"THE TINIEST OF TIMS?"

Published in the Johnson County (Ind.) Daily Journal, Dec. 20, 1996 ©

         I seem to have spent a lot of time lately being more of a eulogist than a columnist. That must mean I'm getting old or melancholy, or a bit of both.

         I have lamented the demises of Wolfman Jack, a student killed in a car crash, a colleague with AIDS, the Indianapolis 500 and single-class basketball. I privately vowed to quit doing that and write about something still living, breathing and promising hope for the future. You know, like life on Mars, Elvis still being with us and flipping burgers in Kalamazoo, petty, provincial politicians and/or the Internet police finding the First Amendment with both hands, or a 21st century with neither bloodshed nor Dick Vitale.

         Then Tiny Tim died.

         Tiny Tim, the hook-nosed would-be singer who couldn't carry a tune in a washtub, even in his finest quivering falsetto, and who barely got in his allotted 15 minutes of fame by marrying "Miss Vicki" on the Johnny Carson show in 1969. That Tiny Tim, not the one in the Dickens classic of Christmases past, present and future.

         I had run into Tiny Tim, the former Herbert Khaury, 11 years ago, when his moment in the big spotlight was long past. He had sunk to traveling with a small, one-ring circus that went from town to town, doing one-night stands then folding up its only tent and stealing off down the darkened road.

         The "Great American Circus" had stopped off in a town in northern Indiana that day, and Tiny Tim had led the traditional parade into the circus tent for the first show, adorned in a tuxedo covered with comic book characters. The cuffs of the outrageous tux draped down onto the tops of a pair of very worn Nike tennis shoes.

         Then, once Zelda the Gypsy Bear and Dora and her Amazing Goats had done their tricks -- and their business -- in the ring, Tiny stepped forward, careful where he tiptoed, strummed his trademark ukelele and performed a few old songs, topping off with his signature tune, "Tip Toe Thru' the Tulips With Me."

         His voice, never an instrument so much as a gimmick, a kazoo not a Stradivarius, squeaked and quavered, and the crowd loved it, much the same way it had loved the 26 clowns tumbling out of a hump-backed car the size of a Tonka truck earlier.

         I later met him outside the main entrance to the semi-big tent, where he was waiting for the second and final show of that August evening. His face still glistened with sweat, and his thoughts jumped from subject to subject, like performing bears.

         But the words that tampolined their way from inside his ragged smile never tripped over themselves, still reaching for an octave of optimism that wasn't in the tune anymore.

         "It may not be the big time," he proclaimed, his face framed by the familiar strings of rose-tinged hair, "but at least it is the big top.

         "And I love every minute of it. For me, it's adventurous."

         Following his circus train of thoughts was an adventure, too. From the joy of a kid who had run away with the circus, he suddenly switched onto the siding of his two most recent disasters. First, his trailer had been demolished in a highway crash, then his wife, Miss Jan, had left him.

         She had been his second or fourth wife, depending on how you counted -- "two were legal, two weren't," Tiny explained, the lilt falling from his voice like an errant tightrope walker.

         Then, like a man shot from a cannon, his mind flew off into another direction, into a strange world of seeing Satan as an angel and extraterrestrials as divine creatures.

         His New Age trapeze then easily swung over to the subject of lingering spirits inside his songs.

         "When I sing those old songs, I feel the spirit of the singer who did it originally inside me. When I do 'It's A Long Way to Tipperary,' I feel John McCormack inside me. Every song has a spirit of a living artist in it."

         And, of course, he envisioned his own reincarnation as a national star. "Sure, I'd love to make it one more time, if it's right," he said, straightening his bulky 6-foot-1 frame so that the red suspenders showed at the edges of his coat of many cartoon characters. "It's a goal, like getting to heaven, and I want to be on top when I get to heaven, or I don't want to go."

         Well, he wasn't at the top when he went. He was in Minneapolis, doing a charity gig, when he collapsed and died of a heart attack. Tiny Tim was 64 and irresistible to the most reluctant of eulogists, but hardly a reborn star.

         He was what he always had been, a one-man freak show that we created, an act the kid inside us all had paid its quarter to see but wouldn't shell out to see again. With an act as disposable as the Sunday comics, he only became a legend in his own mind when his given time had long passed.

         But, back there in the fall of 1985, he couldn't have been convinced. As the circus band struck up its fanfare for the finale of the second show, Tiny Tim grabbed one of the tent ropes and pranced into line with the elephants, the Gypsy Bears and the Amazing Goats.

         "Finale!" he shouted, with a high-pitched shriek and a careful eye to where he was stepping and tried to tiptoe up on the big time one more falsetto time.

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 Copyright 1996 by Jerry Miller ©

 Color photo by Ed Breen

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