Their yo-yos have served kids, symphony, history

The spool of Michael Emken’s yo-yo spins so fast the string sizzles as he shoots the moon, walks the dog and then gets really serious, slinging the yo-yo around his friend Heather Mikkelsen’s finger.

Still spinning, the yo-yo swings through a series of trapeze-like maneuvers before negotiating a graceful dismount from Mikkelsen’s finger. The two will co-teach a yo-yo class this October at CenterPlace in Spokane Valley. They practice uninterrupted until a question arises over where yo-yo has taken them, over where a simple spool and string takes anyone.

Would you believe yo-yo elf? Yes, yo-yo elf, says Emken, 33. He has donned a crimson toque and slung the spinning spool for Santa Claus at the North Pole, or at least the North Pole as created for underprivileged children by Spokane YMCA and United Airlines. At Christmas, the children are loaded onto a jet and taxied down a local airport runway where they hold their breath and close their eyes, only to exhale magically inside the decorated airplane hangar of one Kris Kringle and in the presence of one yo-yo elf.

Emken’s pretty good with a yo-yo, good enough that no trick-mesmerized child is going to ask why a yo-yo elf is 6 feet tall. Closer to home, Emken is known as a student in technical writing at Eastern Washington University, on break.

Emken has also plied his tricks publicly while the Spokane Symphony frenetically blew, drummed and sawed away at Aram Khachaturian’s “Saber Dance.” The musical piece is a trombone-heavy circus standard usually played when an entertainer is balancing plates on sticks. The music makes the audience feel there’s no second to spare, that at any minute the entire gig could spin out of control.

For a performer, at least a yo-yo performer, the pressure isn’t in the performance, but rather in the practice, where every move by the conductor and orchestra hangs on a little spool turning 8,000 times a minute and every do-over brings the whole production to a stuttering halt.

Mikkelsen’s yo-yo travels are a little von Trapp-ish. She picked up the hobby as a teenager after attending a class with her mother, Brenda Stoneman. Soon Mikkelsen’s brother and father were slinging yo-yos, also. Naturally, a yo-yo show was the next step. They performed the history of the world for their LDS church.

“Mom would tell the story and we would act it out with yo-yos,” Mikkelsen said. “The Christmas story with the star and the baby is born.”

As Mikkelsen speaks, she works through some of the tricks, including one that looks a bit celestial and the standard yo-yo trick, “rock the baby.”

For the longest time, Mormon missionaries knocking on Mikkelsen’s door would recognize her as a yo-yo performer. Seeing a yo-yo in action is not the kind of thing easily forgotten, yet as a cultural icon, the yo-yo keeps falling through the cracks.

It’s easy to forget that shortly before resigning under the pressure of the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon played yo-yo with Roy Acuff on the “Grand Ole Opry.” Acuff was a yo-yo player who worked the president through a few shaky spins before, according to a transcript of the show, Nixon said, “I will stay here and try to learn how to use the yo-yo; you go up and be president, Roy.”

And social activist Abbie Hoffman in 1968 irreverently “walked the dog” with his yo-yo while testifying before Congress. He was found in contempt for performing the trick.

Tommy Smothers became Yo-Yo Man on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” in 1986. Millions of little kids like Michael Emken watched Smothers that year on the tube and the message, delivered by Dick Smothers, was clear: “When you’re fully Yo from head to toe, you’re online with the world.”