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By GORDON D. FIEDLER JR.

Salina Journal

Salinan Richard Holm-gren started throwing things in elementary school, but rather than being a detention-level classroom disruption, his behavior was encouraged and eventually led to a full-time job.

Holmgren, 42, is a professional juggler. Known as "Flying Debris," he entertains at parties, corporate soirees and festivals around the country.

"I started as a kid, in grade school gym class," Holmgren said.

He and his fellow students had to at least try to learn the mechanics of juggling with bean bags. Holmgren discovered he had good hand-eye coordination and would practice at home.

"I was a farm kid and we had only one channel back then, so what else are you going to do in the evenings, right?" he said.

Holmgren's mom sewed his bean bags and later bought him a set of juggling clubs. He kept at it and quickly improved, but the level of perfection he was chasing seemed maddeningly out of reach.

"I was always a stubborn person," he said. "I was getting closer and closer, but I was too stubborn to quit."

Holmgren soon discovered his pursuit of perfection was a journey, not a destination.

"The great thing about juggling is it's always a work in progress," he said. "You're never going to plateau. You're always going to get better, always improve. I kept working at it."

Junior high talent show

His first big performance was at a junior high school talent show.

"Everybody sang or played (an instrument). I juggled," Holmgren said.

By then, he was accomplished at keeping five balls aloft, and he could juggle pins and cigar boxes.

"I was able to entertain people here and there, at social gatherings, just for fun," he said.

He teamed up briefly with fellow juggler Larry Pankratz, and together they landed a few paying gigs. He's been on his own since 1994.

The pay wasn't much, but it dawned on Holmgren that he could make money at this.

"I really got motivated, but I had this misconception that to be entertaining, I had to be good at juggling," he said. "I thought I would never be a professional juggler until I learned how to juggle seven balls. One day, a light bulb came on. People don't care if you juggle seven balls or 15 balls and do a somersault while doing it. All they care about is having fun and being entertained."

At that point, he began injecting more comedy into his show. Later, he added a bit of magic and some Harlem Globetrotters-type basketball wizardry. Now, just like adding more objects to a juggling routine, Holmgren is incorporating motivational speaking into his repertoire.

"I didn't really get the idea of making a living at this until I was in my mid-20s," he said. "By then, I'd already started a family."

Juggling chain saws

Before turning to juggling full time, he paid the bills by working for 14 years as a technical service

representative for Geoprobe Systems, makers of drilling equipment.

In his career, Holmgren has juggled all of the requisite objects, including chain saws, but it was a tool that was less benign that turned on him.

"One time I juggled three four-way tire irons and cracked my wrist pretty good. I haven't done that since," he said.

He is adept at juggling unrelated objects, such as a bowling ball, ping-pong ball and a plunger.

"There's lots of good jokes you can come up with with that," he said.

One of his featured moves is balancing a pool ball on his forehead and rolling it from ear to ear.

"That's not the easiest thing in the world to do," he said. "It's a trick I spent a couple of years really learning."

Awful one-hour workweeks

Holmgren admits he practices very little these days and doesn't spend every waking moment juggling.

But, like all jobs, there is a downside to the labor.

"The one-hour workweeks are awful," he said.

--Gordon D. Fiedler Jr. can be reached at 822-1407 or by email at gfiedler@salina.com.

NAME: Richard Holmgren

AGE: 42

OCCUPATION: Professional juggler

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