Tim Torkildson's Clown Alley

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Photo Essay: Not Going To China Anymore.

Novel. The Old Funeral Home. Chapter Four. Part Three.

The Beloved with her sister up in Wendell, Idaho. Friday, April 1.

2022. They are discussing Musica Universalis.

The world will listen gladly to/great nonsense from some buckeroo/But when a prophet speaks for God/most people think it very odd/and say it isn't true because/it's not what his close neighbor does/And so in darkness most proceed/just starving on mere chicken feed!
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Tailbone pain — pain that occurs in or around the bony structure at the bottom of the spine (coccyx) — can be caused by trauma to the coccyx during a fall, prolonged sitting on a hard or narrow surface, degenerative joint changes, or vaginal childbirth.
Tailbone pain can feel dull and achy but typically becomes sharp during certain activities, such as sitting, rising from a seated to a standing position or prolonged standing. Defecation and sex also might become painful. For women, tailbone pain can make menstruation uncomfortable as well.
Tailbone pain, also called coccydynia or coccygodynia, usually goes away on its own within a few weeks or months. To lessen tailbone pain in the meantime, it might help to:
Lean forward while sitting down
Sit on a doughnut-shaped pillow or wedge (V-shaped) cushion
Apply heat or ice to the affected area
Take over-the-counter pain relievers, such as acetaminophen (Tylenol, others), ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others) or aspirin
If your tailbone pain doesn't improve (chronic coccydynia), consult your doctor. He or she might do a rectal exam to rule out any other conditions. Your doctor might recommend using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to find out if you have a fracture, degenerative changes or, in rare cases, a tumor.
Possible treatments for chronic tailbone pain might include:
Physical therapy. A physical therapist might show you how to do pelvic floor relaxation techniques, such as breathing deeply and completely relaxing your pelvic floor — as you would while urinating or defecating.
Manipulation. Massaging the muscles attached to the tailbone might help ease pain. Manipulation is typically done through the rectum.
Medication. An injection of a local anesthetic into the tailbone can relieve pain for a few weeks. Certain antidepressants or anti-epileptic medications might relieve tailbone pain as well.
Surgery. During a procedure known as a coccygectomy, the coccyx is surgically removed. This option is typically only recommended when all other treatments fail.

This information from the Mayo Clinic website will come in handy during the following narration.
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Part 3

Wendell, is the lemon-growing capital of Idaho. Since they can’t grow any lemons there anyway, there is no one to dispute that. In 2020 a man posted on Carl's Jr. Twitter account that he’d lost his dog at the Wendy’s in Wendell. It looks like a black lab. The post has never been updated. (and since there’s no Wendy’s in Wendell . . . there’s no one to dispute that!!)

The area around Wendell is known as Magic Valley. I don’t know why. (Most people talk of the dairy farms and the aroma surrounding that industry. I personally had only noticed the aroma at moments of driving past the large feedlots along I84 as we drove to my sister’s place. The last time we stayed there though, I was wakened in the middle of the night by a distinct odor emanating from the cows. I had never experienced that before in the 5 off and on years I spent in her house.) The reason we are writing about Wendell, Idaho instead of Tioga ND right now is because we just got back from a trip to Wendell, ID. A matter of 4 hours driving. I15 to I84.

The reason for the trip was so my beloved could spend time with her sister on their farm in Wendell. It was my birthday present to her. Because, you see, I hate to travel more than a few miles from home anymore. One of the main reasons for this is a bruised tailbone. When I sit in a car, any car, After the first hour or so, my tailbone is on fire. And so, I need to get out of the car about every hour and walk around for a good 10 minutes, to let the pain diminish.

I injured my coccyx in Denver Colorado, back in 1972 when I was a first-of-May with Ringling Brothers. We were doing the Bakers Gag. Dougie Ashton and Swede Johnson were the groom and bride respectively, who came into the center ring, transformed into a bakery, to purchase their wedding cake. After much byplay, Dougie, as the bride, swipes the wedding cake and begins to run out of the ring with it. He trips and falls face first into the foam rubber cake, which is hollow and filled with shaving cream. And goo goes flying everywhere. Black out.

I didn’t have much to do in the gag because Prince Paul, a dwarf clown, had the job to beat the snot out of me with various oversized baking utensils and rolling pins. In Denver, Prince gave me a standard blow to the face and I fell backwards. The rules of slapstick, mandate that when you fall on your back you break the fall with the palms of your hands. I neglected that rule for the first and only time during the matinee. And was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. I had to be carried out of the ring.

I spent a week in bed and then went back to work. But as the years have sped by my bruised coccyx, like a trick knee, acts up from time to time. Mostly curing long car rides. And so today I prefer to stay home always.(the children have other reasons they don’t like car rides. I would travel with them buckled in the car seats on long car rides. Visiting my parents when we didn’t live with them. Traveling to new places to live when we were moving away from them. Visiting Tim when he would have jobs that took him away from Minneapolis, when we lived there. Each of the children down to Virginia have a story about riding in those long car rides. The one thing they rarely did was complain about how long of a ride it was. I kept them busy with their own travel bag that had coloring things and snacks – I have never let my cars get nasty with dropped food or left over drinks rotting, I hate that smell – They were good little travelers. None of them ever complained about picking up the trash as soon as we stopped anywhere. The ritual was always: pile out and go to the restroom, get a drink of water and pick up trash. Once in a while I would tell them there would be an extra snack if they found all the crayons or markers. I always made an extra sweep of the car when we stopped at our destination. Using the vacuum cleaner on the car was my job until Adam was old enough to actually like doing that job. Our cars were many. My parents gave us their 1973 blue ford station wagon when we were married. When that one was ruined one fateful trip back to Minneapolis they gave us their ‘69 gold colored dodge station wagon. It didn’t last long since it was older than the ford.I found a toyota station wagon and we limped along in that until my emotional brother felt generous and gave us his 1978 Toyota Corolla two door. The catch was that I needed to get to Utah and retrieve it! Yep. I went there to get it. I was expecting Irv. Tim was in Mpls. while the kids and I were with my parents. On the way back from Utah Mom drove one car with the boys. I drove the corolla with the girls. Sarah and I saw a moose. We told stories to each other because I didn’t have a car seat her size and I was holding her when my youngest sister had the driver’s seat of the girls’ car. The next time we went to Utah was two years later for a family reunion. I drove 6 children and me in the two-door corolla. Tim stayed in Mpls, he suffered with the coccyx issue. We were a sight! My other brother told me to find a vehicle to fit my family and he would buy it. I looked in the want-ads of the newspaper – it was before the days of online search popularity – I found a ‘90 chevy Astro van. He bought it for cash. That was a very quiet ride home to MN. That van stayed with us until after the birth of our 8th child.)

Now I’m going to try to explain what my Beloved and her sister Kathy talked about while they were together. I have my own theories and reasoning about the subjects, which may or maynot jibe with what the two sisters have put together as a sort of theory/ theology.

In my mind they were talking about what is known in philosophical circles as the music of the spheres. Philosophers have long posited that each planet in the solar system, along with the sun itself and all the moons, resonate with different and unique harmonic chords. For the most part the human ear does not hear these vibrations as an audible sound. But they can influence both our spiritual well-being. Sort of along the lines of playing Mozart for your plants. Although that is a gross oversimplification. (I think this is a paragraph to invite me to share here. I can only share that my sister and I often talk of things to do with bringing together mind and heart. If someone wants to know about it they will ask. Tim asked me to expound on what she and I were talking about, so I told him a little. If anyone wants to know the information is out there. I have spoken about asking questions. I encourage people to ask! Ask God and He will direct your path.)

Now I am going to brush my teeth. I just bought an Oral-B electric toothbrush and it’s giving me a lot of hygienic pleasure.

Friday, April 1, 2022

Ben Franklin

Ben Franklin ran the Post Office/He made it pay its way/Delivery was certain/and came neatly twice a day/The penny post they called it/knitting folks together by/encouraging the writing/of epistles fond or sly/Good Ben I'm sorry to report/the Post Office right now/has slowed to an eccentric crawl/mixed up like stale chow chow/Perhaps your portly spirit/with great humor to deploy/cajoling can get action/from this fellow named DeJoy/Otherwise dear Franklin/I'm afraid the mail is dead/with new trucks blowing greenhouse gas/while sitting in their shed!

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Novel. The Old Funeral Home. Chapter Four. Part Two.

The Beloved at her computer. Wednesday. March 30.

2022. She often brags to me: "I can do boring."

She well knows I cannot. That's what keeps

me from doing much with Family Search.

The tap water in Tioga was delicious. That's because they put in a new well in 1991. I reported on it. Because, at the time, I was the News Director for radio station KTGO. Dave Guttormson, manager.

Full Disclosure: I was actually just a deejay, but Dave let me do news on the side just so I could maybe somehow with god's blessing and if there were a blue moon get a regular broadcast news job again so we didn't have to live with the Beloved's parents in the Old Funeral Home. I didn't get paid any extra for it.

I don't remember how I got hired for the position. Most anyone could get a deejay job there. Even the Beloved's sister Ova. The station was a daytimer -- it could only operate from sun up to sun down. I manned the board from noon until sign off. In winter that was just four and a half hours. The station's format was country-western. I have always loathed country-western. Except for Homer & Jethro.

We'll get back to that loathing in a moment, folks.

But first I want to go back to KSAL Radio in Salina, Kansas. After I got released from my contract to be Ronald McDonald in Wichita, I was able to latch on to a news job at KSAL. It lasted all of 2 days. The first day at work I wore a necktie, as was required in the employee handbook. The second day I showed up wearing a bow tie, and was summarily fired for insubordination. For wearing a bow tie. As Jonathan Brewster says in Arsenic and Old Lace: "I have led a strange life."

Anyway. Back to Tioga, with the new well. That water was great. I drank glass after glass. It was always ice cold, coming out of the North Dakota tundra as it did. Everyone drank tap water. There was no such thing as bottled water in town. Except for Perrier -- which only a Rockefeller could afford. Anybody else who drank it was considered a foreign spy or effete Hollywood snob. It was the stuff that Thurston Howell the Third would have on Gilligan's Isle if he could get it.

The best tasting water I ever had was as a kid in the summer. When we'd slake our thirst straight out of the vinyl garden hose in the backyard. After fermenting in the hot sun all day, that tube of water, bursting with toxic chemicals from the vinyl, had a toothsome tang I can still smack my lips over. It's probably why I grew a second liver.

As you can tell, I'm not big on chronology in this memoir/novel/taradiddle. I've given up telling you what year this or that happened. I'm depending on the Beloved to do it. If she wants. She likes detail. I like vagueness.

In the summer at KTGO I was putting in long hours, working from noon until after 9 p.m. At least they seemed like long hours to me. The roustabouts in the Tioga oilfields, of course, were working 48 hours straight. But they were being paid a relative fortune for it. Whereas my salary, if I remember correctly, was a measly five bucks an hour.

I introduced one of Willie Nelsons songs by saying, on the air, "Here's Willie Nelson singing Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain. This is a favorite of mine, because it gives me enough time to hit the john."

I got reprimanded for that by Guttormson in a curious way. He demoted me from doing any news to just plain deejay and gave the news position to a friend of his, an itinerant plumber.

This did not sit particularly well with me, although I didn't receive a pay cut or anything. Still, now my chances of getting another news position were beyond the point of nil.

At the same time I had a flourishing side gig going on. Writing Letters to the Editor for the Minot Daily News. They would print all that I sent them. They were humorous letters, along the lines of Petroleum V. Nasby, (Google it -- it's a real person.) So I had high hopes that if a real radio job never came along I might be the next Mark Twain. But I wrote a letter lambasting country western music, saying it all sounded like 'a drunk in a brick alley arguing with a prostitute." It got printed in the Minot Daily News. And for that, Guttormson fired me.

Where did we go after that? I don't remember. Maybe the Beloved does.

I remember we once went to her high school reunion in Stanley. Each alumnus was invited to stand and give a brief history of themselves since graduating. Part of the Beloved's verbal autobiography was: "We have moved 28 times since being married -- and we're not even in the military!"

[The Beloved is too busy folding laundry to add anything to this particular part at the moment.]

(Where did we go after that? (Tim went to Minneapolis and did some job hopping and apartment hunting. He lived with his parents while I stayed with the children at my folks house. I moved the three oldest into the library where it was warmer than staying in the little house. I stayed on the couch in the living room with Sarah’s crib next to me. Sarah was a sweet baby who never cried. My dad formed a relationship with her because she was so quiet. She got pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for a week during that winter. The kids and I went to the hospital to be with her. I worked for the school from time to time as a gymnastics judge. It was money but not very much. Tension was high between my parents and me because I had so many kids there and they had their own family. My little brother was not yet 6 years old! I remember one phone call from Tim where I told him in tears that I was so tired of doing this!) I don't remember. Maybe the (my)Beloved does. (I don’t blame Tim for not remembering the way things went. He was working constantly at forgetting it.)

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

I've started taking melatonin again. My current sleep pattern is to go to bed at 11p.m. and then be awake at 4a.m. I'd give anything to sleep a few more hours. When I'm awake so early and the Beloved continues her deep rest I like to write short religious verse for Twitter. Today I wrote:

When God looks down from heaven/I wonder what he sees/to give his heart deep pleasure/and set his mind at ease/The sinner's restitution, and kindness to a foe/I think make him feel better/than any chanting show.

I consider these rhymes as a sort of social media missionary work.

Also this morning I sent some verses to Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal, about the Post Office:

The fleshpots of Egypt

The fleshpots of Egypt are always at hand/making us slaves in our very own land/A famine of wisdom and plain common sense/leaves us with nothing but hollow pretense/Send us the manna of tolerance, Lord/Deliver us from dogma's dull rusty sword!

Monday, March 28, 2022

Haiku: 妻と散歩 A walk with my wife.

a walk with my wife

in the freshness of morning --

stepping on cold ants.

妻と散歩

朝の鮮度で-

冷たいアリを踏む。

a walk with my wife

to the rec center --

did you bring a towel?

妻と散歩
レックセンターへ-
タオルを持ってきましたか？

a walk with my wife

in her yellow coat and scarf --

I feel like strutting.

妻と散歩
彼女の黄色いコートとスカーフで-
気が遠くなるような気がします。

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Novel: The Old Funeral Home. Chapter Four. Part One.

The Beloved in our kitchen at Valley Villa in Provo. Sunday,

March 27. 2022. She's getting a bowl of shredded wheat

ready for breakfast. She will use a lot of cream but no sugar.

Part 1

The old funeral home in Tioga seemed windswept in the winter. The same way Wuthering Heights was windswept in the novel. Located at the bottom of a hill,it was topped by the nursing home and hospital. It seemed to me that some kind of Stephen King cold dark horror flowed down from those buildings in the winter. Because it got gosh almighty cold, and the winds that howled about the old funeral home took on a desperate character. Often malignant.

But that is the curse and blessing of a poetical mind like mine; like the weather, it tends to go to extremes. So as this piece is written on a balmy March morning — a sunny 72 degrees – I am shuddering with imaginary chilblains at the remembrance of those cold, cold Tioga winters that I and my beloved spent in North Dakota.

According to the National Weather Service, the coldest place in North Dakota ever recorded was in Parshall on Feb 16, 1936 when it dropped to 60 below. And I can tell you from personal experience that Tioga was not very far behind. (I never thought to complain about the cold. In our family we just dealt with it. If it was cold, you just bundled up good. If it wasn’t cold you were glad to get out in nice weather. I think it was a lot of bragging about the cold instead of complaining. I often heard many people say things like “cold ‘nuf for ya?” and “the cold keeps out the riff-raff!” When the oil boom was in full swing we had many people come to North Dakota who had never experienced extreme cold. The weather reporters on all the radio and TV stations began to publish education about weather things. Things I grew up with because my parents and other family and friends all knew how to deal with the cold. Newcomers were “stupid” – uneducated – about it. Wind chill was important to know about. If it’s -20 and the wind is blowing at a simple breeze of 20 mph the wind chill is -40. So it feels like -40 and you want to be prepared for -40. That means cover your face, cover your head, zip up your jacket and wear either long johns under your clothes or show pants over your clothes if you plan to be out in the weather longer than a couple minutes. Always have extra gear in your trunk when traveling because your car can act up any time in that kind of cold weather. Stranded on the side of the road with the temperature so extreme has claimed the life of more than one unprepared poor sucker. And then you have the born and raised North Dakotan who is still having outdoor BBQ’s when it’s 32 degrees Fahrenheit. People from California are ice blocks. North Dakotans get out their winter jackets at -20 and when the wind starts blowing more than 40 mph. By this time everywhere else knows that hell has frozen over and the Vikings will win the Superbowl!)

I went to work at KGCX in Williston. One of my early morning duties before signing on at 6AM had me calling surrounding towns for their temperatures and rainfall. In the summer the amount of rainfall was of crucial importance to farmers, because an inch or two less than normal meant a famine crop. I added one town to the list. Tioga. Even though they had no official weather station I called my Beloved at the old funeral home for the temperature. To this day I do not know if she referred to a thermometer or just made it up. (I used the thermometer outside my parent’s kitchen window which was next to the house phone. I had to get a flashlight and shine it just so or the reflected light would obscure the numbers. Sometimes Dad was still home when Tim called and he would scowl at me for the phone call. Dad worked in the oil field industry. He was usually dispatched to work by 3:30 or 4 AM. If he wasn’t gone then he was up at 5 waiting for dispatch to call. Work was very important to Dad. He wasn’t a tyrant about his duty to work. There was a quiet respect we all learned to appreciate. As Tim mentioned this was in the days before cell phones so the house phone was the life line for the family. Dad worked 10 days on and 2 days off for three rotations and then 10 and 3. That is unless the job he was doing was held over his days off and then he worked his days off. He didn’t care about that. He worked to provide a good place for our family.) But we got to chat each morning when I called on the station’s dime.

Back in the Stone Age, before there were any cell phones, whenever you called outside your own town or city Ma Bell would charge an arm and a leg for these “long distance” calls. I remember with a cheapskates shudder the phone bill I received for August in the year I was courting my Beloved. It was over $100 dollars. After we were married, when people would ask why we got married, I would sometimes say “well, it’s cheaper than talking to her long distance.” That was 9/10ths joking!!

Now I grew up in Minneapolis Minnesota, where it can get plenty cold. But it seemed like a more optimistic chill; the brutal cold of North Dakota is a brooding futile environment. But I will say this much, it breeds strong men and women. My Beloved’s mother was as sturdy as a cedar fence post. She never faltered, nor gave up on an idea once it had been planted in her deeply enough.

And my Beloved’s father was the sturdiest and strongest man I ever knew. Give him a thermos of hot black coffee and he could endure working 48 hours straight out in the oilfield in the middle of January. He could charm the birds out of the trees, but most of the time he wore the stoical mask of a Norwegian farmer.

My Beloved’s parents were truly “Giants in the Earth”, as written about by O. E. Rolvag.

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One reader's recent reaction to our novel:

"Honest, sweetly painful, the awful endless effort to connect and have place… for indescribable reasons, the story, the tone and the emotions resonate."

Haiku: ウズラの奇妙な叫び The weird cry of quail

the weird cry of quail

wakes me up in my wife's arms;

we missed church again.

ウズラの奇妙な叫び

妻の腕の中で私を目覚めさせます。

the weird cry of quail

in the morning reminds me

to make sweet cornbread.

ウズラの奇妙な叫び
朝は私に思い出させます
甘いコーンブレッドを作るために。

the weird cry of quail


再び行方不明の教会

the weird cry of quail

in the black asphalt alley --

scratching at wet hulls.

ウズラの奇妙な叫び
黒いアスファルトの路地で-
濡れた船体を引っ掻く。

The Plagues of Egypt

In Egypt Moses turned the streams to blood for Pharaoh's sake/But that stubborn autocrat no thought would undertake/to free the Hebrew slaves and let them go away in peace/and so a raft of plagues began without the least surcease/Bloody waters still exist around the world today/as people after people freedom's price still have to pay!