By Morf Morford, Tacoma Daily Index
How many cats can you fit into a triplex in Tacoma? It’s either the set up for a “dad” joke or just a typical news story in Tacoma in 2022. For better or worse, it’s a real story – and yet another example of what we in Tacoma do best – blur reality and the absurd, if not pathetic into a single event.
Life is to be lived forward, but it is to be understood backwards. – Soren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard put it simply, we live life in the present, aiming for the future, and at the same time do our best to understand what has come before.
A statement like that could not be more universal, and true in any and every situation.
Except, of course, in Tacoma.
For a little context, consider the structure of a typical joke; any joke has, in some form, three parts – a set up, a short explanation, and, to tie it together, a punch-line.
The punch line, carries the “punch”, the unexpected surprise, reversal or unveiling that ties it all together (at least if one “gets” the joke).
In other words, what makes a good joke is that the punch line shatters or reverses the expectations and assumptions of the set up.
These unexpected conclusions or “reveals” is where Tacoma excels. Maybe it’s the mountains on the horizon, or the water around us, or the cloud cover over us, but for whatever reason, much is hidden, or least obscured, for us. And what is revealed is not always what was expected.
Joke anatomy
There are also different categories of jokes – all of which, I would argue, personify or resonate with Tacoma.
Some of these categories of jokes are mistaken assumptions, exaggerations, misplaced sincerity, contradictions, puns, meta-jokes, omitted (or understood only by insiders) punch lines and, of course, self-depreciation jokes.
If you have lived in or around Tacoma for very long, you have encountered, even lived-out, many of these jokes.
Our jokes, perhaps more than anything else, reveal the attitudes and beliefs most of us really believe – as opposed to what we say or publicly assert.
A joke, in most cases, strikes us as funny because it tells the truth – and the truth, as many of us know, often hurts.
Jokes, to keep their potency, walk a fine line between the explicit and the implicit; what is stated and what is implied or assumed.
What is implied or assumed is only understood by those who already have a certain, relevant body of knowledge and experience of the topic at hand.
One example in Tacoma’s history is the name “Ivan”. Most people, on hearing the name “Ivan” might think of a Russian man, or even a Disney movie. But for those of us who grew up in Tacoma, in a certain era, “Ivan” was no Russian; he was a gorilla who was the star attraction of a “circus store” in South Tacoma.
The real “Ivan” is gone now, and the “circus store” is far from the family-friendly attraction it once was, but the jokes and legends – about Ivan or clowns or spooky (and sketchy) “circus stores” continue.
As do our jokes about local politicians and law enforcement.
How many cities, for example, have such a long and consistent history of corruption and abuse by political figures and those whose job it is to enforce laws in our community?
Other cities might have mayors who have been removed (and Tacoma certainly has) but how many cities have had an entire city council re-called? Tacoma did it in the early 1970s.
Other cities might hold power-hungry small-town tyrants who will do anything to claim – and keep – power and privilege, but how many cities can hold up a mayor (and city council) who actively rounded up and evicted an entire ethnic community? In the 20th Century it was called genocide – but in Tacoma (in 1885) it was called “The Tacoma Method”.
Other cities might have established red-lining or exclusionary zones or laws, but Tacoma’s leading figures kicked out all Chinese people and burned (or stole) any evidence of their contributions and decades of labor.
They were all acquitted by an all-white/all-male jury, And had a congratulatory photo taken to celebrate.
Other cities might have corrupt local politicians, but how many have blatantly racist, violent violators of law and legal processes who are public and proud of it?
Tacoma has a tenuous relationship with authority – and an even more convoluted relationship with wilderness – or the unknown.
Did you know that Tacoma back in the 1880s had a resident 800 pound bear who would hang out in the lobby of the Tacoma Hotel (the fanciest hotel in town at the time) and drink beer at the bar?
Or at least he did until one night, when perhaps after one too many beers, he broke free from his pen and walked down the street where he scared a recently hired policeman who then shot him.
Tacoma has a long and dismal, and apparently continuing history of doing more than killing errant city mascots.
But beside routine, if horrifying acts of bullying and even killing, seemingly endemic among those who hold unquestioned power (as a teenager, I was pulled over once, on my bicycle, frisked and threatened, for no reason), Tacoma’s finest, as always, go beyond expectations.
Pierce County’s recently elected Sheriff is currently on trial for harassing and filing false charges against a newspaper delivery man.
If that’s not the perfect set up for a joke, I don’t know what is.
For those taking notes, newspapers are delivered on a regular basis, in most cases daily. By a person hired to do that job. And if it is a morning paper, that paper must be delivered as early as possible. Each day.
For whatever reason, our ever-vigilant, newly elected sheriff misunderstood the context and decided (at about 2 am) to follow and harass the newspaper delivery man.
You’d think that a few minutes of observation would have clarified the situation. But, instead, our ever-determined law enforcement officer called an emergency line to say that he was the one being harassed and threatened.
Tacoma’s implied (and irrepressible) absurdist instincts are not confined to politics and law enforcement.
Tacoma FD is a comedy series that plays on these impulses and assumptions.
And if you look closely, you’ll notice all the categories of jokes at work – mistaken assumptions, exaggerations, misplaced sincerity, contradictions, puns, meta-jokes, omitted (or understood only by insiders) punch lines and, of course, self-deprecation jokes.
What else would you expect from the town that hosted the first UFO siting (in 1947) and the county that posts the most Sasquatch sightings in the world?
You can keep up to date on Sasquatch encounters here.
One of the slogans that Tacoma nerds refer to is “You’ll like Tacoma”.
Tacoma, like a good wine, is perhaps an acquired taste. Maybe we just need to learn to like it.
