Grandpa Letter 8

Thursday, November 19, 2015                   10:38 a.m.

Provo  Utah

My Dear Katrina;

Where was I with my story of Larry the Lazy Leaf?

Let’s see . . .

He was blown off his tree and floated onto the front porch of a little girl, right? What was that little girl’s name? Maude? Miranda? Mary? No, none of those! Oh yes, it was Maisy . . .

Well, so Maisy brought Larry inside the house and hollered up the stairs to her mother “Hey mom, I found a leaf for my school album! Come down here and paste it in for me right now!”

“This little girl is certainly very impetuous” thought Larry to himself.

Maisy’s mother came down the stairs and went into the kitchen. Maisy followed her.

“Can I have some fried tulips and a bowl of pink ice cream?” asked Maisy.

“Certainly not” her mother replied, “you’ll spoil your appetite for dinner. You can have some carrot sticks if you want.”

“Bleaaaaaahhhhh!” exclaimed Maisy in disgust.

Her mother very sensibly ignored her rude outburst and got out the wax paper, and then set up her ironing board and plugged in the iron.

Maisy waited impatiently while her mother laid out one sheet of wax paper on the ironing board and then tested the the iron to see if it was hot enough yet by licking the tip of her finger and then placing it on the bottom of the iron (now don’t you go trying to do that in your house – it’s not a good idea at all!)

Meanwhile Larry was beginning to worry:

“What’s going to happen to me? What is that lady doing? What’s an ‘album’? Are they going to eat me?”

“May I have the leaf please” said Maisy’s mother.

“No, let me put it on the wax paper by myself!” screamed Maisy, who then rushed forward and plopped the leaf onto the wax paper.

Her mother sighed and then put another sheet of wax paper over Larry and ran the iron quickly over the top.

This didn’t hurt Larry at all; he just felt something very warm pass over him briefly, and that was all.

Maisy picked up the two sheets of wax paper, which were now stuck together, with Larry in between them, and danced happily around the kitchen like a catamount.

“Thank you, mommsy-wommsy!” she shouted happily, and then ran up to her bedroom with the new page for her leaf album.

TO BE CONTINUED 

Grandpa Letter 7

Thursday, November 19, 2015              9:52 a.m.

Provo  Utah 

My Dear Ohen;

I’m kinda bored of The Magic Thrift Store story, so I won’t be continuing it in this letter. If you want me to continue it in another letter sometime please let me know.

It was good to see you this past Wednesday. I hope you’re feeling better, and that Lance doesn’t throw up on you!

I have enclosed 2 photographs from my days with the circus. The first one shows a circus barker in front of the STRANGE THING tent. This was called a look-see joint. The yokels paid 50 cents to go inside and see “The strangest freak of nature you have ever laid eyes on, ladies and gentlemen! Is it fish or fowl, mammal or reptile? It has baffled scientists for many years. This is the only one of its kind on exhibition anywhere in the United States, so don’t miss this opportunity to see something that may never come this way again! Parents, please do not let your small children enter this tent – the creature on display is so terrifying, so mystifying, so utterly weird, that it may give them nightmares for many years to come and stunt their intellectual growth! Hurry and step this way!”

I’m sorry I don’t have a photograph of the Strange Thing itself. I can’t remember now why I didn’t take a picture of it. Maybe because it was very dark inside the tent and my camera wouldn’t work in there (back then I only used a disposable camera – I thought it was very artsy-fartsy to do so.)

Anyway. The so-called monster was in a small glass cabinet that was dimly lit with a red lightbulb. It appeared to be part stuffed alligator, part latex Halloween mask, and part mummified carp.

The psychology behind this fraud was that once you had paid your fifty cents to see it, and realized you had been suckered, you didn’t want to admit to anyone else what an idiot you had been, so you told all your friends and family that is was “fantastic” and encouraged them to go inside themselves – which they often did. They would feel the same way you did, and so tell all their friends and family the same malarkey you had told them, and eventually hundreds of people each day would go in to look at the thing. And since they only lost fifty cents, they never complained – it would have been too embarrassing!

The other photograph I have included may seem rather mundane; just a road sign. But if you look carefully you will see some small arrows at the bottom of it that read “C&M”. That stands for Culpepper & Merriweather, a circus I worked for. They were the work of the 24 Hour Man. This was a key position with mudshows – which is what small traveling circuses are called.

The 24 Hour Man traveled ahead of the show by one day, hence his moniker. His job was to make sure the next day’s circus lot was cleared of trash and mowed. And that it hadn’t flooded during a recent rain. He also made sure all the appropriate food and animal licenses were paid for and in force. (In some towns you had to buy a license to display elephants and tigers, or to sell hotdogs.)

But most importantly, it was his job to map the route from one circus lot to the next. This was back in the days before GPS was available. Our circus traveled around a hundred miles each morning from one lot to the next, never on freeways but always on country roads; the 24 Hour Man had to find the quickest, safest route between lots for us, and mark it with arrows he taped onto road signs, telephone poles, etc. He had to avoid roads that went under low bridges, because some of our tent trucks was too tall and wide. He also checked to make sure none of the roads were flooded or closed for repair. In the photograph I have included, you can see that he has put up directions indicating that we were to turn left on 18. Without those directions circus drivers would have had to figure out the route all by themselves with maps, and probably get lost on the way.

Some towns, especially in the Midwest, were just plain ornery and would send someone out to tear down the 24 Hour Man’s signs after he put them up, because, they said, it was against the law to put anything on a road sign or a telephone pole. Circus people had a description for people who did that – crab apple.

So, Ohen, make sure you never become a crab apple!

Yer Pal, 

The Circular Railroad of Yangon

Grandpa Letter #6

Wednesday, November 18, 2015         10:03 a.m.

Provo Utah

My Dear Deisel;

Your mother tells me you’ve been getting better grades in school lately, but your teachers tell her you don’t work very hard. I can understand that completely. When I was in high school I was BORED OUT OF MY GOURD with every class except English and Theater, so I never tried very hard. I was so sick of school by the time I graduated from high school that I vowed I would never get any further education – ever. Lucky for me I was able to get into Clown College right away!

I have enclosed an old photograph I took years ago of your great grandma Ev’s angel cabinet. I know your mother likes angels, too, so you might want to show her the photo to earn a few brownie points . . .

I don’t know why my mother liked to collect angel statuettes. Maybe they reminded her of her own mother, Daisy, who really was a very gentle and loving soul – a real angel here on earth. Your aunt Daisy is named after her.

I never paid any attention to her angel collection until I moved in with her to take care of her during her final illness. She had congestive heart failure and the doctors told her she didn’t have long to live. Hah! She lived for almost 2 more years. She was a tough old bird.

As she began to approach the final dissolution, she would ask me to take the angel cabinet off the wall and bring it over to her in her chair or in her bed. Then she would stare at it for hours, sometimes talking to one of the angels, calling it by her sister Ruby’s name or calling it mother – telling the cold little statue that she would soon be joining it on the other side and asking that she please be there to greet her. She began talking to the angels every day, calling them by the names of her friends and family that had already died.

Except for my dad – she never talked to him when she talked to the ceramic angels. I don’t think she ever thought of him as angel material. (And unless they have a saloon in heaven I doubt very much he’s there myself!)

One day mom rallied enough to want to make a new will. So I drove her over to her lawyer’s office and she had a new will made that split everything she had 3 ways – one third to me, one third to my brother Billy, and one third to my sister Sue Ellen. My other sister, Linda, who had left home as soon as she graduated from high school and told mom she never wanted to see her again, was left completely out of the will – except for the angel cabinet. Mom specified that Linda should get that, and nothing more.

Well, Sue Ellen was fit to be tied. She wanted the angel cabinet, not because it was worth anything, but just because she didn’t want her sister Linda to get it. So, when we moved mom into a hospice center a few days before she died, Sue Ellen let herself into the apartment and took away the angel cabinet. When I asked about it she told me to shut up and mind my own business.

But I didn’t get mad, because a few weeks earlier mom had had me take all her silverware (which WAS worth something) and ship it out to Linda in Oregon. I never told Sue Ellen, and so when it came time to pass out poor old mom’s possessions the silverware was nowhere to be found. Sue Ellen was the executor of the estate, and she was foaming at the mouth about the missing silverware. I finally told her what I had done with it, and she tried to have me arrested for theft. When that didn’t work she managed to get a court order disbarring me from receiving anything from my mother’s estate, and, instead, transferring it over to the Child Support people who were supposed to send it all to your Grandma Amy. I guess they did. At least, I never saw any of it.

That’s when I decided to go back to Thailand to spend the rest of my life – I felt very disgusted with my own family and with the USA in general.

I’d still be in Thailand today, except when my passport expired the Child Support people stepped in again and wouldn’t let me get a new one, so I had to come home.

But after all these years, I’m not bitter anymore about any of it. I’m glad I could take care of my mother; I’m glad my sister Linda got something to remember mom by; I’m glad I got to go back to Thailand; and I’m glad I had to come back and get my life in order so I could go back to the Temple again. I go every Tuesday now, and am enjoying myself immensely!  Just remember, my boy – wickedness never was happiness, and it ain’t tax-deductible either!  

Yer pal, 

Grandpa Letter #5

Wednesday, November 18, 2015.  9:23 a.m.  Provo, Utah.

My Dear Noah;

I have certainly been enjoying your emails to me.  They are most salubrious to my daily outlook.

I have included a photograph of me, standing in front of radio station KIWA in Sheldon, Iowa.  I was the News Director for the station back in about 2009.

Here’s how I got the job:

A year earlier I had been News Director at KICD Radio in Spencer, Iowa. But one morning, as I was putting together my 6 a.m. newscast, I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to go back to Mexico again. I had been there as a young man, before my Mission, studying pantomime.

So I decided, on the spur of the moment, to resign and go back to Mexico, this time to teach English. (By the way, this was a BAD decision – very hasty. I don’t recommend hasty decisions, unless you really get a burning in your bosom about them from the Lord.)

So I enrolled in a TEFL course in Guadalajara, Mexico. I already had a TEFL certificate from Thailand, but I figured if I got one in Mexico it would be a lot easier to get a teaching job. TEFL stands for “Teaching English as a Foreign Language”.

But halfway through the course I was robbed at knife-point as I was walking back to my hacienda from the school. The robber didn’t get much money, but I was so scared and outraged by the incident that, again, I decided on the spur of the moment to leave Mexico and never come back again!

So I did.

I visited my mom up in Minneapolis when I got back, and – surprise! – she bought me a brand new car. I didn’t ask for it, she just up and did it on the spur of the moment. I guess we Torkildsons do a lot of stuff on the spur of the moment.

So I drove my new car back to Spencer, Iowa, to see if I could get my old job back. They said “Sorry, Charlie – no can do”, or words to that effect.

Disheartened, I drove aimlessly around all day – wondering what I was going to do for a living. When I passed through Sheldon, Iowa, kind of on my way down to Oklahoma (where a lot of circuses are located; I thought I might get a job down there.) I noticed the KIWA Radio station on Main Street, and decided, on the spur of the moment, to drop in and ask if they needed a News Director.

Lo and behold, they did!

So I got the job and went back to getting up at 4 a.m. every day so I could get the 6 a.m. newscast ready. When I got to the station I would call the local city police, the county sheriff’s office, and the state Highway Patrol, to find out if there had been any crimes or accidents overnight. Then I would call the Farm Bureau in Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, for any agricultural news they might have about Northwestern Iowa, or Northeastern South Dakota (Sheldon was not too far from the state border between Iowa and South Dakota. Your great grandfather Donald, my dad, was born just outside of Vienna, South Dakota.) Then I would splice together any old taped interviews I had on file from interesting or important people who had stopped by the station in the past week for some free publicity (politicians, sports players, religious leaders, etc.) and use that as my last ‘news’ story.

The rest of the day was taken up with taping more interviews with anyone who wandered into the station and wanted to be on the air. I would also call certain people who were in the news already in Iowa, to do taped phone interviews. I also taped many commercials and had to record some live feeds from the Chicago Stockyards and Schwab’s Financial on pork belly futures, etc.

I was supposed to have Saturday off, but I never did. The demand for news stories every day was insatiable, and I did not have an assistant.

On Sundays I also worked as the DJ, operating the board all morning long for two live church services in town – one from the Methodist Church, and one from the Dutch Reformed Church. They both paid the station to broadcast their church services. I can’t remember any of the sermons – they were super boring. And the choir singing was not as good as ours by a long shot.  

I worked there about a year, and then, on the spur of the moment, I went back to Culpepper & Merriweather Circus as their Publicity Director.

I guess I’m just naturally peripatetic!

Holiday Forgiveness, or Holiday Baloney?

I Hate the Waze App!