The Adventures of Tim Laughingstock. The Terrible Thingamabob. 13.

Have you ever been given a gift you didn’t want, or didn’t know what to do with? That was now Tim Laughingstock’s dilemma, pretending to be Warden Um of Larry’s Lockup. After he made sure every prisoner had been fed a piece of hum cake, and that all the guards took a bath, trimmed their beards, and exchanged their heavy leather boots for wooden clogs, he didn’t know what to do next.

“Why don’t you let all the prisoners go, and march the guards off a cliff?” suggested Gullet the Ghoul, whom Tim had released and made his secretary. The thought of all those guard cadavers just waiting for him at the base of a cliff sent a shiver of pleasure down his short spine.

“But I have no idea if any of the prisoners are really dangerous or not. Were they all put in here unjustly like me -- like us -- or do some of them deserve to be here?” Tim mused more to himself than to Gullet.

Tim’s perplexity lasted until he went to bed that night, when he dreamed a dream.

In his dream he saw a huge mountainside that was lit up with the words “Exit Interview.” He climbed the mountainside, fought off a few dragons at the top of it, rescued a beautiful maiden, and rode off with her into a forest full of dancing hedgehogs and skinks.

The dream was sent to him by Poorstar, the minor deity that ruled over paperwork and filing cabinets. Now that Tim’s heart was open to heroics, he had been assigned a deity, or a muse, to champion him and guide him. In Tim’s case, that happened to be the god of paperwork. Poorstar was a very minor member of the pantheon of gods -- truth be told, he hadn’t had a client or protege in nearly four hundred years. So he was delighted to be given such a promising young hero to chaperone as Tim Laughingstock. But Poorstar was so out of practice that he couldn’t think of anything to do but send Tim a dream full of humdrummeries.

Still, when Tim awoke next morning he immediately called for his head guard -- Snoozlepuss. This worthy was aroused from his slumbers -- he slept a good deal, and was usually eating the rest of the time -- and quickly pulled on his red shirt, blue trousers, and wooden clogs, and presented himself to Warden Um as smartly turned out as a brass weathervane.

He stood stock still in front of the Warden and saluted with such ferocity that the breeze from his upraised hand blew paper’s off the Warden’s desk.

“Who is considered the very worst prisoner in our lockup?” Tim asked him.

Snoozlepuss did not hesitate in his answer.

“Without a shred of doubt it must be the Thingamabob!” he replied.

“The what?” asked Tim.

“We call him the Thingamabob, sir, because he has been locked up for so long and become so ferocious and uncontrollable that no one remembers his name or where he comes from or why he’s even locked up!”

“I want to see him right now” said Tim calmly. “Send your strongest guards to fetch him and bring him here please.”

Snoozlepuss turned nearly white with fear.

“But, but, sir -- no one has been in his cell in years! We just throw in some soup bones and a bowl of water twice a day, through the grate at the bottom of his door. He howls back at the guards and shakes the door until it nearly breaks in two. I wouldn’t be in the same cell with him for all the owl pies in Boogle Hollow.”

The mention of Boogle Hollow set Tim’s temper ablaze. And it was now a heroic temper.

“Frap mappit, man! I want to do an exit interview with him. If you’re too foozled of him, I’ll go get him myself!” So saying, Tim arose and strode out of the room. Then sheepishly came back to contritely ask the head guard to take him to the Thingamabob’s cell -- since Tim himself didn’t know where it was.

Down, down they went -- past the snarling wombats and the sulking sulfur snails. Into the bowels of the rotten earth they descended -- until the very air turned gritty with a rooting foulness. Their torches guttered in the fetid atmosphere, nearly going out. It stank of stale rust and overboiled cabbage. They arrived at the very most bottom of the very lowest dungeon. There was only one door, and it was heavily padlocked and chained shut. A guttural murmur came from behind it. With quivering fingers, Snoozlepuss unbolted and unchained the door -- then fled back up the stairs in sheer terror -- leaving Tim alone with the terrible Thingamabob. But a man who has faced albino bumperstumpers and ishgobs, not to mention pickled lumdiddles, is not going to back down for some paltry Thingamabob!

Deciding that politeness was just as heroic as rudeness, Tim gently knocked on the thick wooden door and murmured “Would you mind coming out, Thinga . . . er, ah, whoever you are? We seem to have misplaced your records and would like to update them.”

With a tremendously disappointing creak, the heavy wooden door slowly swung open to reveal a perfectly ordinary man -- who was very well-dressed to boot!

Tim lowered his arms, which he had put up to fight off the terrible Thingamabob, to gape like a beached eelpout.

“Allow me to introduce myself” said the well-dressed man. “I’m Sir Cornelius Cornwit Gnawson. I believe my older brother Lawrence is the steward of this dungeon retreat, is he not?”

“Well . . . “began Tim uncertainly. “He rode out a while back to organize guided tours for trees. He felt they needed to travel around instead of standing in the same place all the time.”

“Ah, that sounds like Larry! But, pardon my decayed manners! Who might you be?”

“Oh, I’m the new Warden. Warden Um. Appointed by your brother Larry -- I mean Sir Lawrence.”

“Happy to make your acquaintance, young man. Would you care to step in for a cup of pimento wine and a slice of hazy pudding?”

Tim did not know what to say, so he simply went into the cell -- which turned out to be an elegantly furnished apartment with the sweet smell of mallows and cucumber honey. He sat in a plush upholstered chair, still speechless, as Cornelius puttered about -- at last bringing him a plate of hazy pudding and a full cup of pimento wine. Both of which tasted wonderfully fresh. The prison fare, even for the Warden, was usually potatoes boiled to death with lumps of fatty meat burnt to a crisp. And the potatoes were getting spoiled, since there was a madman in the potato bin who kept hollering he wanted to get out.

When Tim finally found his tongue again, he could not frame his questions in a coherent manner.

“What? Where? How? When do you . . . ? Do you mean to tell me . . . ?”

But Sir Gnawson’s younger brother kindly overlooked Tim’s befuddlement and answered his questions in a few well-chosen words.

“Larry furnished this place for me years ago, so I could pursue my work in peace and quiet. I bang on the door occasionally just to keep the guards from bothering me. Over there is a tunnel that leads to the nearby village of Woolly Willows, where I stroll each day for supplies and fresh air. Since I make no demands on anyone here, I believe dear Larry forgot all about me some time ago. I am perfectly happy and content living and working here.”

Starting to recover from his surprise, Tim finally managed to ask “What kind of work do you do, sir?”

“I am a writer” said Sir Cornelius Cornwit Gnawson “of fantasy novels.”

Meeting John Toy

Information on John Toy is hard to come by.

Back in 1990, during a hiatus from circus clowning when my wife Amy and I bought a house on Como Avenue in Minneapolis so our six kids would not spill into the streets like a pack of stray dogs anymore, I got a phone call from an old clown -- John Toy. He said that a mutual friend of ours, Robin Shaw, told him I was a very nice guy and a former Ringling clown. I hadn’t heard from Robin in years -- not since she got mad at me for pouring ketchup on a shepherd’s pie she’d baked for me down at Winter Quarters. Toy said he’d like to get together sometime soon to talk about the ‘old days’ at Ringling. I sensed a loneliness in his voice, so although I was not partial to meeting strangers to wallow in nostalgia I agreed to meet him the next day at Aarone’s -- a bar and grill my dad managed on Hennepin Avenue. They had recently upgraded the place -- “for the damn carriage trade,” as my dad snorted -- so it was now a decent place for a meal.

But the next day there was an emergency at work and I couldn’t make it. I worked for Fingerhut Catalog Telemarketing as an assistant sales manager -- we were always chronically short of people to man the phones, relying heavily on penurious students from the University of Minnesota. The student newspaper had raked up enough muck to run an article about how underpaid and overworked Fingerhut telemarketers were -- half of them walked out after reading the story. Ted Deikel, the CEO, told our office he still expected us to meet our monthly sales quotas -- so all the management, including me, had to get on the horn to sell Corningware casserole dishes and percale pillow protectors to little old ladies in Bemidji. We worked double tides, so I barely had time to see my wife and kids, let alone visit with John Toy.

We rescheduled our tet-a-tet for the following month, November. That’s when all the carnival workers laid off for the winter and needed something to tide them over until the marks came out of hibernation in the spring. A dozen or so carnies always showed up at our office for work, They were extraordinarily good at selling (and lying) over the phone. As long as they didn’t cut the cake too wide we turned a blind eye to their slightly larcenous sales pitch. They moved a lot of product with a minimum of customer backwash. I could then go back to a more relaxed schedule, monitoring sales calls and reminding the staff to ‘stick to the script’ and ‘smile and dial.’

This time John Toy and I agreed to meet at Bridgeman’s Ice Cream in Dinkytown, by the U of M campus. But the day before our meeting my son Adam found a rusty old butcher knife in a trash can on his way to school and decided to bring it into his classroom for show and tell. He was immediately suspended until Amy and I could go in to give the principal an acceptable alibi for his ‘threatening’ behavior. It took us several days to convince the insanely cautious school authorities that Adam was just a curious little boy, not a homicidal psychopath.

I apologized profusely to Toy for this second postponement. Feeling slightly guilty and foolish, I invited him and his wife over for dinner. Come Hades or highwater, we would meet at long last.

But then his wife developed a serious illness that kept her hospitalized for weeks. He did nothing but weep during our last phone conversation. I fully intended to go over to his apartment, but a blizzard dumped a foot of snow on us and I put my back out shoveling the walk. By the time a chiropractor had me walking upright again John Toy’s phone number was disconnected. I had not taken the trouble to ask for his street address during our previous conversations.

So we never met. Years later when I finally found Robin Shaw’s email address out in Los Angeles I sent her a note asking for information about John Toy. But she never replied.  

The only information available on the internet about John Toy is a New York Times article from 1985. It reads in part:

John Toy clowned with many circuses, he was personally acquainted with many elephants, and he has stories to tell. I like his stories because they remind me of what Eudora Welty writes that she finds in the stories of Chekhov: ''What is real in life - and what a Chekhov story was made to reflect with the utmost honesty,'' she writes, ''may be at the same time what is transient, ephemeral, contradictory, even on the point of vanishing before our eyes.''

It is hard for me to conceive of anything with elephants as ephemeral, but in John Toy's memory the circus is a series of fragile, fleeting moments. They were good days, he says, but it wasn't all wonderland and spangles. He talks about clowns he worked with, marvels my somber 10-year-old self missed: Emmett Kelly, trying to sweep the spotlight from the sawdust, or holding out his pocket handkerchief to catch any Wallenda who might tumble from the high wire. He tells me about Gargantua (''the world's most terrifying living creature!'') a gorilla bought by Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey from a woman in Brooklyn who kept him as a house pet.

''I was lousy, terrible, when I first broke in,'' John Toy says, but with glitter on his nose and a heart painted on his forehead, he learned to use explosives and to fall flat on his face gracefully and competently (most of the time). Once in a clown band he was playing cymbals. ''The conductor kicked me in the rear,'' he said, ''and I fell on top of the cymbals and broke most of my ribs.'' He went on with the show.

He says he still doesn't know what is funny, but whatever it is, it should be done quickly.

At home in his apartment John Toy keeps his old trunk, full of costumes and the long, long shoes he designed for himself. Somewhere he still has a can of clown white. He hasn't clowned in almost 20 years, but practically every night he dreams about the circus. He does not dream about performing, about his time in the ring. Rather, his dream is always that he is putting on his makeup, getting ready for the show. ''After all,'' he says, ''most of the work was preparation. Two hours out of 24 are not that many.''

Robin Shaw, in the center

The Vigilantes of Clown Alley

As a First of May I was awfully judgmental & stupid

A young boy's definition of 'hygiene' is rather flexible. At least mine was. I was constantly at loggerheads with my mother over her insistence that I change underwear every day. At the time, this seemed rather drastic to me. Who would ever see my underwear, or ever be offended if it began to reek a teeny weeny bit? Changing it once a week seemed the saner course for a young man busy with long sweaty bike rides in the summer and intense ice skating sessions in the winter.
The constant washing of face and hands that were demanded of me prior to each meal at home were also an onerous and certainly unnecessary burden imposed by a germaphobic parent. Her high-handed approach to cleanliness was not next to godliness -- it was next to torture!
But as I matured (or at least my body matured -- there is still some debate in academic circles as to whether my mental abilities have ever extended beyond the capacity of an eight-year-old) I found that soap and water, and a good deodorant, were not the incredible imposition I had once thought; indeed, I realized if I was ever to snag a girl friend I would need to be as clean as a hound's tooth, if not as sharp. So I brushed my teeth and combed my hair and lathered up once a day -- and much good did it do me in the romance department. Girls not only wanted a sanitized boyfriend, but one with money and a car. Pfui!

It was a bitter lesson, one that I took with me to the Ringling clown alley in the year 1971 -- along with my by now entrenched habits of normal cleanliness.

Maintaining hygienic standards in clown alley took some doing. First there was the daily application, and then removal, of the heavy greasepaint. We didn't use any of that namby-pamby powdery stuff you see in stage productions, but good old Stein's Clown White -- a thick and oily white paste that stayed on despite sweat and strain -- and that came off unwillingly only with industrial-strength mineral oil. And even then there'd still be streaks of it in odd corners of the face and around the ears when vigilance was lax.  

My costumes were constantly under siege from animal fluids -- everything from tiger urine (they could direct a stream with unerring accuracy up to ten feet away from their cage) to the watery feces of the elephants after they had raided a handy dumpster. Not to mention the gallons of white goo that were flung around during the ring gags. It consisted mostly of shaving soap and glycerin, and it dried to a thin white crust that was as hard to dislodge as cement.

We were all kept busy washing, scrubbing, and brushing. The hobo clowns, like Otto Griebling and Mark Anthony, were doubly jealous of their personal sanitation; they kept their fingers rigorously manicured and doused themselves with pints of Old Spice. Even then, audience members would sometimes wrinkle their noses at one of them and exclaim "Pee-yoo, does that bum stink!"

But there was one holdout in clown alley who did not follow accepted hygienic practises. I'll call him 'Kyle' for the purposes of this narrative. He was a First of May, one of my fellow students from the Ringling Clown College in Venice, Florida.

Kyle disdained the use of mineral oil for makeup removal. He used Ponds cold cream, not very effectively. The outlines of his Auguste makeup were still clearly visible when he quit clown alley each night. He did not shower because, he claimed, he caught cold very easily. He shaved only intermittently. He rarely trimmed his nails, and the grime underneath them was as potent as night soil from any Third World country.

In other words, he was as filthy and smelly as a goat. How he ever got a contract with the show is a mystery on par with what actually started the infamous Hartford Circus Fire back in 1944.

And he kept his roomette on the circus train in the same squalid shape as himself. These roomettes had originally been the premier accommodations on the crack train lines between New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, back in the 1920's and 30's. But by the time Ringling Brothers purchased the cars they were practically slums on wheels. So we clowns had our work cut out for us just to keep our roomettes one step above a ghetto. They were dusty, drafty, and uncarpeted, but with a little elbow grease most of us managed to keep them somewhat civilized.

But not Kyle. He never changed the sheets on his Murphy bed; loved to eat fried chicken in his room and scatter the bones around like a Norman baron feeding his mastiffs; and he used his fold down sink as a urinal. The consequence was a new herd of cockroaches every few weeks, which would stampede out from his foul den to the surrounding roomettes -- including mine!

As spring swiveled to summer, Kyle's personal hygiene grew worse -- or at least the cumulative effects of his existing state of filth grew more offensive. There was talk of vigilante action.

 When the show reached Anaheim in July Kyle was unceremoniously removed from his noisome roomette late one night for a complete hosing down. I was not part of this posse, but I heard that they were not very gentle with him. The group also cleaned and scrubbed out his roomette, smashing family photos and other keepsakes while in the grip of their Lysol mania.

The next day Kyle showed up in clown alley sullen and bruised, but very clean. For the rest of that season Kyle kept his nose, and everything else, clean. If he began to slip he was grimly reminded that another midnight ablution could be arranged.

Today such brutal and direct action would certainly be condemned and probably prosecuted as a hate crime. I look back on that episode myself with lingering discomfort and guilt. But what else could have been done? We all asked him to please clean up his act prior to the outrage; our requests met with nothing but a grimy sneer. In the close-packed and volatile world of clown alley Kyle was just asking for trouble.

He did not get invited back for a second season with the circus. Many years later, at a Clown College reunion, I saw him sitting by himself in the corner of the hotel Hospitality Suite, smoking a cigarette. He would not make eye contact with me, so I didn't go over to say hello. He was wearing a light yellow polyester sports coat and white slacks and looked perfectly normal and clean to me. Somebody told me later he worked in Las Vegas as a lounge singer in some of the second string casinos. I remembered then -- he always had a pretty good baritone and used to sing cheerful Broadway show tunes a lot -- before the Night of the Hose.

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.