and a man’s primeval need for ‘a jug of wine, a loaf of bread -- and thou.” That was just literary license, nothing more. Just hot air on a cold night.

This is shaping up to be the real deal.

I know why my kids want it to happen. Not because they have yearned all these years for dear old mom and dad to be reunited, but because they are tired of taking care of their mother and her crotchets. She’s a Grade-A nuisance in their lives.They want me to take her off their hands. And I think I know why Amy might want it -- she can’t leave anything alone once she’s started work on it, and that includes me.

But why would I want to marry her again?

Good question, Sherlock. My heart inclines to her, but my mind is dead set against living together again. The sex would be negligible (because of my bladder stone operation); she has too much money in the bank to qualify to live in any kind of subsidized housing (from the sale of her house in North Dakota); but not enough to get a decent health insurance policy for the both of us; and I’d never have another good meal in peace again, what with her ever-evolving and baffling views on diet.

I have decided, after giving the matter my best thought for all of ten minutes, that the only way I would agree to marry her again is if she and I moved to Thailand, where we would use some of her money to get me fixed up at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok for a third of what it would cost here in the States, and then use the rest of her money to open a modest restaurant in a seaside town. There would be no interference from her abhorrent family and I would be in charge of things until she learned to speak Thai and understand the culture. That way, whenever she finally decided to leave me again (which I’m convinced she will) I would still come out the winner -- having my health restored and living in Thailand. With my Social Security intact.

I intend to stick to my guns on this. At least until I’m actually sitting next to her on my couch, watching a romantic DVD and sharing an intimate bowl of microwave popcorn. At that point, who can tell what diabolical mischief Cupid might concoct for the two of us?

Looking on the bright side, maybe a bus will run me over before Amy gets here in July.

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

Tim:

I've been meaning to write back about this since it came in, but have not been sure exactly what to say about it except that this all seems really bizarre...coming out of the blue as it apparently has.  

That said, it seems to me that you have sized up the matter correctly.  Various people consolidating what is in their best interest and dumping all the consequences onto you, and insuring that they will be forever insulated from those consequences inasmuch as you will have purchased insurance which will provide sufficient economic independence for everyone involved except you, as you have to be dead to make it all work.  Hmmm...is there any collusion going on here?   And haven't you been the "beneficiary" of that type of thinking before?

Which has reminded me of an incident in my own life that has something of the scent as this one appears to have.  

Did I ever tell you about my experience with being the beneficiary of an arranged (sort-of) eternal union?  (Not Joanne, as you will discover).

I call it the Boise Idaho Plot, and it goes something like this:

Whilst serving in Idaho on my mission, i was introduced to a woman who I shall identify as "BB" (to maintain anonymity, and to be in harmony with two major characters in the movie "Rumor Has It," which stars Jennifer Anniston, Kevin Costner, Shirley McLane and Mark Ruffalo and which Jennie and I think is a hoot, and was a modest hit although the critics  didn't care for it.  There is actually no plot similarity between these two stories, but the idea of calling someone "BB" has a nice ring to it...). 

The introduction was managed by a member in one of the wards who functioned as something of a "mission mom" to missionaries serving there in that she would weekly pick up and do our laundry as well as make us fresh-baked pies regularly.  I was a bit ambivalent about her doing our laundry (which ambivalence I carried into my marriage as I told Jennie from the get-go that "nobody touches my dirty clothes but me."  It just seemed icky that someone else would have to handle my soiled--or contaminated--underwear--after all, there could be C-Diff in there for all you know--so I put my foot down on that issue and actually received no objection to it.  Funny that, huh?).  Anyway, the pies were very gratefully received.

To continue...

Sometime after I left this area, I received a phone call from mission mom just wanting to know how I was doing, as she felt that I was struggling at that particular time.  As it happened, I was going through a rough patch as I had a companion who was struggling quite a bit to the point that he was too sick to go out from time-to-time, so I appreciated the call.  

Ultimately my mission ended (HOORAY!!) and I went home and immediately did the three things I was telling people I would do after my mission, which I was unable to do on my mission, in response to the question apparently everyone feels obligated to ask in the last six months of your mission:  What are you going to do when you get back home?  My answer: I was going to do three things I've not been able to do for two years: sleep in, take a nap in the afternoon, and see Star Wars.  Having accomplished those I found a job and an apartment, and settled in to a regular routine.  

Fast-forward two and a half years.  Out of the blue, I receive a phone call from BB.  Just wanting to know that she remembered me and wondering how I was getting along.  I was too naive to pick up any hidden agenda in the call, but shared a pleasant conversation.  I think she may have called again a time or two over the next few weeks and in one of those conversations suggested it would be nice to see me should I ever want to come out and tour some areas in my mission.  Again, I was too clueless to pick up on anything (are you beginning to pick up on why I remained unmarried until age 44?  Has there ever been anyone more dumber-than-a-brick that you have ever met?).   Anyway, the idea actually appealed to me.  I was just accepting a new job and could easily give them a start date following a week or so out of town.  

So it happens I end up visiting people in Idaho that I remembered fondly from when I served there.  I did not actually remember BB more than acquaintance-fondly, as I did not find her particularly physically attractive, but she was certainly pleasant and attentive.  I think it was the excess attentiveness that finally caused my eyes to open--that, and the fact that mission mom explicitly said that BB and I had a pre-mortal arrangement to meet each other and marry while here on earth.  Putting it mildly, I was mildly freaked and, after some excessively uncomfortable conversations, ended up back home successfully still single.  A state that would remain in place until I met Joanne and was, once again, involved in some matchmaking but which I did not object to at all, as Joanne was very  appealing and I was perhaps mature enough now to actually succeed in a relationship (25 years last December...). 

There is more to the story, which I will tell you another time as a proper telling requires a substantially less insouciant and much more deeply spiritual gravitas to do it justice. But, for now, in consideration of your present plight, the suggestion that rushes to the forefront of my mind is thus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCUcJfnQsdY

Beyond that: a couple of updates:  I am currently undergoing physical therapy for lower back pain.  I have compressed discs and have been sore for about a year and a half now.  Hopefully this new treatment will do some good.   

I am also on a CPAP machine for sleep apnia.  Joanne demanded I go and get it evaluated as she said I would stop breathing periodically during the night, and she was worried that I might not start up again.  That didn't worry me a bit, as dying in my sleep has always been my ideal for expiring.  My grandfather on my mom's side died in his sleep, and my dad's youngest brother died in his sleep, so why  not me?  Maybe not right now, but certainly when the time comes.

Anyway, Joanne was afraid of maybe right now, so I went in and had a sleep study done and, sure enough, I have apnia.  So they set me up with a machine and I am in the trial phase now.  I may be starting to get used to it.  It involves a mask with a heated and humidified tube connected to ensure that air is being pushed into my lungs on a regular basis while sleeping.  I'm not sure how it will all work out, but will let you know how it goes.

We are uncertain of visiting Utah this year.  Michigan yes, because Joanne's dad will be 90 on July 1, so we for sure want to be there.  No other travel plans are being formulated at the moment, but will certainly let you know if we are able to make a trip out.

So, how are things with you?     And do let me know how your marriage conspiracy evolves.

Payday in Clown Alley

As Prince Paul often said: “Whether you’re rich or whether you’re poor, it’s nice to have money.” My embryonic conceptions about money were formed at Ringling when I began as a First of May. Prior to my initiation into that archaic body of buffoons I hardly took notice of mazuma. At home, everything was paid for by my parents -- my food, my clothes, and my shelter. The only things I had to worry about paying for were Mad Magazine and Old Dutch Onion and Garlic Chips. I loved snacking on them while looking at the latest zaniness of Don Martin and Antonio Prohias.

In clown alley I quickly learned not the value of money so much as its fleetingness in the life of a circus clown. My salary was slight, to say the least, and it had to cover a multitude of requirements. There was makeup and costumes and rent for my roomette on the ‘Iron Lung’ and food and tithing and savings and books and taxi cabs and girls -- not necessarily in that order. Some weeks the girls took most of my meager income -- other weeks I splurged on books. And some weeks, being just 18 and not yet grown to my full height, my adolescent hunger pangs demanded steaks and chops and french fries enough to beggar me. I discovered that one of the cheapest yet most filling meals I could afford on my income was liver and onions, with a side of mashed potatoes and plenty of bread and butter. On the East coast the White House restaurant chain offered a large platter of it for $1.25. In the Midwest the Woolworth stores practically gave the meal away at their grill for just 75 cents. And out in California they served thin, crispy slices of liver wrapped in bacon at the Big Boy chain for a round one buck.

Of course, there was always the circus-run pie car, where you could get a meal pretty much at-cost. But there were times when I tired of seeing the same old faces at every meal -- and the place reeked of cigarette smoke.

I was conflicted when it came to tipping. One the one hand, my co-worker Chico never tipped. He maintained that since we would not be back to that same restaurant for possibly years to come, it didn’t matter if we stiffed the wait staff. On the other hand my future clown partner Steve Smith insisted that we should be open-handed with every waitress, because his mother had been a waitress and depended on generous tips to feed and clothe her kids. I tried to eat out with Chico, rather than Smith, as often as I could. (And just for the record, now that I’m settled here in Provo, Utah -- whenever I eat out I am the soul of generosity when it comes to tipping -- mostly because I only eat out with my kids and they won’t let me get away with shortchanging the wait staff.)

This is a long and wordy preamble to a description of the mechanics of payday at the Ringling Brothers Blue Unit back in the early 70’s. Our pay was disbursed every Friday, but the exact time when the manna fell was flexible. As soon as the banks were open Schwartzy, a former midget clown with the show, who now functioned as paymaster as well as the circus train’s concierge, was driven over by Mac the bus driver and mail clerk, to pick up several sacks of greenbacks and rolls of coin. Schwartzy brought the loot back to his office in the back of the Pie Car to count out and stuff into envelopes. Then he hauled out an immense check register and began the laborious task of signing each employee’s check. There were over four hundred checks for him to sign -- and he already had a sore elbow from the frequent tipping of a bottle -- so he didn’t finish this task until late afternoon. Usually after the matinee had already started.

The veteran clowns could remember a time, back in 40’s and 50’s, when payday was an uncertain prospect. If the show did not make their nut for several days in a row, payday could be postponed until the following week. Or month. This memory made them skittish on payday -- they wanted to get theirs before the money ran out. As soon as the First Call was sounded on the trumpet by bandleader Bill Pryne, Swede Johnson, Prince Paul, and Mark Anthony became Olympic runners -- leaping tall elephant tubs in a single bound and skirting around guy wires with the grace of a cheetah closing in on its prey. They usually got to the card table set up by Schwartzy before any other performer.

The ritual never varied. Since the clowns were always in makeup when they received their salary, which circus management thought increased the likelihood of fraudulent impersonation, we each had to announce our full given name to Schwartzy -- even though he’d known some of the clowns for more than thirty years. Once satisfied we were not grifting impersonators, he pushed the paycheck towards us, we signed it, he took it back, and then handed us an envelope of cash. Deductions were already made for our roomette on the train, Social Security. and AGVA dues. We had to take care of our own taxes. That first year on the road I foolishly kept my legal residence in Minnesota, which has one of the highest personal income tax rates in the country, instead of changing it to Florida, which has no personal income tax. At the end of the year I was hit with a tax bill that wiped out most of my carefully hoarded savings.

I always liked that it was first come first serve on payday. Whether you were a trapeze star or a lowly clown, you stood in line and waited your turn. The only exception to this rule was Otto Griebling. By special dispensation from Irvin Feld himself, Otto’s salary was automatically sent to his wife Annie back in Florida each week. When Schwartzy had finished paying off he would personally bring an envelope of cash to Otto in clown alley, which Otto did not even have to sign for. Swede told me it was called a ‘clown emeritus bonus’ and was completely off the books so Otto didn’t have to report it to Uncle Sam.

The older clowns all kept a ‘grouch’ bag around their necks -- a leather pouch where they squirreled away their cash snug as a bug in a rug. I tried the same thing, buying a plastic one from an AAA store that was for the safekeeping of passports and traveler’s checks. But the plastic string around my neck chafed exceedingly. So I stuck my slim wad of bills into my wallet and left it in my clown trunk during the show. During the weekend I wallowed in my filthy lucre -- all $125.00 of it -- but on Monday I always found a bank to buy money orders to mail to my own bank and to pay my tithes and fast offerings. What little was left then went for food and books and baby oil and Stein’s clown white.

And if I could have found a store that sold Old Dutch Onion and Garlic chips I would have been in very heaven.

Charles Murray Gets His Revenge On Middlebury College Students

More than five dozen Middlebury College students were disciplined for their roles in shutting down a speech by the author Charles Murray in March, the college announced this week. But the students were spared the most serious penalties in the episode, which left a faculty member injured and came to symbolize a lack of tolerance for conservative ideas on some campuses.

from the NYTimes 

A student who kicked in Vermont,

Deciding a speaker to taunt,

Was given a slap

On his wrist that mayhap

He’ll learn how to use some detente.

The Suicide of a Canadian Clown

Happily, Dr. Green had become adept at brokering delicate family discussions over the past year. She had presided over 35 deaths since the Canadian law for medical assistance in dying passed, each intimately different from the next. One man got dressed in his amateur clown costume, complete with wig and red nose, and died telling her jokes.

Read the complete story in the NYTimes

The fishing’s good in Canada -- the poutine’s mighty tasty.

And if you wish to croak at once, your doctor will be hasty.

For even jolly circus clowns, when feeling sad and bitter,

Can have their doctor bump them off, to get a final titter.

For circus clowns are all upset to see the Ringling show

Depart to never come again on green lots here below.

Mercurial in temperment, the carefree circus clown

Is ideal for the death doctors to expertly put down.

The government then pays them a delightful little fee

For sending grinning customers off to eternity.

Oh, I have got arthritis and a host of other ills

That keep me from my clowning -- and rack up gigantic bills.

Perhaps I’ll move to Canada and let those sawbones loose

On my failing body so that they can cook my goose.

For making people laugh is all I ever want to do --

And if I cannot do it anymore I get real blue.

Assisted suicide sounds like a smooth way out of life,

Avoiding further pain and threat from any surgeon’s knife.

But even though I’ve never been much more than a buffoon,

I think I’d like to stick around to see another June.

I guess this here old circus clown will suffer, with God’s grace,

And muddle through until that final pie’s thrown in my face . . .

The Haunting of Clown Alley

We had a devil worshipper in the Ringling clown alley when I first started with them in the early 70’s. After all these years I see no need to give you his real name -- let’s call him Fred. He was from California, where strange cults are as common as sunburns. His blackened crooked teeth made those of a Ferengi look like Doris Day’s. He was cadaverously thin, and his white face glowed with an unhealthy brightness, like a willow-the-wisp deep in the swamp. I think he powdered down with cornmeal, not baby powder, to give his makeup a gritty, eldritch appearance.

No one in clown alley cared to socialize with him, or even have his trunk next to theirs. And he made no friends on the ‘Iron Lung’ train car by burning black candles late at night that were scented with asafoetida. Weird monotonous chants issued from his roomette at odd hours of the night, and sometimes there was a green glow around his closed door. As an avid reader of H.P. Lovecraft, it was my considered opinion that he was trying to summon Cthulhu to destroy the earth.

When I asked Tim Holst what he thought about this suspect creature he merely quoted Shakespeare at me: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  

Prince Paul dismissed him as “a guy that’s not playing with a full deck, that’s all.”

And when I shared my concerns with Swede Johnson, he joked “If anybody has got horns around here it’s you, Pinhead, and that other Mormon clown you hang around with!” (Swede was from Denmark, and, interestingly enough, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century it was a common folk myth in Scandinavia that the Mormons all had horns on their foreheads, because of the tall black hats the missionaries wore.)

Since nobody else seemed worried about being turned into a toad or otherwise cursed, I let the matter drop for most of the season. This was my first year on the road with Ringling -- and the fun I had making huge crowds laugh was all the magic I cared to practice.

But then the show began its tour of California -- where weird and disturbing things occurred. The Bulgarian acrobats and Hungarian teeterboard artists shunned their usual late night barbecues outside the train. They whispered furtively with each other about a malevolent ‘hexen’ who was turning the dark hours of the night into a horror with his ability to attract railyard rats and juggle them. During the full moon a flock of bats somehow got into the showgirls’ car -- the ensuing pandemonium could be heard miles away. And in clown alley pentagrams were chalked on everyone’s trunks by some surreptitious graffiti artist. Not once, but several times.

Several of the rowdier roustabouts had beaten up Fred one night in San Francisco -- and after that he became even darker and grimmer; murmuring to himself about pouring summary vengeance out upon all his enemies.  

In clown alley our possessions began to disappear from right under our noses. Prince Paul’s copy of the New York Times, which he always put inside his trunk during the show, was not to be found after the first show -- no matter how much he cursed and poked around the innards. Mark Anthony’s set of electric carving knives, used to sculpt foam rubber props, simply disappeared one matinee while he went to the donniker -- one moment they were laid out on a folding table and the next they were nowhere to be found. I guarded my brand new Timex watch, for which I paid the hefty price of nine dollars, as if it were solid gold -- keeping it on my wrist even during clown gags. But after one particularly spirited slap boxing match during come in I looked down at my wrist in complete bafflement to discover it was no longer there.

Then all of our shoelaces from all of our clown shoes disappeared into thin air on opening night in Sacramento. We had to improvise with twine. We found our rubber chickens decapitated -- their headless carcasses strewn about the propboxes as if scattered by a cyclone.

Clown alley was cursed, or haunted. And the main suspect, in fact the only suspect, was Fred.

Chico and Rubber Neck told Tim Holst that since he had been an Elder on his LDS mission to Sweden, he must know how to do an exorcism. They were completely serious. Holst waved his arms around for a minute, while shouting “Boogie! Boogie! Boogie!” Then he threw a hand full of baby powder up in the air and declared that the spirit haunting clown alley was appeased and would depart to the nearest Shrine circus. Neither Chico or Rubber Neck thought that was particularly funny.

“Don’t you Mormons take ghosts seriously?” asked Chico in an offended tone of voice.

“We don’t even take the Nicene Creed seriously!” Holst shot back. This went right over their heads, as it did mine at the time. (I’ve since boned up on theology and early Christianity, and can assure you that that was a pretty darn good comeback.)

Even though Holst, Prince, and Swede pooh-poohed the idea of witchcraft at work in clown alley, a posse of sorts formed around Hillbilly Butch -- a First of May from Arkansas, who said he was a lapsed Baptist preacher. He wasn’t much of a clown, preferring to sit on an elephant tub with his guitar, singing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” He began stirring up the more credulous clowns with notions of a midnight raid on the infidel’s roomette to effect a suitable punishment -- such as burning at the stake. ,

“Tork, are you in or out on this?” Hillbilly Butch demanded of me, when the show hit Long Beach. He had a large sebaceous cyst on his forehead that did not endear him to children, even when he was in makeup. I looked around for Holst, to get his advice. This caused Hillbilly Butch to sneer at me.

“Does that college boy do all your thinking for you? Can’t you make up your own mind, or are you just a brainwashed puppet?” he asked me critically. As a former Baptist minister, he had no love for committed Mormons like Tim Holst.

“I can do what I want!” I replied hotly. “I’ll be there when you go after him.”

I was a kid, just turned eighteen. Still hardwired to make hasty, stupid decisions. It was decided to meet that night at 11 pm to lower the boom on Fred. But when we got to his roomette, Fred wasn’t there. In fact, we never saw him again -- because that same night the police arrested him for dealing drugs to some of the roustabouts. That’s why some of them had beaten him up in the first place -- a drug deal gone wrong. I was secretly very glad that I had been robbed of my opportunity to commit mayhem. I knew it was wrong as soon as I said I’d go along with it, but didn’t have the guts to follow my better nature and back out. After that I avoided Hillbilly Butch, whose intolerance came to seem much more of a curse to me than anything Fred might have cooked up.

As soon as Fred was tossed in the hoosegow the ‘haunting’ of clown alley ceased. Was it just a coincidence -- or was it something more? I may never know -- but I wish I knew a spell right now to wash my laundry without losing any more buttons off my shirts.