I had just finished performing my story show at a combination bowling alley/theater in Minneapolis called the Bryant Lake Bowl and Theater, and while I was breaking down a waiter named Randy said,

“Hey you got a couple laughs tonight. Not too shabby for a Tuesday. You did all right. Sometimes when new people perform you can hear the paint fade it’s so quiet.”

“Well thanks, man. I came 2,000 miles to do this show and I’m just glad I didn’t suck.”

“Yeah, isn’t that life? Constantly avoiding sucking, just trying so hard not to blow it.”

“Constantly avoiding sucking? That’s perfect. I should make that the title of my next show.”

Then he said, “Hey, I bought this new sound system for my car and I got a CD that sounds incredible. You got to hear it.”

We went out to his rusted Toyota and he cranked up his CD, “The Greatest Hits of the Guess Who.”

“This is the music you wanted me to hear?” I ask him as “American Woman, stay away from me” blasted out.

“What, you don’t like it?”

“It’s OK. I guess. I’ve just never met anybody who actually bought a Guess Who tape.”

Randy asked me where I was going after Minneapolis and I told him I was driving south on Highway 61 along the Mississippi River.

“You gotta stop at this tiny town called Trempealeau on the Wisconsin side. There’s a cool old hotel within a block of the Mississippi and it’s worth checking out.”

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It was a beautiful ride on that old highway hugging the big river and I drove into Trempealeau to find the hotel, right there on Mississippi. Sailboats and barges were drifting by in the late afternoon sunlight. There was hardly a person on the street. The only sounds were birds chirping.

I walked into the old Trempealeau Hotel and the bartender poured me a pint.

I noticed a stage on the lawn behind the bar.

“Do you have bands play back there.”

“Oh yeah we have local bands every weekend.”

“Any touring acts come through?”

“Well last summer we had this big “Dinosaurs of Rock” shindig with some ’60s relics. Mike Pinera of Iron Butterfly that had a hit with “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” and Cannibal and the Headhunters, who played “The Land of a 1,000 Dances.” And the big headliner was Tiny Tim.”

“Wow, you’re kidding. I thought he was long gone.”

Tiny Tim.

Now, to explain: Tiny Tim was this virtuoso ukulele player who played old-timey songs in Greenwich Village and sang in this bizarre high-pitched falsetto voice. In the mid ’60s he wore his hair past his shoulders, way before long hair was everywhere. Tiny Tim became a huge national star by playing his hit song “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” on the Laugh-In show and Johnny Carson. In 1969 he married Miss Vicky on the Johnny Carson show with 40 million people watching. Hard to imagine now.

“So, Tiny Tim’s the headliner. What was he like?”

“A real piece of work, let me tell you. We sold over 800 tickets in advance and this was going to our biggest show ever. It’s the end of summer and people would be coming from all over.

“Day of the show, Tiny Tim comes waddling in wearing a dirty American flag T-shirt. The guy’s big as a barn, with long, stringy red hair. He sits and scarfs down two dinners, some pastry and four beers with a god damn straw. Can you believe that? It’s the middle of the day and he’s half in the bag already.

“He gets up to leave and has to balance himself and push up from his chair. He’s wobbling and muttering to himself.

“I’m thinking, ‘That’s the last we’ll see of him. No way he makes the show. I’m going to have to refund a lot of money.’ I was sweating bricks.

“A couple hours later, the show’s raging. Cannibal and the Headhunters are singing ‘The Land of a Thousand Dances’ and the crowd’s going nuts, dancing on picnic tables, pounding beers.”

“Iron Butterfly does this wild half-hour version of ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ with a burning oil drum. There’s a guy in front of the stage with no shirt on juggling cooked bratwursts. It’s a big-time party but there’s no sign of Tiny Tim. Everybody’s having a ball except me. I’m freaking out.

“Then suddenly he appears next to me listing back and forth like a ship out at sea.

“I hear, ‘Now, let’s hear it for the star of the night, TINY TIM!’

“He tries to walk up the stairs but can’t make it, so two of us have to push his big ass up from behind. He stumbles on stage, weaves over to the microphone and stares out at the crowd for 10 solid seconds, teetering back and forth.

“Everybody’s hooting and hollering and Tiny Tim’s eyes are rolling to the back of his head. I can hardly stand to look. It seems like he’s about to fall over but then as soon as he hits that first chord on his ukulele he’s completely transformed, like Zorro or something. He’s TINY TIM, PROFESSIONAL ENTERTAINER!

“He starts blasting away ‘On Wisconsin,’ ‘This Land is Your Land,’ ‘Tip Toe Through the Tulips,’ Dylan songs Tin Pan Alley stuff, just amazing. The crowd’s going bananas, dancing all around. Tiny Tim’s slapping five and laughing. The crowd singing along. I never saw a guy surprise me so much in my life. Talk about rising out of the ashes, the guy brought tears to my eyes. Tiny Tim really made a believer out of me that night.

“The next morning I was wiping down the bar and saw Tiny Tim standing in the middle of the street, wearing that dirty American Flag T-shirt, staring out at the Mississippi River with this Chesire cat smile. He looked so peaceful and happy, watching that big river roll by.

“It was weird because the day before Tiny Tim looked like one of the saddest guys I’d ever seen. I thought, ‘How could a guy fall that far? Millions of people watching him on Johnny Carson, all that fame and money, and now he’s a total mess of a man?’ I felt sorry for him, I really did.

“And now, day after the show he looked like the happiest guy in the whole damn world. Well, I don’t mean to exaggerate mister, but Tiny Tim was definitely the happiest guy in Trempealeau, Wisconsin.”

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Jeff DeMark is a writer and musician.