Gather round, kiddies, while Uncle Timerick tells you a tale . . .
This is a story of hamburgers, secrets, and betrayal.
It's early afternoon on a warm August Saturday; I'm checked into the Best Western in Arkansas City, Kansas, and I feel like rumaging through my bag of Kansas stories to wile away the hours until something good turns up on Turner Classic Movies or the Cartoon Channel. I spent the morning down in Ponca City, Oklahoma, cutting & pasting collages, which I have mailed out to some of you; the lucky ones will never know what I'm talking about . . .
Back in 1984 I was, to put it mildly, underemployed. This is a chronic condition with me I was working two part-time jobs in Tioga, North Dakota; janitor at the First Lutheran Church and graveyard clerk at the local Kwiky Mart. How I came to this sad state of affairs is a tale for another afternoon. Suffice it to say that I was as bored as Chef Emeril at a vanilla-tasting contest. The winter was long and rude, with Alberta clippers rushing through every so often to turn the brittle snow into enough dirty slush to choke Moby Dick. Then the bottom would drop out of the thermometer and everything down to the marrow in my bones would freeze solid. Then came the Twist. Ever since I gave up night lights the Twist has occured about every four years; just when things have gone from dismal to utterly nugatory a Twist occurs that sends me spinning in a new direction that I could not have imagined even if I were Charles Dickens.
In this case an old circus friend called me to say he could get me a job as a regional Ronald McDonald, if I wanted. I wanted.
I flew out to Milwaukee to meet with a personage known as Ay Jay, an old and unhallowed carnival clown who had somehow slipped into the ranks of executive pin stripes instead of an early alcoholic grave. Ay Jay was corporate trainer for Ronald McDonald. As such, he had his own minivan, with a driver, and the awesome responsibility of finding and training enough Ronalds to satisfy franchise owners across the land. He conducted a searching pre-employment interview with me at a tawdry Chinese restaurant, where he sat drinking innumerable cups of wan fu, sweet Chinese wine cut with turpentine, while I squirmed like an octopus at low tide. Was I funny, he demanded. How does one answer such a question -- by blowing on a kazoo while spritzing water from a seltzer bottle? I merely lowered my eyes modestly and said that some people in show biz thought I showed promise. He grunted noncomittedly. There is a twenty-five page handbook that all Ronald McDonalds must follow, he purred, his eyes mere slits; could I follow the handbook, hew to it as if it were the Decalogue? I sprang to my feet and clicked my heels while shouting "Jahwol, mine Herr!"
This seemed to satisfy him. We began training immediately. Back in my motel room Ay Jay had me put on the Ronald face -- not once, but a dozen times -- until he was satisfied I could apply the warpaint in the approved, corporate manner. Then he showed me the Red Shoe Review, a 20-minute routine good for school assemblies and other pediatric gatherings. The Review was a melange of hoary old magic tricks that went out with bloomers and buggy whips. Things like the magic coloring book and linking rings. This is stuff that puts all but the most cretinish child to sleep in a matter of minutes. Meekly I asked if there was any room in the Red Shoe Review for a little improvisation.
NO! roared Ay Jay. This is the only performance you are allowed to give while wearing the Ronald McDonald costume and makeup. Nothing more, nothing less. I gave a faint "yessir" and resigned myself to memorizing every bit of twaddle exactly as Ay Jay showed me.
I arrived back in North Dakota with a fat contract in hand from Kansas. I would be the state's new Ronald McDonald. The Kansas franchise owners generously paid for the move to Wichita, where I and my family settled in nicely.
We were welcomed into the local Mormon ward but found it awkward to explain my position at McDonalds. Rule #3 in the handbook strictly forbade me from disclosing my secret identity to anyone outside the immediate family. So I was vague; oh, I just do promotional work for 'em.
This seemed to satisfy everyone but the Primary President, a saintly older woman who originally came from an Ozark shack somewhere in Missouri. It pestered her, as she put it, that this good brother never said much about his job. Everyone else in the ward would give novella-length descriptions of the trials and tribulations of their job, but not Brother Torkildson.
Well, at length she overheard my wife and I discussing something or other about the job in the hallway one Sunday. She pounced on me like a panther. Oh, you must do something for the Primary! Dismayed at being outed, I tried to fob her off with one excuse after another, but to no avail. Unless the franchise owners okayed it, I was not to don the sacred red and yellow jumpsuit. I told her it couldn't be done, but you know these good LDS Primary Presidents. She simply went over my head, straight to the franchise office itself, to ask that Brother Torkildson be allowed to appear at their next Primary activity.
Ah well, the job wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway. I was already improvising my head off in the Red Shoe Review, playing my musical saw and performing a bit of pantomime here and there.
The timing of my release was impeccable. My wife and I closed on a house Thursday afternoon. Friday morning the doctor's office called to confirm that we had another bambino on the way. Friday afternoon I got the word that MY Services Would No Longer Be Required.
But not to fear! As faithful tithe-payers we were invulnerable to despair. Something else would turn up, as, indeed, it did, the very next week.
KSAL Radio, up in Salina, Kansas, needed an assistant news director, and through channels that seemed both mysterious and miraculous at the time, they heard about my previous radio experience and that I was now "at liberty". Would I like the job? I would. Another happy ending for little Timmy Tork and his growing family.
Yes, friends, I got the job with KSAL and kept it for . . . two weeks before being fired for insubordination.
But that, too, is a story for another drowzy Saturday afternoon.
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