Ogden’s Jubilee

In my mailbox, hermetically-sealed under clear plastic tape to prevent contamination, tampering or adulteration, I found a tag with my address correctly printed and affixed to a blue envelope. In the upper left was a tidy, store-bought, self-adhering, no-lick sticker with three little sail-boats under the brightest matching blue sky, playing tag with the occasional cumulonimbus. On the silver bordered little tag was both a name and an admonition, an admonition that seems to have gone unheeded for at least a few decades, if not entirely: Anne B(e) Wilde. The statue of liberty with blue shadowing under a blue sky all on a monochromatic blue stamp adorned the appropriate and opposite corner of the envelope. The blue of the tag, the sticker and the stamp did not match, though they did not clash but rather blended like colors in harmony. Indeed, I had received a letter from one of the triumvirate, one of the Mary-Anne-sketeers, from Anne Wilde herself, such a rare occasion, such an honor.

Inside the envelope printed more on a lavender and blue starry sky than a sheet of paper was an invitation to Ogden’s Birthday Jubilee. There, on the paper, was a request for me to do what many people would be most appreciative were I to stop doing, a thing which Ogden cannot stop doing, a thing, which of late, I have grown weary of doing: Anne Wilde was asking me to WRITE. Most people, upon reading my offerings (a flyer, a study-guide, a book), are instantly beset with such revulsion that they immediately seek the remedy of a garbage can, a dumpster or small fire. What had gotten into Anne and caused such a lapse I am not prepared to conjecture, yet, somehow Anne Wilde wants me, Mike Bingham, to write a “humorous” “tribute” or “memory” to Ogden Kraut on an 8 ½ x 11 paper, yet she has not specifically instructed the offering to be one sheet of paper and, even if she did, an entire book could be reduced to one sheet of microfilm or one sheet of binary encryption.

So, here we are, what seems to be a “humorous tribute” in Anne’s view smells more like a “roast” to me, and if it looks like a roast and smells like a roast, then let the roast begin!

Forgive Anne Wilde, she knows not what she does!

Ogden Kraut owes the ‘sand-man’ far more sleep than he owes back-taxes to the IRS! Night after night, year after year, the state’s most notorious and prolific published polygamist collapsed alone on his couch in his print shop, subsisting on three or four hours of sleep a night. To say Ogden is way over-drawn at the sleep bank is an under-statement, but the ‘sand-man’ took his revenge by installing an invisible switch on Ogden’s backside, illustration to follow.

For a time, I owned a standard sized pick-up truck, and still own (presumably, since it’s on indefinite loan to Ogden – you haven’t sold it yet, I hope?) a small, heavy-load trailer. With these implements, I would occasionally be recruited in one of Ogden’s important missions (a more sardonic person might call such a mission a “fool’s errand”) – like the time I towed a tow-dolly to Wendover to retrieve one of the number of a small fleet of barely operable vehicles which Ogden owned and occasionally operated. Upon arriving, Ogden informed me that the keys to said vehicle were back at the print shop in another state, a situation he might have informed me of earlier, had he been aware of it and had he been awake. After raising the front of the car using borrowed jacks and blocks and an occasional non-repeatable incantation (offered by myself), Ogden discovered that one of the keys on a ring he did have happened to open the door to the reluctant auto, facilitating brake release and so forth, better late than never. Upon arrival back at the print shop and after unhitching his car, Ogden produced the ignition key and, sure enough, the freshly-towed car started right up. We consoled ourselves that, had Ogden had the key and had the car started in Wendover, it might have stalled en route anyway.

My vehicle, trailer and I were first pressed into service more than a decade ago to aid one John Doe, a friend of Ogden’s. That’s right, John, it’s your turn. I came to know John through his cherished possessions first.

Like an old cigar box with tin soldiers, spy-glasses, a decoder ring and cereal box-top treasures, baking soda submarines, trading cards, each object a memory of carefree childhood. Somewhere in southern Utah were storage containers with boxes full of John’s childhood memories, an autographed gift Bible for graduating seminary, a sixth-grade photograph, each object a key to an almost forgotten memory. You cannot take the stuff of life with you, thoughts and feelings and friendships and knowledge are the only treasures we can take with us. The object is just the key of remembrance.

John’s memories, his possessions, his treasures, if you will, go by another name. In the vernacular, these things are called junk.

We kept the equipment and supplies relating to the printing trade and loaded them for transport. We saved some of what we supposed John might have valued had he been there. The rest of John’s crap was taken to the junkyard for the wind to sort. There are people who charge thousands of dollars to come to your house, organize your possessions and de-junk your life. We accomplished the same thing for John free of charge; after all, what are friends for?

Stage two of the de-junking of John’s life was accomplished when Ogden knew someone with a friend with an abandoned building where John’s printing and private possessions could be stored. Owing to some disagreement or miscommunication, John’s stuff was later thrown out into the weather to rust and dissolve. Glad I could lend a small part, John, no thanks necessary.

It was during the course of helping John unburden himself of his mortal possessions that I came to know of Ogden’s unserviceable debt to the sleep bank and the invisible switch. It would be Ogden and me in my truck alone for hours. I would be the captive audience. I would coax from Ogden the “hidden riches” of the kingdom. The treasures I would find, the secrets of the ages, would be mine. Mysteries never before revealed would be unfolded. Prophetic riddles would be unraveled. It would all be worth the time and work and wear and tear on the truck.

To my dismay, I soon discovered that Ogden had so cheated and swindled the ‘sand-man’ on three hours of sleep a night through the years, that Ogden had acquired a switch on his hindmost parts. The minute he sat in a vehicle, his eyes shut and the lights went out. You could be careening down a canyon, I am convinced, or flying off the road, just so long as you were moving, Ogden’s travel-induced narcolepsy is sort of a safety valve as well. Crashing sound asleep is as good as crashing drunk. It’s best to be relaxed.

Like a baby fast asleep in a car seat in L.A. rush-hour traffic or zonked in a car navigating the coastal highway in midnight fog, the only thing needed to wake Ogden is for one to quietly roll to a stop and switch off the ignition.

To chauffeur Ogden, I learned early on, is not to travel with a fount of knowledge, but to travel with the catatonic!

In the early stages of my on-going adolescence in Milwaukee, a public service announcement would come on the T.V. and query, “It’s 11 o’clock, parents, do you know where your children are?” I would like to query Ogden in a similar manner, but first, before I let go of John, and, although he is not the object of the evening’s roast (sometimes I can’t help myself), I would query John, “John, it’s whatever o’clock, do you have the faintest idea where your printing presses are?” This can only be humorous with the realization that John caches away used-up printing presses in storage containers all over the state like a squirrel hoarding nuts against the approaching storms, and like the proverbial squirrel, sometimes John forgets where he has cached his printing presses and hence the acorn becomes the mighty oak. The angels know when a sparrow falls, yet do even the angels know where John’s presses are?

Ogden, look at your watch, it’s whatever o’clock it is, do you have any idea whatsoever where your wives are? Furthermore, do you have even so much as a clue as to precisely who your wives are?

Ogden, may the Lord grant you as many wives as you can stand and a bright recollection as to precisely who and where they all are.

Mike Bingham

On the occasion of Ogden Kraut’s birthday, June 21^st, 2002 in the year of our Lord.