Narrative Poem: No Reply.

 I saw a small boy with red hair

in a white shirt at church.

Rather, I saw the back of his head.

I never saw his face. 

But that red hair was 

very distinctive.

Walking down the hall

after Sunday School

I saw that same red-headed

boy again.

Only, he was wearing a 

black and white gingham

dress. Maybe it was his

sister.

I stopped and smiled at him.

He looked up at me with a

solemn frown on his face.

A lot of kids get that frown

after a long church service.

I needed to hear his voice,

or her voice,

to decide if this was

a boy or girl.

"That's pretty bright red

hair you've got there" I

told him. Or her.

"My father's a Marine"

he replied in a voice

unmistakably male.

Then I knew him.

The Bledsoe family.

They lived down the street from

me. The father was never home and

the mother seemed to have over a 

dozen kids running around the place

all the time.

"Your mother runs a daycare, right?"

I asked him, feeling loutish.

In reply he handed me a stiff

white card and walked away.

The card read: "No Reply."

When I looked up the kid was gone.

Vanished.

In fact, when I looked up 

I was not longer in church.

I was at a marine base somewhere

down South. I could smell

the turpentine stills.

"Hey Sergeant!" yelled a man

I recognized as Mr. Bledsoe.

He was in uniform.

He walked towards me.

"We got another one!"

Narrative Poem: The Wrong Wife.

 

 

"You're doing it all wrong"

my wife said.

"So you say" I replied shortly.

"You'll break the whole thing"

she insisted.

"I know what I'm doing"

I said patiently. "Just

keep your shirt on and

I'll show you."

Just then the hinge snapped in

two.

"That's it" she said bitterly.

"We might as well break out a bottle

of wine and forget about it."

"Wait, what?" I said, bewildered.

My wife has never taken a drink in her life.

"You don't drink."

"Says who?" she said. Then she looked 

closely at me.

And I put my glasses on to look more

closely at her.

"You're not Manny" she said to me.

"And you're not Suzy" I said to her.

"How did you get in here, anyway?"

she asked me.

"This is my house" I said."Isn't it?"

I looked around the living room.

But it wasn't my house.

"Your house?" I asked nervously.

She looked uneasy.

"It's not my house. I don't know

where we are."

"How did we get here? What's 

the last thing you remember?" I 

asked her urgently.

"I was hoeing turnips" she said.

"I was peeling shrimp" I said. 

"In the backyard with the kids."

"You have kids?" she asked me.

"No, I guess I don't" I said.

"But it seemed like the right thing

to say."

A man came into the living room.

He had wild black hair and icy blue

eyes.

"Who the hell are you two?" he said furiously.

"Get out of my house before 

I call the cops!"

We both ran out the front door. 

She went left and I went right.

I stumbled over the gravel and weeds.

Because there was no sidewalk.

That's the trouble with the 

suburbs -- 

they don't put in sidewalks.  

Today's Timericks: Senate passes most significant gun control legislation in decades

 the senate moves at lightning speed

to meet our nation's ev'ry need.

at long long last out of the mire --

they passed a bill about gunfire!

now all we ever have to dread

is how they shoot off their mouth instead. 

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

the us mail is not a farce

nor are its virtues very sparse.

it goes through wind and hail and rain,

and then returns to sender again.

and if my poetry don't scan

don't blame it on the old mailman!

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

the world is running out of wheat;

with bread becoming trick or treat.

our flour soon will be tree bark,

with pancakes made from ditto mark.

if leaders want to make this cease

they should commit to total peace.

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

My wife's the handyman, in that

I hammer like a baseball bat.

I have more thumbs than bees have wax,

and cannot even hit thumb tacks.

And so at home I sit around

and let her paint and frame and pound.

Fed’s Jerome Powell to Head to the House With Interest Rates in Focus Central-bank chief has signaled a new 0.75-percentage-point rise is possible in July to fight inflation

 

I do not get these interest rates;

they're high because inflation

threatens to engulf us

as a people and a nation?

Excuse my economics, please,

but that is Greek to me.

My finance chops are shaky,

but it seems a fantasy.

Rather, let the Central Bank

it's assets give away --

so we can squander it at will

with one more big payday.

And then we all can live in tents

and vinyl records play.

Bugs in Thailand. A Personal Memoir.

 

You’ve all heard about our bug situation here in Provo, so i won’t belabor that dismal situation any further except to say that the provo city housing authority has authorized a thermal strike on our apartment. We have to be out of it all day on Thursday so they can bring in a furnace of sorts to heat our place up to 120 degrees for eight hours, which should kill every living organism in the place. Plus melt all our electronics, like computers, and wilt all the wall hangings – so we’ll have to lug all that stuff out onto the patio for the day. Even our big screen tv. 

Which is merely a preamble to my recollections of bugs in thailand when i was just a wee missionary there. 48 years ago. How is that possible? I haven’t lived that long, and neither have any of you. We should be bent and wizened fossils, cackling toothlessly over a game of checkers in some nursing home. But instead we have wives and build or repair houses and eat good solid meals with our own teeth still. I don’t get it. Why is time standing still for us? I think there was something in the air in thailand, or something we ate there, like som tum, that slowed down the aging process. We’ve all passed out second childhoods without noticing it, and are now working on our third childhoods . . .

Anywho – back to the bugs.

Nobody ever warned me there would be so many varieties of bugs in thailand, or that they would be so pervasive and aggressive, getting in my face like a grade school bully.

I took a brand new electric shaver in a smart leather case with me to thailand; a gift from my elders quorum in minneapolis. One morning in bangkapi i opened the case in the bathroom and lo and behold a huge flying cockroach was nestled inside. It gave me a nonchalant look as it shivered its wings. I shrieked and dropped the case, breaking the electric razor into pieces. I couldn’t afford another electric razor, so i had to revert to the barbaric practice of scraping my chin with a cheap plastic blade. The scabs made it hard for me to apply my clown makeup evenly. 

Elder ah ching was a big strapping hawaiian elder, unafraid of man or beast. His motto, when taxed by his companion elder nebeker for being somewhat lackadaisical in missionary work, was to say ‘i just want to be an angel.’ there were three companionships that shared a communal bedroom, i recall, and we kept after the maid to get rid of the wall geckos, which had overrun the place.

‘No’ said elder ah ching, ‘you want them around because they keep the cockroaches down.’ but he changed his tune one night when a gecko on the ceiling lost its footing and fell into his open, snoring, mouth. His screams not only woke the rest of us up, but nearly and  prematurely propelled us into the telestial kingdom.

We had to place each leg of our beds in bowls of turpentine, lest the little white ants crawl up the bed legs and onto our mattress – there to wander restlessly over our bodies each night, silently chewing on our epidermis. 

On tour with the singing group in phitsanulok one evening, elder wright was crooning a thai love ballad – and how those thai ladies loved his voice! There were several large stage lights on him, which attracted a bevy of flying creatures from out of the night sky. Just as he opened his mouth to hit a mellow chord, something large and scaly flew into his mouth. And he swallowed it. He was out of action for the rest of that show. He couldn’t even play the pump organ for me during my clown act at intermission. He was a great accompanist. He knew all the waltz tunes and circus marches i liked. In fact, he got to the point where he didn’t even notice what he was playing during my act anymore, and would segue into a church hymn, like master the tempest is raging, playing it in ragtime, without even noticing.

The infamous mot dang, red fire ants, were ubiquitous in certain rural areas. If you were foolish enough to walk through a weedy field in those areas you picked up dozens of ‘em on your pants legs, and if you didn’t brush them off quickly enough they gave you an almighty painful bite that would blister for a week.

A centipede crawled up my leg one afternoon as i was giving a discussion to a startled thai family – who wondered why joseph smith’s story had to be told with a frenzied irish jig.

But certainly you have your own tales to tell when it comes to bugs in thailand, so i’ll cut short this particular ramble down memory lane. Besides, it’s nearly 6 a.m. and i have to make a greenbean and frankfurter casserole to serve for brunch this morning. Amy has been after me to use up the five cans of green beans we have in the pantry. So i’ll mix ‘em with some cream of mushroom soup and a package of hotdogs, top the whole thing with some process cheese and cracker crumbs, then bake the whole shebang in a casserole dish to serve with leftover cornbread from yesterday. When you make cornbread right it is crunchy and slightly grainy and lasts for a week or more. Because so many people complained about our meal yesterday – it was vegetable soup (because meat is too damn expensive) with cornbread, and some of the old ladies complained because it was vegan and because the pieces of cornbread we served out (all for free, mind you) were so small. So I told myself it’s time to quit this racket and move on to some other kind of service. Like temple work. Then someone i had never seen before came by and dropped twenty dollars into the kitty without even asking for a bowl of soup. That’s why there’s going to be green bean casserole today.

And then we’re going to the temple, too, this afternoon, to do initiatory proxy work.

 

 

Thou art the man.

 

There have been melancholy days

when in the mirror I had to gaze

with my wounded heart ablaze --

and say "Thou art the man."

When with the Lord I did not walk;

like David when he got the shock

who Nathan's stern rebuke did mock --

and say "Thou art the man."

 

My pride did push me to behave

in ways that lured me to the grave

of abandon, there to rave --

and say "Thou art the man."

But then I turned to face the light

and with great help made bad things right,

so to the Savior say I might --

"Thou art the MAN."

A Missionary in Thailand

 

Church attendance was rather sparse this Sunday morning here in Provo. I guess nobody heard about the Nestle Crunch Bar all the fathers would get right after the service was over in honor of Father's Day.

It reminded me of my brief stint as branch president in Thailand during my mission long times ago. We rarely had more than 5 people, plus livestock and poultry, show up on Sunday.

Church was held in our cinder block house on the outskirts of Khon Kaen. Attendees included a professor from Khon Kaen University, our maid Sister Phiilailuck, a local duck farmer, a shell-shocked Peace Corps volunteer, and the occasional American Marine from Nam Phong Air Force Base, where they were flying covert bombing raids over Laos and Cambodia at the time.

We usually invited the Peace Corps guy to stay for Sunday dinner. Sister Phiilailuck did not work on Sundays, but she always left us a huge selection of curries, salads, and cold rice for the day to warm up ourselves. I wish I could remember that guy's name, but I can't. He was short and blonde and had decided he'd made a mistake in volunteering to go abroad. He was a homebody, not a wanderer, and as we sat eating our exotic leftovers he'd reminisce about the bread his mother baked and the milk and honey his father produced on their farm and how they'd all sit down together for a big bowl of bread with milk and honey on Sundays. He'd get a little misty-eyed. His Thai was execrable, having learnt it at some government program back in the States for a month prior to coming over. (As was mine when I first got to Thailand!) So he felt pretty isolated and lonely. When his time was up he dropped by our place, as happy as a pig in mud, to leave us his stash of pork & beans.

The duck farmer was a nice guy, very quiet and devout. He killed a turkey for Thanksgiving and delivered it to Sister Phiilailuck to pluck and cook for us. All that day as Elder Day and I were out tracting we thought of the delicious roast turkey we'd have when we got back home that evening. But alas, Sister Phiilailuck had no experience with either a bird that size or with an oven (in fact, we didn't have one -- she did all her cooking for us on two gas rings.) So we returned to a large dead bird smoldering in a wok. We broke out the pork & beans instead.

While branch president, I was told by the mission office to find us a new house and place of worship. Our current abode had shutters downstairs, but no screens or bars in the windows. During Sunday services it was not unusual for a stray chicken to flutter in during Sacrament to check things out. Curious water buffalo stuck their heads in during the hymn singing to find out what all the ruckus was about. And sometimes joined in with a pious bellow.

But the biggest problem were the flies, which came in like locusts. They settled on our food and refused to budge even when we waved our arms athletically over them. I kept getting ill as they poisoned the food, although the other Elders didn't seem to be affected that much. So my proselytizing hours were dismal.

I never did find us another place. Decent rental houses were mysteriously expensive for farangs like us who didn't have Thai girlfriends. A piece of Siamese eye candy could spread some lolly around for her man, to promote an inexpensive pad, but we upright lads were out of the running.

 I can no longer put names to most people I knew in Thailand. My missionary journals, faithfully scribbled upon during my two year stint in Thailand, have all disappeared over the years due to frequent moves and a divorce. My philosophy has always been 'I can put stuff in a cardboard box, but I'll be darned if I can be bothered to carry that box around!' So names, among other things, have dispersed like the ten tribes of Israel, along with my journals.

Hence I cannot tell you the name of our Khon Kaen University professor -- who worked on the Thai translation of the Book of Mormon and was a counselor to President Brown. What I do remember is that one Sunday he came to services, obviously out of sorts. 

And this is as good a place as any to explain that Thais are a cheery and affable people, who will give you the rice out of their bowl at the drop of a mango. But at the same time many of them are subject to deep and savage bouts of melancholy and doubt that rise up like a summer thunderstorm, burst, and then disappear as quickly as they came. This particular Sunday this particular brother was in such a surly mood. After services he stayed behind to inform us that the whole Church was a fraud and imposition and that he was through with it. 

I don't claim any special revelatory powers or gifts, or to have vast reserves of patience, but as someone who had already been out in the world living with a bunch of psychotic misfits (clown alley), I didn't take his rant all that seriously. I remained calm and undisturbed. I figured that after he got it off his chest, he'd get over it. (Which he did.) But Elder Day was so alarmed by his outburst that he told me we should drop everything to take the next bus the 281 miles down to Bangkok to inform President Brown personally of this grave apostasy.

Elder Day was like that; he was always wanting to rush down to Bangkok to inform the mission office of something or other that seemed a crisis to him. The maid kept beer in our fridge for when her non-member brother visited? Our squat toilet backed up? A local Protestant minister was saying the Book of Mormon was the work of the devil? Bam! We'd better get down to Bangkok to report on it right away! To which I'd patiently reply 'May wai.' (No way.)

 Elder Day had but one joke, which he liked to trot out at least once a week. It went like this:

'A farmer worked hard to send his son to college for an education. When the son graduated he visited his father on the farm, and his father asked him 'Son, what all did you learn at that there university?" To which the son replied "Why dad, I learned all about Pi R Squared in my math classes!" The father grew red in the face and yelled at his son: "You damn fool, pie are not square -- pie are round!"

I heard that Elder Day eventually picked up a degree in civil engineering after his mission. I hope he was able to pick up at least one more joke along the way, too . . .

I should probably look up all my old companions that I

so cheerfully malign in these memoirs, using social media, but when I joined Thailand Missionaries on Facebook I was immediately accused of being a troll and then bashed unmercifully in the comments section. So I unfollowed that group pronto and haven't tried to reconnect with anyone since. We artistes bruise so easily.

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

An email response about the above from one of my companions --

I remember Elder Day, but don't remember any interactions with him.

I was comps with Elder Raynolds and Elder Fletcher when I was a Sr.  Both of them thought I was a moron, which I was compared to them.  Not even smart enough to let them lead.  Ditto with you.  Shoulda let you make all the decisions and just follow you around and flirt with the girls and drink Fanta orange.  That was the first advice I got, on the 2nd or 3rd day in country, from Elder Kuzi, or whatever his name was.  He said "Don't hesitate to take a break and drink a Fanta Orange, or whatever."  And Elder Thayne gave me advice too, on one of my first P-days, when I split with my comp (Elder Jim Allen, who wanted to see a movie, and I didn't.) "You see something interesting, just go ahead and take a picture of it.  It's novel to you.  It won't be novel after you've been in the country a while."  And from the airport to the mission office we were picked up by the visa Elder and his companion turned around to us in the van and said "This is a one baht coin.  It's worth about 5 cents.  Treat it like a quarter."  I didn't follow any of those pieces of advice.  Should have.

Hey, how come you didn't tell me stories about being in the circus?  I don't remember you doing so.  I guess I didn't ask.  I was too freaking straight.  Gotta follow all the mission rules.  Wow, I'd do it so differently now.  I'd visit only members,wouldn't do any proslyting at all, and would be much more generous to our maids.  It's now embarrassing to think about all my mistakes as a missionary.  I even once asked a Russian diplomat sitting next to me at the dentist office while waiting for Elder Christensen to get his braces tightened, when his country would let missionaries in.  He didn't like the question.

 

A Free Father's Day Meal in Provo, Utah.

 

Help us celebrate Father's Day today at NOON with a special Father's Day Pasta Salad, served up for free on a bed of fresh crisp iceberg lettuce.

What's in it, you ask?  All of Tim's favorite things! 

We start with elbow macaroni. Then add smoked oysters, anchovies, pepperoni, black olives, diced tomatoes, creamy cubes of smoked Gouda cheese, and diced Videlia sweet onion. We stir all of this together with our special house dressing and let it marinate for several hours. The results are spectacular.

If you're not sure you can handle this hearty and tangy Father's Day Salad, just drop by our door for a free sample. We think you'll fall in love with it.

And thanks to all those generous souls who have been donating to our food supplies this past week so we can keep on providing free community meals.

We still need milk, onions, white distilled vinegar, cucumbers, sugar, chicken, and pasta.

The Torkildsons. Apt 115. Valley Villa. Provo.  Utah.

 

Even More Missionary Memories: Run for your Life!

 

harvey brown was a jolly and tubby little man, built along the lines of Kris Kringle. he was also our mission president in thailand after president morris was released. he'd had a long successful career with the state department before retiring. i don't believe he'd ever been stationed in thailand or, for that matter, knew anything about the country at all. as he told me the first time i met him: "elder torkildson, i'm just fat, dumb, and happy -- call me harvey the hugger!' 

well, i never did call him that but i came to appreciate his good humor early on. he loved to hear stories about my experience with ringling bros circus, and whenever i had an interview with him the apes (assistants to the president) would admonish me beforehand that he was a busy man and couldn't spare me more than ten minutes. those ten minutes as often as not turned into an hour, with me telling him about how the clown car worked or my monumental fight with michu the world's smallest man.

harvey the hugger encouraged us elders and sisters to come up with new ways and means to garner good PR for the church in thailand. that was the purpose of my clown shows, and the singing group. 

"think big!" he'd exhort us. "come see me with any idea at any time -- my door is always open!"  and indeed it was -- but behind that jolly exterior was a stone cold pragmatist.

"what's in it for us?" he'd always ask, after some elder had explained his hare-brained scheme. there were a lot of organizations and companies that wanted a tie-in with the church, because they knew it was a rich world-wide operation, and they expected to leech off of it for their own benefit. but unless there was some concrete benefit to the church, president brown always gave these schemes the thumbs down.

one idea finally met with his approval. i no longer remember who came up with the idea. it was called "run for your life."  Or 'wing phua chiwid.'

it was inspired, i guess, by all the old chinese men and women who spent their early mornings exercising in the park, going through a series of slow motion movements that allegedly improved everything from their mental capacities to their sex life. it was noticed that more and more young men, and women, were joining in with these tai chi groups in the park. so let's horn in on this trend to grab some free PR for the church! seemed to be the general idea.

pamphlets were printed up, showing a grinning group of thais jogging along a hibiscus-strewn path, and extolling the virtues of a good morning run each day. the whole concept is contained in the book 'aerobics' by a us air force doctor. we all were given copies of the book to read and told to start inviting men and women to come out at 5 in the ever lovin' morning to join us for a jog down the local soi.  

it wasn't a bad idea. we got to wear bright yellow t-shirts, labeled with 'wing phua chiwid' which literally means run for life.

it wasn't a bad idea, but it wasn't something my body liked to do. at the time elder terry, from snowflake, arizona, was my companion, and he was a little dynamo. he could run all morning and not feel a thing. after about six blocks i would be left behind panting and developing shin splints. but we kept up with the program for several months. until word came from salt lake to phase it out. so we did. 

seems like the mission office never got any good news from salt lake. whenever the apes said there was word from salt lake we prepared for the worst.

just before my mission was up president brown called me into his office to ask if i would like to serve an extra four months in thailand. he thought he could pull some strings to have it happen. would i!?  i would have loved that. but word came from salt lake, and, in fact, i even got a letter from the church missionary committee, stating firmly that once my 24 month were up they were up and no one single day more would be added to my time serving as a missionary. It was time to return home, resume my education, and find a good and proper wife to marry. End of story.

i was with elder terry when another missive came from salt lake -- disband the singing group and get rid of the clown. so i was sent to knon kaen as the branch president. my companion was elder day. that lasted two months, during which time president brown worked his wiles on salt lake and had the ban on the singing group and on my clowning lifted. so i was brought back to bangkok, and never left its environs again. and i never had to run another step, either, for wing phua chiwid. although i kept the aerobics paperback with me when i returned home and back to the circus. my good old pal tim holst and i tried to run aerobically each day between shows. but it got too hard for me to take off my makeup and put it back on in time to make come in for the second show.

hey, wasn't i supposed to tell you guys about my crush on sister mumford in this episode? oh well, it'll keep.

 

Wife, I'm getting older . . .

 

Wife, I'm getting older, and the flame of passion

flags;

my heart for you still thunders, but is muffled by stale rags.

I take you in my arms, my lusty wench, and then regret

that I've become a rag doll with no hardened bayonet.

Eight children did we have so long ago it seems a yarn

we tell now to each other while my socks you sit and darn.

Still and all, though parts of me no longer do their duty,

I'll not forget, but cry up thanks, for your eternal beauty!