Much of what I love about good story telling is bound up in the nature of the fool character, or the wise fool, if you will. Shakespeare is probably the consummate creator of fool characters. Jaques in As You Like It, Falstaff in Henry IV and Henry V, the King’s Fool in King Lear, and even Polonius in Hamlet. The fool is essential to the story because he serves several important purposes. He is a foil for main characters in the unraveling of the plot, providing exposition through dialogue, wit and wisdom in commenting on the events, and pratfalls and innuendos for the further amusement of the audience. He is the Harpo Marx character, Chaplin’s Little Tramp, any Red Skelton character, Lou Costello, Jerry Lewis, and every foolish talking animal in cartoon adventures like Scooby Doo.
So, I have tried to include the clown in my stories of childhood in Iowa, the land of imagination and corn. In my newest novel, Snow Babies, the key clown is Harker Dawes, a good-hearted bumbler who has bought the hardware store in Norwall, Iowa and quickly managed to turn it into a bankrupted and foolishly failed business. He is in control of essential supplies for a small town to use in surviving a raging blizzard, but he is also totally incompetent and capable of creating as many problems as his store can solve. He is a bachelor uncle living with his brother’s family of three, and he becomes one of the people most responsible for taking in the four orphans from the bus.
Today’s Paffooney is a picture of Harker in his store. Of course, I can’t tell you the name of the real-life person that Harker is based on. But I can tell you that I drew this portrait by combining his real-life mug with the features of Rowan Atkinson. In fact, if a miracle happens and they make this story into a movie, Rowan Atkinson would be perfect for the part. His first name is even the real name of the town that becomes Norwall in my story. Stewart’s Hardware Store is no longer there anymore. Even the building is gone, but the image in the background is close to the antique feel of that wonderful old place.
Catch a Falling Star 