"Don't Go Smelling Like a Rabbit" - J David Moeller

My Mission Statement:

Don’t Go Smelling Like A Rabbit

(Lessons Learned on the Way to Becoming Great and Famous)

By

J David Moeller

Photo by Justine O'Hara, Chicago

Copyright 1994, 2006, 2009, 2010 J David Moeller

The Moeller Crest

To Lisa

I love you, daughter.

Chapter One.

If I'd been a girl my name would have been  "Lettuce".

The woman who adopted me (hereinafter: the a.m.) spent endless hours deciding upon that name for the new baby girl she was trying to find to adopt.

As it turned out, I was named after my adoptive grandmother: Justine.

Fortunately the "e" went with the foreskin.

I dropped the "ustin" after the a.m.'s death when I was 20, although I'd already been writing under “J David Moeller” for about a year.

In the sixth grade I decided to change my name, at least during school, to Matt, after a character in “Wells Fargo”, my favorite TV cowboy show of 1957. The new appellation lasted for a few days before I tired of it and changed it back.

Only I neglected to tell Mrs. Bond, my 6th grade math teacher; and, for one hour a day, for the rest of that school year I was "Matt".

I think my real last name would have been Blakeney, after SMU Instructor Elizabeth Blakeney, my Godmother, who was in and out of my life until her suicide sometime before my teens.

There was a custom common in those days that unwed mothers who wanted to stay close to their children could be named the godmother; the era’s equivalent of today’s open adoption.

I don't know if Elizabeth really was my biological mother; but over the years I've come to believe the possibility, thanks to memory, some 20/20 hindsight and a creative imagination.

If, in fact, she's not there's no harm done. I mean it as a tribute to her and as a way of saying I understand.

I have many memories of my childhood dating as far back as the womb: its taste/smell, texture and colors.

It was cramped, I can tell you that much, too. And often reddish orangey.

One summer evening when I was about 5 I was visiting Elizabeth for a few days and she, her mother and I went to see the film “Stranger in Paradise” the first night.

I was very curious about what paradise was and what it looked like. In my mind, paradise was all colors...and a feeling of serenity. The film didn't reinforce my opinion...nor did it answer the question.

Afterwards, on the way back, I took one of those newly marketed ball point pens and began scribbling circles and lines on a sheet of paper in the back seat of their car. I thought I was drawing Paradise, was proud of my work and couldn't understand the lack of excitement over my masterpiece.

When I showed it to her, Elizabeth's mother made a point to convince me I had scribbled "absolutely nothing at all" on the paper...just lines and circles that didn't mean anything.

Lesson: The suppression of artistic expression begins early.

I didn't like Elizabeth's mother. She was mean spirited and cold hearted, not to mention crabby looking.

The Wicked Witch of the West studied with this woman.

She always had to be in charge and, in retrospect, I got the feeling Elizabeth was just being dragged along through her life like a weight she couldn't get rid of.

During my stay I slept on a chaise longue on the screened-in porch.

When the a.m. first told me I was going to visit them for "a few days" I had this strange image in my mind and I asked if there was a tunnel-like place I would be sleeping in when I got there. I could “see” myself in an elongated, ribbed-like passageway.

The a.m. didn't understand what I was talking about and told me there was a window between the bedroom and the porch. I asked if I could sleep in that.

She laughed at me.

I held the image in my mind, not knowing what it was but fully aware it was somehow directly related to Elizabeth: the birth canal?

I was very disappointed to find a normal window sill which I obviously couldn't sleep in.

I have another vivid memory of Elizabeth from earlier, when I was about three.

The a.m. was having a Christmas party. We lived in a two story house in University Park, Texas and from my room I could hear the party going on downstairs. Somehow I'd managed to wriggle out of my nightshirt... and I was horny.

I remember having good "feelings" between my legs...and I liked to squeeze a pillow between them. I was naked and I wanted attention from the a.m.

I began whispering, "Mother. Motherrrrrr" over and over with increasing volume and intensity until, finally, Elizabeth appeared.

I remember being very disappointed it wasn't the a.m. because she didn't know what the a.m. did for me; and, as a result, nothing was done about the "feeling" I had between my legs.

She helped me back into my nightshirt and went back to the party, even though she spoke kindly and sweetly to me. I felt very frustrated.

Lesson: Sexual tension starts early.

The last time I remember being around her was when she and her mother took me to the Texas State Fair. I was around 8 at the time and there was another little boy along with us; named Steven, maybe. My brother? Half brother? A cousin? I'm not sure and I was never told what relationship he had to our group, nor why he was with us.

Before we went to the fair we stopped for lunch at a hamburger stand across the street from Fair Park in Dallas.

I remember sucking up a straw-full of milkshake and blowing it into the little boy's face. I thought it was a hilarious stunt. No one else did.

Lesson: Slapstick is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Elizabeth had to stop for rests quite a few times throughout the day and she seemed moody and distant from we children. It was hard for her I remember thinking, not having any idea what it was that was hard for her.

Life, I now suppose.

After the fair the other kid and I took a nap on the living room floor at her apartment while she went into the other room to rest.

When I woke up the kid was gone. It was the only time I saw him. No word was ever mentioned of him again.

My adoption papers state "both the mother and grandmother" relinquished all claim to me. There's no mention of a father or grandfather. I was told by the a.m. my real mother had died in childbirth and my father died in the war (World War II was coming to an end).

Chapter Two.

I was born August 9,1945. Earlier that day America had obliterated Nagasaki, Japan with an atom bomb.

At 4:30pm Central Time I popped out in Denton, Texas.

The woman who would become my a.m. had been searching for a little girl to adopt since the death of her sister two years before.

The sister had been 20 years her senior and had served as her mentor and surrogate parent since their parent’s death in her teens, which coincided with the teens of this century.

The a.m. was born in 1895.

She had made the rounds of every reputable adoption agency in the state and a few others as well, I was told, and had had no success in finding a girl to name "Lettuce" and to train to take care of her the way her departed sister had done.

She had an attorney, Jack Johannes, who would go on to be the chief corporate lawyer for Frito Lay, conducting the search for her. One day he made a phone call that changed both our lives.

"I have some good news and some bad news", he might have said to her. "The good news is I've found a baby to adopt. The bad news is it's a boy!"

"A boy? I don't know anything about boys!" she would quote to me whenever she told me the story. "What am I going to do with a boy?"

Indeed.

After Johannes explained her hunting-for-a-baby days were limited by her being a single woman in her 50s in America in the ‘40s she agreed and the adoption process began.

Seems there had never been an adoption by an unwed female before and the presiding judge mentioned this to Johannes.

No slouch himself, he fired back an amazing bit of legal insight, "There's no precedent saying an unwed female of good reputation and sufficient means shall not be allowed to adopt."

Crumbling under such an astute argument, the judge allowed me to be the first child ever adopted by a single parent in the United States.

Lesson: In the United States, you don’t even have to grow up to become Precedent!

The papers were signed and the adoption was official some time around October or November of 1945.

But there was something about this new mother who celebrated her 50th birthday about the time the papers were signed: she was a product of the bygone Victorian Era.

She'd been catered to her entire life by a sister, twenty years her senior, who doubled as a mother; and she, flat out, missed the attention.

She told me on numerous occasions she just wanted somebody to grow up and love her and take care of her in her old age. She'd have a perfect trainee in a little girl and that's why she'd been so reluctant to accept me, a boy, into her life.

I’m still grateful she didn’t name me Jeeves.

But accept me she did...and then some.

I have vivid memories of being held to her breast to suckle. She had no milk of her own and she bragged about how she'd put Eagle Brand condensed milk on her nipples so I'd have something sweet to nurse on.

I have memories of her dangling her ample breasts around me, literally encircling my tiny head and body with them and dancing naked throughout the house.

She'd sing and coo at me as we went whirling around from room to room.

She lived alone! Who'd know?

The a.m. loved to wash my penis.

Every now and then, when I was between 5 and 10 or so, she'd come into the bathroom while I was taking a bath and inform me she wanted to make sure I was keeping clean. She'd sit outside the tub and have me stand near the edge while she got me good and erect and then she would wash me thoroughly...for quite awhile.

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness!" she'd always remind me.

Lesson: Religious training begins at home.

She'd explain how we should always take care of ourselves "down there" and that "it" must be kept clean at all times.

One of her favorite jokes was:

A young woman went to the doctor with a complaint. He examined her and told her she wasn't practicing good hygiene. She countered by telling him, "Every morning I start with my face and wash down as far as possible and every night I start at my feet and wash up as far as possible".

“Ah Ha”, the doctor exclaimed, "There's your problem. You're not washing 'possible'!"

She always wore a blue denim housedress that buttoned up the front for those ablutions. The lower buttons were always undone when she was through washing me. And I would still have an erection when I peed afterwards, forcing me to bend over slightly to hit the bowl with my stream.

Sometimes I'd complain about the slight stinging sensation and she'd assure me it was just the “soap in the little hole” and there was nothing to worry about. It just meant I was extra clean.

She'd also invite me to shower with her. She'd wash me and then she'd let me wash her vagina with my forearm, instructing me to draw it back and forth slowly between her legs.

I liked her long dangly labia minora. I liked to watch as they moved back and forth with my arm movements.

I was a kid. What did I know? This was the a.m. and she washed me, why shouldn't I wash her? I was making her feel good...and clean.

And I guess, close to God.

To this day I still like long women's lips.

Ah, but she had an evil side, too.

She used to beat me with the dogs' leashes. We had a cocker spaniel named Susan and a fox terrier mutt named Skipper. Skipper was my dog; the best dog a kid could have, too.

I don't remember when the beatings started but I remember that when she went for the leash I knew I was in for it. The beatings hurt but I don't think they ever did any real physical damage.

I don't think they made be behave any better, either.

When she'd get ready to beat me for some infraction, real or imagined, she'd run for the leash and I'd start to run the other direction.

"When I get that leash I'm going to beat you to within an inch of your life!” she'd shout.

At the sound of the leashes the dog's thought they were going for a walk and would get all excited.

I'd run from her while she, and the dogs, chased me. They thought it was a wonderfully fun game, yipping and barking and carrying on. But they never tried to catch me and were always sympathetic to my plight afterwards, comforting me, along with Gramma, as I stopped crying.

Our house on Walnut Hill Lane in Dallas was laid out so I could run through the kitchen and breakfast room into the front entry hall then make a u-turn through the living and dining rooms and back into the kitchen through the swinging service door: a circuitous route not unlike in the old cartoons where a chase takes place in a circle round a tree.

We had a big fireplace we never used in the living room and I'd duck into it and watch her storm past, ranting and raving: "You'd better come here! When I catch you it'll be worse. The more you make me chase you the more you'll regret it when I catch you!"

I was always amazed that it worked!

Lesson: Life imitates art.

I was no dummy. She was fifty years older than me. The more I ran her around the house the more tired she was when she caught me and, thus, the weaker the beating.

After she'd get out of sight I'd come out and make as if I'd been in another room: I knew I'd have to face the whipping sooner or later, anyway.

Once, after coming home from the circus with a toy souvenir whip (a stick with a string "popper" on the end like the horse trainers used), she got angry with me for breaking a beloved old abacus of hers I’d been playing with earlier in the day.

Instead of going for the leather leash, she grabbed that whip and beat me viciously with it while I dove into my bed and shielded myself with the blankets.

She kept beating me over and over with the wooden shaft and I remember getting stung in the eye by the popper on one blow.

She beat me so long and so hard that she broke it. It took me forever to stop crying and gasping for air that night. I had never cried that hard before and it terrified me.

I think it firmly planted in my mind what a hateful woman this was who would do that to me.

On the other hand, Gramma was always there trying to calm her down and getting her to temper her blows. And it was always Gramma, and Skipper, who were there with me afterwards.

I never told the a.m. how I felt and I never forgave her.

But I had time on my side.

I was growing.

One afternoon, when I was 11, I was playing in the mud of a garden we'd just dug. It was soft and muddy from the tilling and it felt good to sink up to mid calf in the muck, squeezing the goo between my toes.

For some reason, when she saw me she got furious. She grabbed me and hosed me off and sent me to my room where she came at me with the leash.

This time I just stood there and took the beating quietly, fending off the blows near my face with my arms; and when she was finished I calmly asked, "Are you through?".

It withered her and she never beat me again.

Lesson: Sometimes you just have to stand and take your lumps.

I have a lot of memories going all the way back.

As I’ve said, I can actually remember being in the womb, which might be the "tunnel" I associated with Elizabeth. I can remember the smell and taste that was in my nose and mouth, and the feel of its tightness: secure and warm. And the changing colors tinted red and orange and textures of light and dark. I don’t, however, recall sounds.

These memories are my own, unaided by outside influences, new age beliefs or emergent technologies.

Another is of me lying on the floor of the house we lived in on Woodlawn, in Dallas, the night "Gramma" came to stay with us permanently. I was under two.

Gramma was Emma Brown, a holocaust refugee whose son, Roger, a friend of the a.m.’s, was already living in America. He was a successful businessman and had a wife, Anita, and a son, Stuart, a year older than me.

The circumstances of how Gramma came to live with us rather than him and his family was never made clear to me.

She stayed on as our cook and the a.m.'s companion until I was 12.

At that time she went back to Germany for a few weeks’ vacation. During her absence the a.m. convinced me she was the root of all our disagreements and didn't I think she should be asked to move out of our house when she returned?

I didn't know what to say and, with more prodding from the a.m., I said it might be different.

In my mind I wasn't so sure.

I didn't always call her Gramma, though. Stuart naturally called her that and one day I started to and it stuck. Nobody minded, least of all she. Stuart protested she wasn't my real grandmother and I successfully argued that "Gramma" was her name...not her relationship to me. He was "Stuart". She was "Gramma".

He bought it.

Lesson: Learning to rationalize is essential.

About a year after her arrival we had a backyard talent show. The neighborhood kids came and sang and danced on a picnic table shoved up against the garage/servant's quarters behind the house. We even had a “servant” living there in those days: the current maid and her occasional boyfriends.

An outdoor light attached to the eave of the garage roof was our spotlight.

Naturally, I wanted to perform, too. Never mind I didn't know any songs and couldn't dance a lick but I got up on that stage anyway and winged-it.

I haven’t any idea what I did but I kept thinking the lighting was all wrong. I could feel its "heat" on my left ear; but, somehow, I instinctively knew it should be shining on my face from the front. I could "feel" its absence.

That night I knew I was going to be an entertainer when I grew up!

Lesson: If you want to be seen, you have to find your light!

Chapter Three.

The first girl I ever had a crush on and kissed was Nancy Smith. We did the deed in the Jones' house across the street from our house on Walnut Hill Lane. It wasn't the Jones' house yet, though, because it was still being built.

Nancy and I were in the same class and I knew she liked me because she always chose me for her dodge ball team during recess.

It was my best, and only, sport in 2nd grade.

We were playing in the soon-to-be Jones' house. The walls weren't up but the framing was and we were running from room to room through the walls acting like ghosts. Out of the blue I kissed her on the cheek. She thanked me and put her hand on her cheek where my lips had touched and just looked at me.

The a.m. must have seen what was going on and called me home seconds later. I said g’bye with all kinds of tingly feelings going on in my body.

I felt like I needed a bath.

Lesson: They don’t call it the “dirty deed” for nothing.

I also had a crush on my next door neighbor, Laura Brodsky. She was the first girl I ever saw naked and she was the first to ever see me so. I’ll explain.

We'd get up early during the summer months and play till the a.m. called me in for breakfast.

One day she had to pee. I took her to my favorite “pee” patch amid the sunflowers that grew 8 - 10 feet tall in the field behind my house. I didn't know girls were different from boys but she knew of the difference because she had a brother, Alan. I’d seen the a.m. naked but that didn't count: adults were an entirely different species altogether.

When lovely dark haired Laura pulled her panties down I was surprised she'd been "tucked in". She explained that's the way girls were made.

I was pleased, but felt sorry for her: she couldn't make the toilet water swirl by aiming her pee stream at the edge of the bowl and forcing the bubbles to "swim" around.

Soon to be an Olympic sport, I was sure.

It didn’t seem to bother her in the least that she couldn’t accomplish this.

After she finished she said she needed some paper to wipe with.

I was getting an education this day, for certain.

Being the frontiersman that I was and having the sunflower patch experience that I had, I told her to do what I did when I wiped after taking a dump: use a sunflower leaf.

She did, but used the scratchy side and it irritated her girl-ness.

It also irritated her mother who forbade us to play with one another for the rest of the summer.

Lesson: Know your Flora.

Years later, Joan Goren was my first "sexual" love.

She was a gently plump, pretty Jewish girl in my 6th grade math class, where you’ll remember, I was called Matt; but only by the teacher.

Joan had a cute little habit of vigorously scratching her crotch on the edge of her desk seat. She'd move over to the edge of the seat and slide back and forth on it. She always seemed to do it when I was looking at her.

I guess math class brought out the kinky in me, too. I couldn't help it, but I used to get an erection while standing in line for help at Mrs. Bond's desk. I'd press my engorged penis against the edge of the desk while she showed me how to do whatever math problem I needed help with.

She ignored the help I needed with the swelling in my pants. But I believe Joan noticed. She sat in a direct line with the desk edge.

She and I would always dance together at sock hops. She was my regular date for these soirees.

We would dance very close. I would get an erection and press it against her and she would press her budding breasts...yes she had lovely little nubbins beneath her dress ...against me in return.

I never noticed any itchiness at the dances, however.

The first time I got an erection dancing with her I tried to move back, but she felt it too and wouldn't let me pull away. She just held me tighter around the neck and moved even closer, pressing her chest against mine.

She never said a word about it and neither did I but we danced a lot of slow dances during the sixth grade.

I used to hate when the song was over because my erection was rather obvious.

Young ladies dresses in those days were quite flouncy and full. I made a point of walking closely behind her half a step to allow for the coverage her garment provided.

Lesson: A lady always precedes the gentleman.

Joan was the only woman, besides the a.m., that was ever allowed to feel my erection. Laura'd seen my penis but I never got an erection when I danced with her.

Janet Greenstone’s were the first breasts on a girl I ever saw.

I liked breasts. I loved to watch the a.m. "catch" her long pendulous “National Geographics” in her bra in the days she still wore one. She'd bend forward and her breasts, each a good 7-8 inches long, would swing forward and she'd catch them with a flipping kind of motion in the cups of her brassiere. It used to tickle me silly to watch and she'd do it over and over again for me saying she didn't mind and that there was nothing wrong with nudity among family members.

Janet's breasts were "mosquito bites" but they were pronounced on her chest. She was all of about 10 and was going with my best friend, Randy Pritchett, who lived across the street from me, next to the Jones' new house.

She'd let Randy feel them all he wanted but wouldn't let me, because they were going steady. I was good buddies with her big brother, Jimmy; and I felt like I was part of the family since her dad, Carl, would include me when he and Jimmy went to father/son nights at his Masonic Lodge: Hella Temple.

I'd tell Janet I was almost like family and that there was nothing wrong with family members seeing each other naked. She bought the "seeing" part and allowed Randy to hold up her shirt as we both looked as hard as we could (pun intended).

Randy, of course, would assert his territorial rights and fondle them while Janet proudly watched my eyes pop out of my head.

But they weren't the "danglers" the a.m. had.

Lesson: Sometimes the grass isn’t as green on the other side.

Chapter Four.

I used to steal in the fourth grade. I wasn't allowed to go outside to play during recess: I was sickly. I had several problems from birth including asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia and, most severely, an a.m. with, at the time unknown/undescribed,(Von) Munchausen’s by Proxy Syndrome!

During the cooler months of the year, and while all the other kids in my class were outside playing, I was left alone in the gym with no supervision whatsoever, not an adult in sight, for the full 30 minute period.

So, to pass the time, I’d inspect the contents of the girl’s little purses they’d left there, and I’d pilfer a quarter from one of them.

Later, during lunch, my victims often came to me and said they'd lost their milk money.

Generous soul that I was, I'd loan them a quarter and then magnanimously tell them to forget about paying me back. It gave me an immense feeling of being: as if I were saying "you see...they won’t let me play with you but I'm a person of good nature and look how I give to you freely ...please like me".

Lesson: People love the reformed sinner.

One day I found a miniature pen and pencil set in a purse belonging to Ida Mertens. I kyped them. I gave the pencil (pens are cooler, so I kept that for myself) to my best friend: Clel Van Beavers and he turned around and busted me. He ratted. Finked. Squealed. Tattled. He turned me in to our teacher Mrs. Fuller, the most beautiful woman in the whole world, who then called me outside into the hall.

Her interrogation concerning the circumstances leading up to my possession of the set and my denials and protestations and repeated declarations of innocence were to no avail and naturally led to the principal's office.

Mr. Benthul’s questioning was intensely more stern. My claim of no wrongdoing was as vehement.

As a dodge, I said they were given to me by Jimmy Greenstone, a year older and in the 5th grade. Mr Benthul, Mrs. Fuller and I then went to his classroom where he was called into the hall and shown the items. He truthfully denied ever having seen them before.

Believe it or not I was thoroughly surprised he didn't back me up!

I lasted a good two more hours in that office that afternoon. In the end I admitted my guilt and was told to bend over for punishment with a wooden paddle kept for such purposes in plain sight on the office wall.

I received several swats all the while crying "That's enough" between my sobbing gasps.

Well, it used to work with the a.m.

The spanking eventually stopped and Mr. Benthul informed me I had better not ever be caught doing anything like this again or the consequences would be entirely more severe.

But I did pilfer three more times that I can remember. But away from school.

I stole money out of the neighbor Jones girl's purse.

At the YMCA I found a little plastic wallet with nothing at all in it and refused to give it up or admit that I even had it to a nosy little girl.

And, I, amazingly, wangled open a sliding door of a playmates's house while he and his family were out of town and stole a toy detective's badge and holder/wallet from his room. Nothing else. I’d spied it there one afternoon when we were playing and knew it would be the best thing I’d ever had to play with.

I could be a real detective with that badge! Why, I could even detect burglaries and robberies and stuff.

I did this deed in broad daylight without breaking anything. I just wiggled the door and it slid open! I went in, went to his room, got the badge and left. Simple.

I was never caught.

I remember feeling quite guilty at the time; but when I made up stories in my mind (should I be asked how I'd acquired the loot) I always absolved myself of any real wrongdoing because I firmly believed there was no Commandment in the Ten that said "Thou shalt not lie". I didn't know what false witness meant, yet.

I wasn't a big church goer.

That pretty much summed up my career as a 10 year old burglar.

I did gave it up. I didn't like the guilt feelings, no matter how much I tried to justify my actions.

LESSON: Everyone seeks attention in their own way.

Chapter Five.

As I’ve said, I was sick a lot as a child. I was born with a bronchial tube too small leading into one lung.

I also had an inguinal hernia that was repaired when I was one.

I remember being in the hospital for that operation. I remember the pain when I stood up in my crib. And I remember being very confused about the pain. I knew it wasn't a regular sensation between my legs. I don’t actually remember being aware that I was going to have an operation, though.

I firmly believe children, even babies, understand far more than they're given credit for.

For instance, if I'd been told, in simple terms, that I had a hernia and that they were going to operate on it to make it better, I believe I would have been able to understand on a rudimentary level.

I had pneumonia countless times as a child and was in and out of almost every hospital in Dallas my first few years. I was told I had so much penicillin pumped into me I developed an immunity to it.

As I aged, I remember choosing sites in my butt for the daily injections.

Dr. Lewis Alday was my favorite doctor. He called me, and all his patients I later learned, Skipper.

I named my dog Skipper. There was only one of him.

As a result of the a.m.’s mental affliction (the Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome), I was in and out of school a lot during my early years, too. She'd keep me home on the basis of a sniffle. I'd go to school for a week, clear my sinuses a little too noisily one night, and be kept at home for a week or two.

Needless to say I never developed many people skills.

The a.m. would always be telling people how worried she was about my health and how she was always thinking of only me and my well being. And how she suffered with me through all of it.

Meanwhile, it was Gramma who sat with me for hours on end while I was bedridden. We played the usual games like checkers, "I Spy", "Old Maid" and "Go Fish". Day in and day out for weeks, throughout my growing up years.

Where'd the a.m. go? Who knows?

Out. She didn’t have a job. Her income came from properties she’d inherited or bought. One of which was 1308 Main Street, downtown Dallas, beneath the Adolphus Hotel.

Visiting?

I was never told.

She’d be gone for hours on end.

But, at the hospitals, or in the Doctor's offices, she'd put on a better show than the Metropolitan Opera.

She'd demand an extra bed be put next to mine so she could spend the night with me in the hospital.

But when they'd come in to drain my lungs, or do a procedure of some sort, or pump me full of drugs to cure whatever disease I was “suffering” from at the time, she was nowhere to be found.

She’d tell me she’d be back soon, and just leave.

I was a scared little kid who needed a soft bosom to snuggle into or a hand to hold but she was shopping or visiting or whatever she did while they "abused" me in the hospital.

If you think some medical treatment isn't a form of child abuse, you've got another think coming.

Here's the scenario. This woman said I was sick and needed treatment. They'd have to examine me to find out what was wrong and if nothing was immediately apparent, she’d demand they do tests. Any and all they, and she, could think of.

And she always thought of something.

Where else can you take a little child and do horribly painful scream-inducing procedures and experiments and get away with it? All at the whim of an over-protective parent.

A child doesn't know from "this is good for you...it'll make you feel better" and sheer terror. It's legalized torture. It may save a life, or prolong the time of torturing, but the mental scars remain.

Throughout my young life she would constantly remind me how "they wanted to cut out one of your lungs, but I wouldn't let them! You'd be dead today if they had done that to you. But I wouldn't let them! ‘Over my dead body’, I told them".

But often hours before a procedure was scheduled she'd be nowhere in sight: out of earshot of a terrified tyke crying his heart out as they shoved tubes into lung cavities to pump out the sputum.

It was a power trip. She could tell all her friends how she'd stood up for her little boy against the big mean doctors.

I never met a doctor who told me they'd considered removing a lung.

As I’ve said, they hadn’t described Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome, also called Facetious Disorder by Proxy, at the time. That came later in 1951 when a Dr. Richard Asher adopted it to explain self-induced illnesses.

That's what she had.

Von Munchausen's Syndrome is where people actually make themselves ill or invent illnesses to gain attention from the medical community.

The "By Proxy" form is where the illnesses are created by parents, most often by the mothers, in their children, so the parent can be considered exceptionally caring and a martyr for the constant concern and dedication to their long suffering wards.

Dr. Charles Max Cole was not only a neighbor but also my doctor from about my 10th year on. In a conversation with his wife in 1981 when I was 36, and at a point when I was having serious doubts and questions about my upbringing, I asked her: "Do you think I was really that sick all that much or do you think it was partly her imagination?"

She replied, "Oh, I'm sure a lot of it was in her head".

I mentioned this conversation to Dr. Cole a day or so later when I visited his office for a check-up; and, although he didn't respond, I could tell from his demeanor he was very unhappy about her response to me.

Lesson: Sometimes sickness really is all in their head.

Chapter Six.

I'm psychic.

When I was in the first grade at Mrs. Frybarger’s Kindergarten there was a girl in the 2nd who was the snottiest, most self-centered, obnoxious little girl in the whole world.

Bonnie Smith (no relation to Nancy) was rich, too, and lived in a big house with a lake (albeit a tiny one) in her front yard.

Anyone with a lake in their front yard automatically had to be snotty. What? They couldn’t keep it in back like the rest of the world? They had to show it off?

We were in the same carpool. Now, I never felt she was any better than I was and couldn't understand why she was in 2nd grade (obviously better) and I was only in the 1st.

Never mind she was a year older.

I used to tell her, "Someday I'll catch up with you!"

She always looked at me like I was nuts and went right on being her snooty little Miss Lakefront self.

To my glee she moved away at the end of that year.

Years later during the summer between my 4th and 5th grades, the phone rang.

I answered it and “Spanky” Benthul was on the line asking to speak to the a.m.. The instant I heard his voice I knew...knew, mind you...that I was going to skip the 5th grade. That's not so easy because I didn't know you could do such a thing.

But I knew it was about to happen to me.

It turned out I was partly right. I would go from the 4th to the 6th grade but I would have to study 5th grade subjects at home during the summer and convince “Spanky” I had learned sufficiently to allow the step up.

The a.m. taught me everything except mathematics, which were handled by Dr. Jim Cronin, professor of Greek and Latin at Southern Methodist University, a dear friend of the family and colleague of my godmother.

My reward for learning everything was a trip to California and Disneyland which had just opened to the world. Mind you, the trip was mainly so the a.m. could visit a dear childhood friend in Los Angeles, but it was reward enough for me.

We arrived at Disneyland in its second month of operation.

It was absolutely thrilling.

Lesson: Do your homework.

After the summer, and on the first day of sixth grade, I went to my assigned home-room. Sitting in the 1st chair of the 2nd row was a face I hadn't seen for years. I walked up to the girl and calmly said "I told you I'd catch up to you!" and went and sat down at the back of the classroom. When the teacher called the roll I just smiled and felt so self satisfied.

Until she heard my name, I don't think the lady of the lake had any idea who I was or what I was talking about, but I had fulfilled my pledge.

Later that day an announcement was made over the P.A. system that children living on one side of a particular street would continue to come to school there at Preston Hollow Elementary and the rest would start classes at a brand new school: George B. Dealey Elementary.

Bonnie was in the Dealey group.

In the entire time/space continuum, I had only one hour-long window of opportunity to find her and validate my prediction.

Another example of my "psychic" ability took place the second time I went to Europe, in 1966.

I was having a pint at a pub across from the Café Des Artistes, my usual hangout in Kensington in London, England. My group included a cute woman from Wales named Maureen. I was "chatting her up", as we used to say, telling her I was psychic and could read palms. She extended hers and I examined it slowly and professionally-like. Then I said, "Hmmm, you've had a cold recently".

"That's right! How did you know that? Where'd you see that?” she asked.

I pointed out some area of her palm that looked like it would have said she'd had a cold recently and she actually bought it as she wiped the smudge away.

Lesson: Sometimes you have to tell ‘em what they want to hear.

But, it got her attention and ultimately got her to come back to my bedsitter a block away for an in-depth reading.

A bedsitter is a one room flat, or sleeping room, in a house that's been modified. You sleep in the beds at night and sit on them as couches during the day. There's usually a hot plate for minor cooking and a shared bathroom down the hall.

Though they think differently, there is no toilet paper in all of England.

Maureen was on my roommate's bed and I was on the other. Candles around the room had been lit and the mood was set. I explained that I did readings from the vibes I pick up from the people I'm around, and commenced.

General things: some hits, some misses. Mostly baloney, but impressive enough to maintain her interest until something really did seem to "come to me".

I said she was loved by a fella, far away from London, but she didn't love him. His name began with "T" I said.

"Tex begins with T", she pointed out. It was my nickname in Europe.

"No, this guy's name is Terry", I told her. I was surprised at how sure I was of it, too.

Mind you, I'd just met the woman that night, not much more than an hour and a half earlier, and hadn't spoken to her at all on a personal level.

She gasped.

I took this as encouragement and went on: "But there's something wrong with him. It's as if he's blind or has a finger missing...something like that".

She gasped again. And explained that her ex-boyfriend was named Terry, he was back home in Carmarthen, Wales, and was deeply and madly in love with her but she "didn't want to know"-it was now over. Then: he was blind in one eye and had the top half of his thumb missing!

Even I was impressed.

We went back to the pub to tell of my success. We never consummated any relationship other than to become good friends.

Later, in the '80's I invented the fine art of reading lip imprints. I may not have actually invented it, but it came to me independent of any outside influences or study.

It began with Sharon Hendricks, my agent in Houston. She always had a huge Styrofoam cup of coffee on her desk in the morning with a humongous red lipstick imprint on the rim.

I used to teasingly pick up her cup, scrutinize the imprint, offer up a few Uhhh hmmmmm's and "I seeeee" and "Ahhhh Hahhhhhh".

She'd go "Whaaaaat?", but I never let on.

Then one day I went through the routine and she ventured that I was pulling her leg and that I really couldn't read anything in her lip prints. This time I picked up the cup, examined the print more closely and said,"You're on the verge of making one of the biggest decisions of your life right now, today actually, and I think you've just made it. You're moving."

She was flabbergasted. She had, indeed, just that morning, decided to move from Houston to Dallas.

Turns out I'm pretty good at lip prints, but have to be in a receptive mood for it to be effective.

Most people I've "read" say I'm right on the money.

Unfortunately, I can't comfortably see anything for myself. I can't see my future, clearly. If I do get some kind of premonition, I always second guess it and convince myself it's my imagination working overtime.

One premonition I have is this: Beware the "Third Day of Fire"!

I believe the 1st and 2nd Days of Fire were the 2 days we let loose the power of the atom on Japan. The 3rd time something like that happens will be the one to watch out for.

Armageddon?

LESSON: Trust you instincts.

Chapter Seven

The second time a phone call triggered a precognition came when Roger Brown, Gramma's son, called. As before, the instant I heard his voice saying "Is your (a.m.) there?" I knew I was going to Europe. It would be for my senior year of high school.

I arrived in Geneva the day after my l7th birthday. I had no idea what to expect stepping onto European soil for the first time. Books and pictures and lessons told of medieval knights and fancy clothes and ancient castles. Intellectually I knew Europe was as modern as America but I couldn't picture it in my mind.

I loved what I found: sameness yet marked difference. Things looked different, but they performed the same function; door handles, for instance, or electric sockets and plugs. Phones looked funny, too. And the cars were much smaller. America was still fond of the land yacht. And old people rode bicycles like little kids! And teenagers rode bicycles! Everybody rode bicycles, but some of them had little motors! These were all wonders to me, then.

The first few days I was there I stayed in the Hotel de la Paix on the bank of Lake Geneva. The annual "Fetes de Geneve" was going on at the time and it was a giant party till the wee hours of the night.

For my first meal in this land of gastronomical invention I asked the hotel concierge where I could find a good hamburger.

Another typical American tourist! He sniffed and said most people don't come to Switzerland for the hamburgers; but, rather, preferred to eat the local specialties instead.

I didn’t tell him I liked them with Swiss cheese.

They make a good bifsteak with garlic butter. Yeah, that’s Swiss. Only difference between a bifsteak and a beefsteak is about 1/2 an inch!

I liked their french fries, or pommes frites: translated means fried apples. Their fondue's terrific, too. The Beef Bourguignon was much to my liking.

I’m a Texan. We like meat.

I stayed the first 3 months with the Bouvier family. The father, Maurice, was a vice president of Swissair. Roger Brown had business dealings with him and had made the arrangements. There were two sons and a daughter.

I wore out my welcome with my independence, though. I would go into town on school nights and catch shows at the nightclubs. Though they never knew of the nightclubs, the Bouviers never said anything, but in retrospect I realize I must have scandalized them.

In 1962, the Swiss didn’t allow dating until the kids were 18; children were only admitted into G rated films, cartoon and newsreel theatres, and women weren’t allowed to vote until 1971.

I'd hear the three children in the room next to mine arguing in the evenings. They'd get pretty heated. At first I wrote it off to sibling spats.

One night I heard the little girl, Mirielle, shushing her brothers and I caught the phrase "Il ne comprends pas!" -He doesn't understand. Well, I understood that and from their tone that meant they were very unhappy with me.

I began making plans to move.

Before I did, I did a horribly embarrassing thing. I didn't speak French very well, yet, and one afternoon I inadvertently asked the wife to give me "a little fuck".

I thought I was asking for an innocent kiss on the cheek at a moment that leant itself to the playful gesture; only someone had played the ancient trick and told me the word for kiss was the word for "fuck”.

Lesson: Do your research; look it up!

Nothing was ever said about the incident and they were too polite to ask me to leave.

I moved to a little pension in Versoix, near my school: the College du Leman.

It was a bare bones place but the food in the restaurant downstairs was wonderful.

I ate "commes les pensionnaires". They had a special meal of the day that cost very little and I could put it on a tab to pay at the end of the month. The meals were simple, filling and delicious.

It was a working man's hotel. Lots of road crews, predominantly Italian and Swiss Italian, stayed there. It was one of two restaurants in the vicinity, so it enjoyed a healthy quota of the local's business as well.

The old timers were friendly and jovial. One old man loved Americans and always said a kind hello to me when I sat as his table. He once asked me how old I thought he was. He looked 45 or 50 and I said so. He was, in fact 66 years old. Veritably ancient to me, and a year younger than the a.m.

He asked me to punch him in the stomach as hard as I could. I wouldn't, but he insisted and when I gave him a friendly punch I found him to be made of steel! The man would have put Schwarzenegger to shame. And he still worked a full day on the crews!

It was fascinating watching them. I used to stand and watch one man with a pick-ax tear up the street. He would hit the tarmac with his ax and then sink the pick into the exact same spot time and again until it was deep enough to lift the section up. His precision was as practiced an accurate as any of today’s computerized manufacturing robots.

Lesson: Practice. Practice. Practice.

The winter of 1962/63 was the coldest in Europe in over 16 years. There was no heat in the rooms and ice would form on the inside of my windows to a thickness of about 1/2 – 3/4 of an inch overnight. I slept under 4 comforters it was so cold. Milk left out (there wasn't a refrigerator) would be frozen in the morning.

And I loved it.

I walked to school a lot of the time for one reason. I wanted to be able to say, "I used to walk to school for miles in the snow when I was a kid your age"!

Really. That's the only reason I did it.

It was cold! Sure I had friends who drove, or were driven, to school with whom I could have hitched rides easily. Too, there was a school bus bringing students from Geneva that passed by everyday. I could’ve caught a ride on it.

But it’s a tradition handed down from Adam...well, maybe not Adam since they didn’t have schools when he was a kid; but his kids probably said it. And I always wanted to be able to say it to my kids, too, and have!

The College du Leman was started by M. Clivaz and patterned after the famous International School in Geneva.

My schoolmates were from around the globe. They were the sons and daughters of corporate officials, diplomats, or delegates to the various international organizations headquartering in Geneva.

That’s the story I heard. The official story. But it seems there was a son of a high ranking American diplomat going to the International School who kept getting into serious trouble.

A lot of people with a lot of money got together and started the CDL to accommodate the errant youngster.

And also to tutor the sons and daughters of persons involved in, shall we say, more clandestine diplomatic endeavors throughout the world.

There were also assorted Middle Eastern princes and princesses as well as the offspring of movie stars and deposed dictators.

Juan Batista’s son, Jorge -we called him George- was a student there. He was always talking about how they'd take Cuba back from Castro some day and restore the land to its former glory.

It is said that when his family fled Cuba they took no clothes; only money in their luggage.

They had a lot of luggage.

In Geneva George had money to burn and he went through cars like most people go through paper cups. He liked to party heavily and was constantly wrecking them...and replacing them.

One night we packed three of us into his latest Mercedes two-seater and went to Lausanne to party. We must have hit half a dozen spots and George wouldn't let anyone pay for anything.

One place kicked us out because George wanted to be part of the floorshow with the naked girls. It was a great time that night and I was thankful we made it back in one piece.

Kate Burton, Richard Burton's daughter, went there. She was only 7 or so at the time. She had a brother with her, too, and it was always amusing to watch the chauffeur hold the door for the two as they toddled out for another day of classes.

I used to hang out in Geneva with other American kids some of whom went to the International School there. I hung with Wendy Condon, Richard -The Manchurian Candidate- Condon's daughter and her boyfriend John “Ippy” Dorrance, son and heir of the chairman of the board of Campbell's Soups.

The Frank Sinatra/Laurence Harvey version of Condon’s film had just been released and Wendy arranged for a special screening for several of us. The entire cinema was ours for the afternoon and we settled in for the thriller. Before it was over the management turned up the lights and told us “there had been an accident and they had not received the final reel”.

It turned out, we learned later, they did have the final reel, but it was too violent for us underagers to view.

Lesson: Sometimes you don’t get the whole picture.

It may be interesting to know Sinatra purchased the rights to the film shortly after its release and unequivocally withheld its circulation until 1987.

President Kennedy had just been assassinated and some thought Sinatra had curtailed it as a sign of respect but there is also speculation that United Artists studio was withholding his share of the earnings.

A few months after the truncated screening Ippy and I flew off a cliff in his Porsche Carrera in Provins, France about 40 miles outside of Paris.

It was the beginning of Fall and we were at our usual hangout, the Movenpick Restaurant in Geneva. On a lark, Ippy asked if I wanted to go to Paris. I said yes. We didn't pack anything, we just left.

The trip through the mountains in his super sports car was thrilling. The views were spectacular and his handling of the machine was awe inspiring. He knew how to drive the precision car well and pushed it to its limits whenever he could.

We were still in the mountains winding through the woods when, in the distance, we spotted a "deux cheveaux"...a small Citroen...parked on the shoulder of the road directly in front of us. As we approached, it pulled forward a bit and revealed a startled young woman squatting down relieving herself.

Europeans hadn’t come by the modern concept of road side rest stops. They still subscribed to the old “when ya gotta go, just go!” philosophy.

When the car moved, she saw us bearing down on her and shrieked and hopped along trying to keep up with her playful boyfriend.

She looked a little pissed off.

Later that night we were coming out of the mountains down a straight away. We were doing about 100 miles an hour and there was a sharp 90 degree curve to the left ahead in the distance.

Ippy began the breaking sequence and down shifted in preparation for the curve.

Then we hit the railroad tracks which sent the front wheels bouncing. You don't need to be a physicist to know that bouncing wheels hold very little traction; and, instead of curving to the left, we continued in a straight line.

One of the last things I remember was seeing a concrete pylon and a huge tree coming at us. The tree whizzed past only inches from my shoulder, to the right.

All of a sudden we were airborne and in the headlights I saw a chicken coop in the field dead ahead of us.

Time now was slowed to a crawl. I remember thinking I was real glad we didn't hit that tree; and we were real lucky we didn't hit the pylon on the other side of us, either, and that there were going to be a bunch of dead chickens in a few seconds cause, at this speed, we were going to land right on top of them.

The next thing I remember was Ippy yelling in my right ear from outside the car, "Tex! Tex! Where are we Tex? Why are we in water, Tex? I'm in water, Tex, why am I in water?"

Groggily I told him, "We're going to Paris."

"Why are we going to Paris, Tex?” he kept asking. I didn't know right then. Mainly, because we’d never had a reason in the first place. We’d just left.

All I knew was the pain in my nose and my back was killing me.

It was the first time I was ever knocked out. I don't remember hitting anything, but I was surprised we never made it to the chicken coop.

Instead we went straight down about 20 feet and hit the far bank of a small creek. In hitting, I was thrown forward striking the rear-view mirror with the bridge of my nose and snapping the mirror off the windshield.

I had been slouched down in the seat and the thrusting of my body forward and back smashed my back down into the seat causing me immense pain which convinced me I had broken it.

The ambulance came and the workers were great getting us out. One guy got into the car with me and kicked out the windshield and helped them lift me out through it.

They carried me up the steep bank and loaded me up; and then they talked very seriously amongst themselves for a few moments before asking me to, please, bend my legs a little: they couldn't close the door to the ambulance and it was illegal for them to travel with the patient's compartment open.

I was happy to comply.

French ambulances are not built for 6'2" Texans.

Lesson: Learn to act shorter.

At the hospital my French was better than Ippy's and I did most of the talking. After we both tried to explain what had happened they asked me what my problems were.

I told them that aside from a little broken back I thought my nose was broken.

The doctor looked at my nose very carefully and told me it wasn't broken, just bruised. It would be fine.

Then he asked me to stand. I told him I couldn't stand because my back was broken. He insisted.

After agonizingly getting off the gurney, I stood. It was excruciatingly painful to do, but I did it and was grateful that it’s height from the floor was set at waist level.

French waist level.

"Non! C’nest pas casse. Your back's not broken." he announced, “You wouldn't have been able to stand up if it was!"

French diagnostic medicine: questionably, arguably, deniably the best in the civilized world.

And don’t get me started on detached septums.

Most major newspapers in Europe carried the story of the two American students who'd survived "Dead Man's Curve".

Some ran pictures of the demolished car which looked worse than it really was due to the rescue crew's breaking out the window. We were deluged with calls from friends and relatives from all over the world. Ippy got most of the calls but I held my own.

The a.m. never called.

We stayed in the hospital for three days before being released.

Ippy had been carrying a pistol in the trunk of his car and the gendarmes were very interested in that. We had to pay a visit to their headquarters before we would be allowed to travel on to Paris. He convinced them of who he was and how he was a possible target for kidnapping and that he carried the weapon as personal protection. Everyone knows Campbell's soups and they accepted his story and bade us safe journey.

It wasn't until 1985 that I learned I had, indeed, fractured my back in the accident.

I went to a doctor after having hurt my back shooting a commercial in Houston and he found I had suffered a compression fracture. He also found an old compression fracture of a vertebrae in my lower back...right where I'd hurt it in France!

I never sued Ippy, though, or asked for any money. Ippy's family paid the hospital bills.

I quite possibly could have made a fortune in a settlement.

A month or so later I returned to the States. I sat next to his mother during the Geneva to Zurich leg of the flight. She was more than gracious to me and even handed me the bag just before I vomited.

“You’re looking a little green there,” she’d said.

Lesson: Nothing trumps class.

We were on the same flight back to the States, but she was in 1st class and I was in coach. She made a point to say goodbye to me when we landed.

In Geneva, another place we used to hang out was Joe's American Bar.

Joe, a Swiss, spoke unaccented American English and catered to an eclectic mix of American and international students. His bar was a cozy little hideaway down a stairwell on the main drag, the Rue du Rhone.

In the back room he had a great pinball machine that, with the right touch, would ring up fantastic scores if you caught the ball on the clicker mechanism. If you could catch it in the right place you could vibrate the machine just enough to force the ball to advance the clicker over and over.

It was a sign of considerable skill and a badge of honor to be able to sustain the shaking over an extended period of time without tilting.

The U. S. Marines assigned to the American Mission in Geneva hung out there too... and there was some serious drinking going on of an evening when those guys were there.

One of the marines was Bill Hugg.

In 1969, 7 years later, when I was working as a barker at "Coke's" in San Francisco's North Beach, Bill came roaring by in a Cadillac convertible.

I was standing out front on a beautiful afternoon touting the fine looking completely naked women who danced within to any and all passersby. Bi11 recognized me about a block after he passed me, slammed on the brakes and parked.

All I noticed was some nut slamming on his brakes and storming my way down the sidewalk.

He yelled, "Tex!" at me and I knew it was someone from my days in Europe, the only place I was called that.

Small world, isn't it?

We reminisced about old times. He let me in on how pissed off everyone was at me for barfing my guts out the window of the Marine's Villa the night I'd visited there.

It was the night a particularly good crop of new Beaujolais wine had come out. The regulars at Joe's attempted to drink up the entire bottling in that one night.

Not wanting our partying to end, a group of folks and I had been invited to the villa to continue the festivities after Joe's closed.

On the way we'd almost been drowned when whoever was driving the cramped Volkswagen bug we were packed into aimed directly at Lake Geneva and almost made it into the drink.

I reminded Bill it was I who'd yelled at just the last minute and saved the whole group from certain death, not to mention the security of the American Embassy.

I told him I thought that more than made up for the fact I was drunker than a skunk that night; and, anyway, since the bathroom was occupied I just found the nearest window to hang out of and released my stomach's contents into the garden below: organic fertilizer.

That's what had upset the guys in the villa: I'd missed the garden! Turns out I drenched the Marine's official VW Van along with the wall of the villa itself without moistening the veggies at all! And it had been Bill who had the duty the next day -meaning he'd had to clean it up!

I bought the drinks at Coke's and settled the score.

It’s a small world!

Lesson: Carry your own bags.

Six years after that chance meeting in San Francisco I was living in Amarillo, Texas trying to be a great and famous Concert Promoter. I was bringing two country groups to town: Jerry Reed and the Austin based group: Asleep at the Wheel.

It turned out the manager of the Civic Center was Carolyn Hugg. Bill's sister!

Bill uncannily breezed through town for a brief visit with her and called me when she told him I was there, before heading on to points unknown.

Chapter Eight

Yeah, I was going to be a great and famous producer and I had the bleeding ulcers to prove it, too.

I'd been feeling terrible for quite awhile in 1974/75. It got to the point where I didn't have any energy at all.

I thought I was coming down with a major case of the flu or something. I'd eat steak and liver till the cows came home and it didn't seem to do me any good. I stayed listless.

I finally went to the doctor and he said I looked a little anemic. I'd never been anemic in my life and said so; but he wanted to do some tests, anyway, and drew blood.

A few days later he told me, "If you'd waited another month or two you'd have bled to death", because my red blood cell count was way down. Way way down. He wanted to do some more tests.

I checked into Amarillo's St. Anthony's Hospital for a full G-I exam: barium shakes and enemas!

Not to be confused with a kinky sugar addict’s favorite fantasy.

The shake wasn't so bad: flavored with so much vanilla I thought I was drinking a wimpy chalk-lit shake!

The doctors let me watch on the little screen as my gulps traveled their route through my stomach and out the little hole in my duodenum.

But they weren't through, yet. There was still la piece de resistance: the barium enema.

If you've never had one, it's a simple affair.

First an ugly nurse comes by early in the morning and has you lie on your stomach while she gives you a regular soapy enema.

Why is it always an ugly one that does that?

When that's flushed out of you she comes back and gives you one while you're on your right side and yet another one while you're on your left side each followed by hurried little trips to the john in between.

She tells you they'll be ready in X-ray soon and to sit tight.

Ha! Sit tight, indeed.

I was sitting thusly when they came for me. I told them I wasn't flushed out yet. They asked if I'd been given the series of enemas. I said yes but they didn't get everything. They laughed. They explained the professionalism of the nurses, ugly and otherwise, that do that sort of thing to earn their well deserved paycheck and that they had gotten everything that was in there because nothing remains after three attempts.

I told them thorough was fine and good, but I'd eaten sweet corn for lunch the day before and there weren't any little yellow kernels in the toilet when the highly professional soap artist had done finished with her ministrations.

They looked at me quizzically. They looked at each other quizzically. They shrugged their quizzical shoulders and sent me back for more soap suds up my butt.

When a cute nurse wheeled me back into X-ray I announced I was now free of any corn whatsoever and to proceed...and do their worst.

Lesson: It pays to be corny.

Mind you, my intestines had had quite a busy morning by now. I don't know if intestines have a mind of their own, but mine were a bit fussy when a young intern jammed an enema nozzle up my rear and started to pump up the little balloon collar/attachment surrounding it that forms a nice tight seal inside one’s plumbing.

Once it's inflated and secure they begin to force feed barium laced stuff (unflavored) into you and monitor its progress on the little screen.

I love to watch.

Pump pump pump, force force force, in goes the barium.

And a little track lights up on the screen showing where it's been and where it’s currently heading.

Now, the human intestinal tract is constantly moving with a force known as peristalsis. Peristaltic action is the methodical squeezing and releasing along a line of the muscles of the walls of the intestines, not unlike the squeezing of a cow's teat during milking to force the milk out of the udder into the pail.

I refuse to insert any joke about how the action of milking a cow’s teat udderly pales in the face of intestinal contractions.

Peristalsis squeezes the day's rations toward the inevitable end over a period of time and, hopefully, a toilet.

But intestines are a one-way street vis-à-vis peristalsis. Things enter from the top and expell at the bottom.

Unless you live south of the Equator and you’re upside down.

When this young "Dr. Kildare" introduced my barium delight into my fussy butt he was toying with a force of nature that was not yet ready to reverse itself that day at the whim of a team of physicians bent on finding internal leakage.

I began to cramp. "Cramp-up" is what the attending physician in charge called it: "Don't push!” he shouted. "It'll pass!" he assured me. "You're just cramped up. It'll pass! Don't push!" he was pleading. I made note of the fact that he was also standing a good distance away from me at the time.

There on the screen I saw the barium in my intestine, then in my rectum, and then out my rectum, all over our young "Dr. Kildare" -who had failed to follow his mentor’s lead.

Oh, it was a joyous day in Amarillo that day! At least for me and my intestines.

And another intern successfully survived his “rite of passage”.

Lesson: Sometimes you have to distance yourself from your work to admire it.

They held me in a state of awe after that. They said they'd never seen anyone blow that little balloon out their butt that forcefully after it had been securely pumped up.

It had taken them a full 45 minutes to clean the intern and the equipment.

I knew they were impressed. And I heard them exclaim, ere they walked out of sight, “What an Asshole!”

I'd ended up in Amarillo on a whim. My 3rd wife, Jeanette, our daughter Stephanie, and our 8 dogs Pooh and Spot and their 6 puppies were making our way from Carlsbad, CA to Pittsburgh, PA where I'd been hired as a fill-in disc jockey for weekends and vacations, on WEEP-AM, a 50,000 watt clear-channel country-western radio station that covered the Midwest.

Jeanette had grown up in Amarillo and her parents still lived there. We stopped at their house for the night to get cleaned up and rested before continuing on the next morning. It was Friday and we were supposed to be there by Monday.

After bathing and eating we went to watch Jeanette's sister, Dorothy and her country band, play at some little dive on Amarillo Boulevard (the old Route 66).

It was exactly the kind of honky tonk you'd expect: just a hole in the wall with beat up pickup trucks in the parking lot and a smattering of cowboys and cowgirls nursing Lone Star Longnecks and twirling around counter clockwise on the sawdust covered dance floor.

I'd always detested country western music; but, since I was about to be playing a lot of it for a major station, I figured I'd better check some of it out.

I had such a good ol’ time that I asked Jeanette if she minded if we stayed here. The thought of coming back home appealed to her so she agreed and I called WEEP's program director the next day to appologize for not being able to come on up. He wasn't too happy about it at all.

The money he’d offered wasn’t much more than minimum wage and he didn’t offer more of an incentive so I didn’t lose any sleep over my decision.

We rented an apartment in the same building her sister, Judy Clark, was living in. On Monday I began job hunting and got hired a few days later as the booth announcer/sound technician for KGNC-TV, the NBC affiliate.

That job lasted 14 months and ranked at the time as the world record holder for longest running unbroken employment period of my life

Jeanette had been making cool hippy-style shirts for me for a couple of years. They were pullover shirts with big collars and flared cuffs, full of colorful designs and prints. Flamboyant would be a good term to describe them...especially by Amarillo standards.

Dale Scarberry, the production director of KCNC-TV, told me a story about when he hired me. I'd been called in to audition and was given several spots to record as a demonstration of my announcing skills: a few 60 second spots, and 30's and 10 seconders. One of them was for Pappagallo Shoes and was written in an alliterative style accentuating the P's. I breezed through it and the others and was told they'd call me.

The next day they offered me the job at another ridiculously low salary. I took it.

Lesson: Work gooooood.

Before I arrived my first day Scarberty told me, the word spread through the station they'd hired a new announcer but that he carried a purse! They weren’t too sure what to expect.

Luckily they liked me when I showed up my first day so there was never any problem.

I pointed out the old pair of blue jeans Jeanette had cut the legs from and sewn up could carry more stuff than most brief cases. And, they were important jeans: I had run for Mayor of Dallas in them.

After I'd been there a few months Dale began dropping hints I should wear a tie. My shirts were loud enough, he told me, but this was a professional TV station that had an image to project and a tie would lend itself to a more dedicated team player attitude.

I protested vigorously that I was always in the "announce booth" and nobody ever saw me, so what difference did it make. The technical crew didn’t wear ties.

They persisted in insisting.

I ultimately acquiesced.

I showed up with one of the loudest shirts Jeanette had made for me, complete with a matching-fabric tie neatly tied at the buttonless neck. I wore it all day. No one said a word.

Ever again.

Lesson: If the announcer is unseen, is he wearing a tie?

And it was the last time I wore a tie as long as I was wearing Jeanette's handiwork.

Months later, when it became possible that a noon talk show and the coveted "Dialing For Dollars Movie" host jobs were coming up I began wearing the appropriate suits and sport coats.

And ties.

I had visions of finally being able to call Janis Joplin, but she was long in the great House of Blues club the sky.

Frank Mitchell, the other announcer, got the positions. Although I didn't recognize his appointment as an affirmation of his seniority at the station, I let him have his chance before I began a concerted effort to wrest the shows away from him.

I was going to be a great and famous talk show and movie host.

His interviewing techniques lacked flair. He didn't know what questions to ask and had no concept of getting to the meat of an interview in the short time available. He stammered and hemmed and hawed his way through the 30 minute program grabbing at anything he could think of, whether it had anything to do with the subject at hand or not.

Over a period of time most inexperienced interviewers can get better by watching tapes of their work and being critical of their mistakes and strong points.

Frank's hosting of the Dialing For Dollars Movie was perfunctory to say the least. He never paid attention to the movie of the day and was completely unaware that television was a perfect medium for a live host to entertain an audience during the short commercial breaks.

He hosted the shows for a few months before he was offered, and accepted, a job in another market.

I was given my shot and immediately turned the noon-time talk show into "J.David Moeller's Let's Talk About It".

I didn't mind the little old lady craft fair and jellyfests as guests but I no longer wanted their ilk to be the main staple of the program. I wanted soft news and interesting interviews presenting ideas and food for thought, not biscuits. I wanted entertainment, too.

I brought on speakers like one from the Department of Energy to tell, in lay terms, just what this oil embargo we were experiencing for the first time was all about, in terms we could all relate to.

I brought artists on to talk about the surprisingly large community of painters and sculptors who lived in the Texas Panhandle.

I brought on entertainers appearing in the nightclubs around town.

There was a pair Australian twins performing music and comedy at one of the hotels in town and I asked them on after catching their act.

They had one routine that involved a bullwhip. They were highly skilled with it and, when the right moment came along during the show, I asked if they could whip a cigarette out of my lips as I’d seen them do in their act.

The request was unplanned and it was a live show.

They looked at each other and agreed.

I wasn’t the least bit nervous. This was entertainment! If it went well I’d be the talk of both the viewers. Even if it went bad ratings would soar through the roof and I’d become the town’s first noseless talk show host.

I could just imagine the crew in the control room placing their bets.

We stood up and I put a cigarette in my mouth. The usual “Target” eased me into a slight lean and reminded me to stay quite still.

The “Whipper” laid out his whip and took his measurement.

We were fortunate to be running a two camera show so I felt assured all the action would be captured. Scarberry was an accomplished director.

When the young whipper snapper was ready his brother gave me a quick pat on the back and stepped away.

The whip’s tip had been on the studio floor in front of me. Now it was slowly sliding back and I caught a glimpse of it being raised through the air and, suddenly, it was coming at my face faster than the speed of sound.

“Pop!”

It literally broke the sound barrier right at my lips and half of the cigarette fell to the floor; shredded tobacco leaves flew everywhere.

Dale had done an excellent job of catching the whip hitting the cigarette. I could hear the ratings jump up a few notches.

Lesson: If you want to be talked about, you have to take chances.

I'd met another guest I had on 12 years before, when I ran away from home back in Dallas.

It had been New Year's Day of 1961 and I was running away to Des Moines, Iowa to find a girl I'd fallen passionately in love with at a Christmas party over the holidays. For some reason I thought everything in my life would be perfect if I found her.

Her name was Sally Guibberson and she lived on the street behind the famous Salisbury Castle. She told me it had been meticulously taken apart and then imported stone by stone from England and reassembled in Des Moines.

Turns out it wasn’t. It was merely modeled after the King’s castle in Salisbury, England, but I didn’t care. I was in love with Sally.

On the way to Des Moines this fine chilly New Year’s Day, while driving through the southern part of Oklahoma, I picked up a hitchhiker.

She wasn’t actually hitchhiking; it was more that she was walking along subtly looking like she needed a ride.

She wore a dark blue sweat suit with the name “Peace Pilgrim” emblazoned in large white letters on its front and back.

On the drive she told me she was on a mission to walk across the country until mankind learned the way of Peace. She said she never asked for anything: housing, food, clothing, but did accept the kindness of strangers.

She was on her way to Norman, Oklahoma to appear on a radio show. I didn’t have much cash but gave her a few dollars for a meal. She thanked me and I drove off rather amazed by her dedication.

Now, twelve years later, I'd received a post card addressed to the Public Service Director of my station saying she would be in the area and would be available to appear on my show. What a windfall of coincidence and fate.

It was fun for me to see her again. The first time I'd met her she was just some nice old lady -in her early 50's at least- traipsing around the countryside saying we should seek peace at all times.

Now, she looked exactly the same and still wore the track suit with “Peace Pilgrim” on it.

Her name was Mildred Norman and she’d begun her walk when she was 44. Over the years she met with the Dalai Lama and Maya Angelou and Katherine Kubler-Ross and other luminaries. She had a country wide -if not international- network of supporters who put her up and fed and clothed her along her way. And all of it was unsolicited by her.

She died in 1981, but she was one who made an impression on the world, albeit her mission’s goal was unrealized.

As for Miss Guibberson of Des Moines, she and her family were out of town. Seems I'd forgotten she'd said they were going to Florida for the New Year's holiday and wouldn't be back in Iowa for a few weeks after that.

So here I was in snow blanketed Des Moines, Iowa with less than twenty dollars and nowhere to stay.

I hadn’t thought about the logistics of what to do after I got there –did I just expect her parents to take me in as a member of her family?

But I had plenty of gumption, if that’s what you want to call it.

Her next door neighbor, when I rang his bell, stammered with a stunned look on his face that they all had the flu in his house and he couldn't let me stay with them till the Guibbersons returned.

I’d actually knocked on their door and asked!

Lesson: You don’t always get what you want.

To the “Dialing For Dollars Movie” I brought innovation -by Amarillo standards- and comedy. During the breaks I always related visually somehow to the scene we'd just come from in the film.

The Dialing For Dollars contest is known as the count and the amount: when called, players would have to know the number of phone numbers we’d counted and the amount of the current jackpot.

From a hopper I’d draw a small slip cut from the phonebook, count up or down (it rotated daily) the assigned limit of numbers to chose a player.

A postcard was drawn from the thousands sent in, I call them and ask for the “count and amount”. If they knew it, they won it!

I also brought special effects to the breaks so that when I was on the air the audience would see television being used for its visual capabilities.

Ernie Kovacs I wasn’t, but it brought both my shows to #1 in their time slots.

Lesson: Give ‘em something worth watching.

Chapter Nine

Jeanette was my 3rd wife.

Number 1 was Julie Lambert, eldest and most beautiful daughter of Henry and Grace Lambert of the Lambert Landscape Co. of Dallas: the largest landscaping company in the Southwest.

Hoi-polloi.

High society.

Her aunt and uncle, Eleanor and Joe Lambert, were the society players of the family (Grace and Henry stayed in the background) and used to tease her they'd decorate the ladder for her elopement so they wouldn't have to pay for her debutante ball.

Julie and I met one afternoon shortly after my homecoming from Europe in 1963.

I was hitchhiking home from a downtown movie one afternoon and Pam Gorman, a friend from my Highland Park High School days (Jayne Mansfield went there –alas, before my time), picked me up.

In the front seat with her was the cutest red-head I'd ever seen in my life. She had style, sophistication, smarts galore, class and beauty all wrapped up in the loveliest package imaginable. She was bubbly and alive. She was intelligent above all else and I fell in love with her instantly.

We flirted. I asked her out and to my glee she agreed.

Her family was in the process of moving from a palatial mansion in the old part of Highland Park across the street from its City Hall, into a new home across from the Dallas Country Club.

It was the only time I saw the place, when I arrived to pick her up. Just like in the movies, Julie made a grand entrance coming down the stairs into the entry hall.

I haven't a clue what movie we saw or what else we did on the date but we went parking afterward. I was 18 and she was 16. I had just graduated from the College du Leman and she was a freshman.

I asked her, after a few good innocent smooches if she had a boyfriend. She said no. I said, "You do now!" And we became inseparable, at least when she wasn't in school.

For three months we were a major item in each other's lives.

I'd gotten a job working as a weekend cameraman at WFAA-TV, the Dallas ABC affiliate. It was a handle on a possibly lucrative career in TV production. But, I was pretty clumsy with the cameras.

I bobbled.

My job was manning the weather camera on the news broadcast. It was simple enough: I'd point at the weather dials the weatherman used in those days. All I had to do was tilt the camera down the line: temperature, wind speed/direction, barometric pressure. But I'd bobble. What should have been a smooth tilt was shaky with a slight wobbly pan in the middle.

Moving the camera up and down is a "tilt" and moving it left or right is a "pan". "Pedestal Up" and "pedestal down" mean bring the camera body up or down on its base without altering the shot.

One can pedestal up and tilt down while panning right during a dolly left if one were so inclined, but all I had to do was tilt down, with a slight pause on each dial as the weatherman read the conditions.

I had no intention of becoming a great and famous cameraman, though. I knew in my heart I wanted to be a "talent" as the on-air personalities were known.

I also knew I wasn't going to be an on air talent at WFAA-TV.

For some reason I decided to move to Tucson.

So, I cooked up some story and quit. I don't think they believed it but they let me go. Years later when I re-applied for another job there I was turned down. No reason was given.

Why the hell I picked Tucson I couldn't tell you. But I did. And I left little Julie behind.

There was a popular TV commercial slogan that said "Move your sinuses to Arizona". Perhaps that gave me the idea.

It was February, 1964. I got a job as a cameraman at KGUN-TV but it only lasted a few weeks because I came down with the flu and missed a lot of work.

There was a new hamburger chain selling 15 cent burgers and I ate lots of them to stay alive at the time. They were the best tasting things around, too. Some place called McDonald's.

They had just opened a location in Tucson. I couldn't wait to tell my friends back in Dallas about how good these cheap burgers were. And filling, too.

I'd rented an apartment on Swan Avenue off Speedway, one of the main drags.

One day a young Univ. of Arizona student named Brent Stein came by asking if any mail had come for him: he was the former tenant. There was some, I gave it to him and he invited me to a beer bust later that night at one of his friend's apartments. I wasn't much of a beer drinker and felt very out of place.

Bored, I left.

Brent would go on to be an iconoclastic leader of the radical hippie movement in Dallas. He was not a “team player” where the “establishment” was concerned and he became a target of their wrath.

He was arrested though not convicted several times for various deeds. Finally he was busted for marijuana possession when the police found a “roach”, the tiny nub end of a joint, in his car and he was astonishingly sentenced to ten years and a day in prison. The “day” meant he wouldn’t be eligible for early release.

He served about a year of his sentence before a petition demonstrating the public’s outcry against its severity and unjustified term for possession of little more than a few seeds resulted in its commutation.

Lesson: They’ll gittcha in Dallis!

Not long after arriving in Tucson I met a guy named Richard who was a DJ at one of Tucson's radio stations. He was into photography and when he learned I was pretty good at figure photography we found we had a little in common.

He and I decided we'd be great and famous figure photographers. I found a woman who didn't mind undressing in the middle of the surrounding desert and the three of us went to work.

It wasn't a sexual thing with the girl. We shot some pretty nifty shots at a little "oasis" I'd found while exploring out in the middle of nowhere: a little stream flowing over some picturesque rocks surrounded by ancient Saguaro Cacti and sand...lots of sand.

One day Richard got us a paying job: photographing a corpse as it lay "in state" in a chapel.

It was my first up close look at a dead person. To this day I could swear the eyes moved.

We snapped the geezer from every possible angle. Twice, maybe three times. Richard took the film for developing.

I never saw the prints because about that time I was getting lonely for Julie and decided to head back to Dallas. I left a bunch of equipment and files and belongings with Richard and his wife and headed back to Texas, but I lost track of them over the next couple of years and never got my things back.

Amongst them were two photographs I had taken on November 22, 1963.

I’d returned from Europe November 7th and lived at home with the a.m. but it was intolerable being around her.

"You're just waiting for me to die, aren't you? Well, you just might have a surprise waiting for you young man", she used to go on and on.

On that fateful day I'd gotten her to front me money for my own apartment, which prompted the daily tirade. I was in the process of renting a nice one around noon when the manager said they'd need time to work up the lease for me and why didn't I go get some lunch; the papers would be ready for my signature when I got back.

I headed for my favorite spot: Kip's Big Boy Restaurant on the corner of Lemmon Avenue and Inwood Road near Love Field Airport, right in the middle of Dallas’ near northwest side.

When I got to the intersection there was a massive traffic jam. Cars were backed up 4 or 5 deep in all 6 lanes on Inwood. I figured there was a hell of an accident up ahead because the cars in front of me were empty: their drivers had, obviously, abandoned them to see the carnage.

I grabbed my camera off the seat next to me and made my way to the intersection. There was angst to be photographed here. Maybe I could sell some of the shots if they came out good, I thought. Everyone loves angst.

Nothing! No wreck. No wringing of hands or shards of glass and metal strewn about.

What was the big fuss?

I looked to my right and saw a line of black limousines coming towards us. All this for a funeral? I wondered. Big deal.

And then I noticed the two people in the back seat of the first car coming toward me. Jackie Kennedy was looking right at me and waving.

I got that shot of them as they drew even with me. You could just barely make out my reflection in the side of the car in the final print. I got off another shot as they passed that clearly showed both the President and his First Lady.

I was impressed and a bit full of myself. I knew they were in town but I had no idea they were still in the neighborhood. I thought they'd come and gone by now.

I went into Kip's, and chatted with other customers who'd been watching the caravan. It was a big deal to have the President of the United States in town.

I ate my regular meal which consisted of a Big Boy sandwich, an order of fries and a hot fudge sundae (hold the nuts) for dessert.

Full, again, I went back to sign the lease.

When I walked in everyone was in tears.

"Kennedy's just been shot!"

Those two photos were in the stuff I left with Richard and his wife in Tucson. I can't remember their names and over the years people can throw away a lot of clutter, so I’m positive everything’s gone. I’d told them I’d be back in a few weeks after I got some money from the a.m.

I drove straight through to get back to Dallas and my Julie. I think I made it in about 14 hours.

It was dawn when I roared down Mockingbird Lane blowing my horn as I passed her house. I knew she was asleep but I fantasized she'd know it was me.

Turns out she didn't hear me. Didn't matter. I was back and we were on again. And brother were we on!

We saw each other daily, just like before but more intensely. And our smooching became more intense as well.

We weren't having sex yet but we got rather familiar with each other physically.

She was a daring young woman. She liked discovering her sexual side and since I wasn't all that much more experienced, I was enjoying it too. My previous experiences consisted of basically getting quickly laid. I wasn't necessarily having any love relationships with the women at the time. We called it “making out”.

It was recreation, not love. It was Europe, where sexual activity carried considerably less of an onus.

My first time was with Penelope Needham-Clark, a tall British/Kenyan with reddish long hair and impressive breasts. I'd met her while living in a villa with a bunch of guys in Vevey, Switzerland not far from my school, the College du Leman, in Versoix.


It was a "party" house. A couple of Americans, 2 or 3 Aussies, and a couple of Brits lived there. Friday and Saturdays would be party days and the place would rock with wine and song and good hearted, heathy debauchery.

Three women in particular came to these parties regularly. They lived together in Geneva, 8 or 10 miles down the road: Penny, Judy Bell, and Eva.

After the party wound down for the night they liked to sleep with me. Sadly, not all at once. They rotated.

See, I have always taken "no" for an answer. We'd engage in a certain amount of intense making out and petting; but when they said to stop, I'd stop.

It bothered the other guys no end when they found this out because they felt they were missing out on "sure-things" by letting the girls sleep with me. It actually led to my leaving the house.

And moving in with the three ladies!

Lesson: Sometimes accepting NO means getting YES…sooner than you think.

“Yes” happened one night while I was in bed reading my 1st James Bond novel, "Goldfinger". It was April/May of '63 and 007 was just becoming the popular read. I'd had a date with my regular casual girlfriend from school, Jacquie.

Jacquie and I had spent that afternoon in a rowboat on Lake Geneva, mildly petting and necking. We were both virgins and by the time I got home I was rather hot and bothered.

Penny came home from her date and appeared to be unfulfilled, herself. She, however, was more experienced than I by a factor of once.

Now, Penny and I were not unaccustomed to each others sexuality.

She and I had spent plenty of time locking lips and generally exploring each other's erogenous zones.

She had a slightly disturbing habit of sucking the devil out of my tongue. She'd suck so voraciously it would actually swell up in my mouth. It took some time to subside. But who was talking at a time like that, anyway?

Yeah, I thought about it...what if she did the same with...but if the effect on my tongue was any indication of the end result...I would be considerably more uncomfortable than the evident fantasy result might allow.

That night she came and sat on the edge of the bed and draped her arm over my hips. I was on my back and my penis was directly below her armpit and it twitched. I tried to ignore it.

Joan Goren, my sock hop partner, came to mind.

Penny didn't make any move to indicate she'd noticed anything. Put Penny was a tease. She asked what I was reading. I showed her the book. I was engorging as we spoke. She was definitely aware of this by now. She sat up and then laid her elbow right down on my penis. I wriggled away and the play began: she was trying to "spear" me!

By now I was as erect as I was ever going to be and we silently decided this was the time to consummate our roommateship.

I'd had other evening's of attempting the sex act with a few other women. Unfortunately, I'd never been schooled in the correct procedures involving insertion.

I knew what went where, I just didn't know you could use your hands to get it there. Those early attempts were mainly a lot of thrusting and asking, "Is it in?" followed by a disappointed, "No!”

This would continue for a few thrusts till I would become frustrated by the whole thing and give up.

It became apparent the young ladies didn’t know they could use their hands either.

After a few of these encounters I began to think I was impotent. They should have covered the mechanics a little more thoroughly in P.E. class when they showed us those stupid films.

On this night I decided Penny and I would do the deed or I'd die trying. I was going to use my hands or a shoe horn if need be, anything to get inside her and begin what I knew would be a wonderful thing.

After a bit of the now unnecessary making out and foreplay I was on top of her. I placed my penis in my palm and pointed my thumb at her vagina. I brought my hand up to her and inserted my thumb.

At least part of me was having a good time. I figured to make a track and slide along it to get inside.

It worked! Eureka! Stop the presses! How La Lu Lia!

I was having sex! I was screwing! I was doing the bad thing! The good thing! The dirty deed! My cherry was popping! The little man in the boat had a buddy! Good heavens to Betsy, I was getting laid!

"Oh My God! This feels good!” was all I could think at the moment.

It didn't take long and both of us came, thunderously. I was a very happy, relieved and an undeniably non-impotent fella.
But with Julie, she was the whole world to me. Although we were head over heels in love, we remained chaste.

Her mother, Grace, didn't like me one bit, though. I never could read her father. I'm not too sure he liked me too much either, but it seemed he had more things on his mind than to worry about me. He deferred to Grace.

They were an odd couple. I never once saw any emotional or affectionate gesture on either’s part toward the other.

They were pretty mean people, her parents were. They, or primarily Grace I am cerain, did what they could to break us apart in the long run.

Grace's favorite saying was from Matthew 19:6: "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder". She repeated this over and over to Julie throughout our marriage and Julie realized it was her way of telling her she knew we were living together without benefit of clergy.

In the eyes of the state we were legal, though. We were common law husband and wife. As far as I was concerned we were married, too, in the eyes of God.

But Grace took it as her ordained task to put us asunder since she didn't feel God had afforded us his protection in the matter.

Their meanness was vividly displayed to me the Christmas before we were married.

Julie had been given a beautiful cashmere sweater and matching skirt outfit. It was a rich light blond/tan combo that clung to her petite curves as if it had been designed expressly for her, alone. Its color made her luscious hennaed hair stand out even more. It was absolutely stunning on her, and she in it.

But she had done something that upset Grace and, as punishment, the ensemble was taken away from her and given to her younger sister, Susan.

Julie was told she could never borrow it or wear it again.

So much for keeping Christmas.

In July of '64 –a month before our marriage, Grace announced that she felt Julie and I were seeing too much of each other. She said two healthy young people should spend less time together, not more.

Well, I was having nothing of it and decided to bring things to a head. Julie and I had agreed to be "engaged" to be married unofficially for several months. We spoke of it often.

Grace mandated we could only see each other every other day. We began to talk about eloping. Julie was all for it. She didn't like the restrictions any too well, either.

We agreed we’d forgo asking for her aunt and uncle’s decorated ladder.

On my birthday in August we agreed the time was near. A few weeks of the every-other-day routine had gone by and now we began devising a plan.

It was simplicity itself.

We began telling our friends, who were in on the scheme, that we planned to elope to South Carolina where the age of consent was 16.

Julie would be 17 in two weeks, legal age in Texas. I'd just turned 19 and my "disabilities of minority" had been legally removed by the court. I was an adult in all things except drinking and voting.

We planned the elopement thusly: Julie would tell her parents I was going to pick her up at 6 am on one of our "on" days. Her folks would still be asleep, but it was not uncommon in those days for all the kids to be up before them.

She told them we’d go to breakfast and then to Six Flags Amusement Park in Arlington to spend the day. After that, dinner and maybe a movie and then back by midnight, her curfew.

The plan was feasible and raised no suspicions.

Soon it was August 19, 1964: the day before the elopement. Julie and her friends had been packing. After her parents went to sleep they loaded her baggage into her car in the carport as per our arrangement.

It was to be loaded by 10 pm after which I would come by and reload it into my car. I’d pick her up at midnight and we’d be off on our journey.

Everything came off without a hitch. At 12:00am on August 20, 1964 Julie and I began our life together. Only we weren't going to South Carolina. We were going to Vegas!

No one knew that. No one. It was imperative that her friends believe we were headed east because we knew they'd break down eventually and tell her parents the truth.

Because her parents and sisters would be asleep when we ostensibly left and returned, no one would even know we had disappeared until around 9 or 10 the next day, the 21st!

And by then we'd be well on our way. And were.

After several hours of driving we stopped at a motel in the middle of nowhere. I don't even know what town it was in, but it was our "wedding night" and we consummated our marriage in the traditional manner.

Later that morning we got lost trying to make it to Interstate 10 and ended up in Crowell, Texas; where we tried to get married by the Justice of the Peace by acting dumb about not having any ID.

It didn't work.

We decided to wait till Vegas.

It was a pleasant drive. We sang songs and talked and laughed the whole way. Only once did Julie get cold feet.

It was somewhere in the New Mexico desert that she said she'd dozed off and heard the tune "There's No Place Like Home" being sung to her. I told her she was dreaming and that we were doing the right thing and that we loved each other and that's all that mattered. She agreed.

We really were in love.

I got a job right away, busing tables at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas. We were pretty broke by the time we got to town and had rented an apartment. The waitresses took pity on me and pitched in some of their tips so we'd have something to eat till payday.

Swanson frozen pot pies were 4 for a dollar in those days and pretty tasty, too.

Julie and I both wanted to be actors and we found a theater company in town: The Gallery Theater. It turned out to be the only legitimate theater in the entire state of Nevada!

I stayed on at the Thunderbird a couple of weeks but lugging bus trays up and down a long flight of stairs from the kitchen to the buffet hall was a bit much and we decided to call the a.m. for cash.

We knew full well this meant letting Julie's parents in on the caper, but by then we'd been away too long for them to do anything about it, we rightly felt.

The apartment we rented on a weekly basis was eating up our money quickly; so we moved into the theater and slept on a mattress, backstage. It was quite comfortable, and we both loved the "romance" and color it all. So Bohemian.

Lesson: It is indeed possible to make a living in the theatre.

Shortly after we moved in I called the a.m. and Julie contacted her parents.

Mine said she’d been contacted by Grace, but that was pretty much the extent of her remarks; no well-wisher, she.

Grace wasn’t too pleased at all, but was resigned to the state of affairs as they stood. She told Julie they were coming West “on vacation” and would drop by to see us on their way back to Texas.

It was Julie's first time away from home and she was very happy to see them. They didn't show me any affection, but I felt a modicum of acceptance into the family, albeit a grudging one.

I was too naive to pay any attention to that at the time.

Grace took me aside (she did all the talking in the family) and made a point of telling me, quite sternly, they had contacted the police to “do something about me” but she'd been told we'd been gone too long and were legally married and there was nothing they could do.

Looking back I realize it must have chapped her butt not to have been able to bust my ass and send me to jail forever for falling in love with her little girl.

I've always had a lucky guardian angel watching over me, I guess.

We never did get married.

To get a marriage license in Vegas I masterfully altered Julie's Texas Driver's License to show her to be 18, the age of consent for women in Nevada.

In those days driver's licenses were made of 2-ply paper. It was easy to exactingly cut a number from one place on the license and relocate it somewhere else. The trick was to not cut all the way through the layers, but only lift off the top layer with the appropriate number on it and then duplicate the process where you wanted to switch them. The cuts were invisible on the reverse side and I made sure the front side was sufficiently smudged; not only over the cuts, but also in several other places so as to look normal to the casual observer.

At the County Clerk's office her altered ID passed without a blink.

I was asked for my ID. I handed it over without fanfare and added the copy of my court papers.

Unfortunately, Nevada doesn’t recognize emancipation of minors and we were denied our license.

Lesson: Lady Luck is a fickle mistress.

Texas and many states in the union recognize common law marriages: where two people publicly proclaim themselves to be married and live together as husband and wife.

We did that. We told everyone we were married. And she had her name changed on her driver’s license. We were legal.

The Gallery Theatre was run by Perry Dell, a former probations officer/counsellor working with youths. He'd taken over a storefront that had been a church, and then a carpet store, and made it into a theater in the round.

Theater in the round had been pioneered by Dallas’ Margo Jones and furthered by her protégé Norma Young, the director of Theatre Three, where I got my start.

We’d gotten to Vegas just in time. I was cast in one of three one-acts they were presenting next: High Sign by Lewis John Carlino, who also wrote the film The Great Santini. The other two shows on the bill were Edward Albee's Zoo Story and Tennessee Williams' Mooney's Kid Don't Cry.

Julie worked crew and costumes. I did publicity and sold ads on commission for the program during the day. I was made Vice President of the corporation for my efforts.

We had a fairly successful run...more so critically than with audience attendance.

One evening we emoted for five people. There were more bodies on stage that night than in the bleachers.

One of those in attendance was Ayn Rand, celebrated author of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" and the originator of the Libertarian Party's philosophy. She and a friend and three others were quite enthusiastic about our evening's entertainment.

She signed her name in the guest book we put out for patrons to sign.

Lesson: If someone’s willing to pay to see the show, you give them their money’s worth, and more.

The theater's financial success was its children's show, "Aladdin", with four performances on weekends. The house was always packed!

One weekend I went on as an understudy for the Sultan. It was terrible. The actor didn't show up and I foolishly said I'd do it...at the last minute. I never had a chance to learn the lines, had never even read the script.

I'd cram what I could into my mind before each entrance and what I couldn't remember we'd ad lib or the other cast members would incorporate into their speeches.

Somehow we got through the weekend.

Lesson: Never volunteer.

Auditions were held for the next show at the theater and there was a perfect role for Julie as the ingénue lead.

She didn't get it; and, since we'd worked hard for the theater for the last three months, we felt she was due the role. In protest we decided to head for points west: San Francisco in particular.

The sleepy little town on the bay was about to change forever, as was its wont throughout its history.

It was a time when Lysergic Acid Diethylamide was becoming increasingly popular among the burgeoning counter culture, as it would become known! It was all the rage. It came on sugar cubes and people were taking it at things called "happenings" in a neighborhood which would become known as "The Haight" or "Haight/Ashbury" (after an intersection).

Julie and I rented a room in a house on Haight Street a block down from Ashbury. We met and made friends with a young film maker named Christopher Brown.

Chris filmed happenings. He even sponsored them. He'd buy a keg of beer and invite everyone he met to come to a cellar somewhere, get drunk, “drop” the acid (LSD) and do anything they wanted while he filmed it all, no holds barred. He invited us to come one night and partake of a sugar cube.

At that time it was still legal!

The establishment was doing it’s best to scare users away by proclaiming it to cause chromosomal damage in babies.

Lesson: Don’t give LSD to babies.

Julie and I were way too straight and innocent and so declined his invitation to participate.

Mind you, this was literally the beginning of the beginning of "The Haight".

We’d opted out of history!

Meanwhile, I was busy trying to be a great and famous public relations man and had rented an office on Market Street to make it official. I didn't have a clue. But I had moxie.

I wrote letters to potential clients. I even wrote one to Broadway star Zero Mostel asking for funding.

Julie had met him years earlier during a visit to New York. In the letter I mentioned their meeting backstage after one of his shows. He ignored my request with vigor.

Lesson: Just because you meet a star once, you’re not the closest of friends.

The neighbor across from my office said he had an idea that would make us rich. He had a contact in Japan that could manufacture anything. Anything at all. All his contact needed were photographs of any product with measurements and they'd do all the work. All we had to do was sell it to the consumer.

I passed. I figure who has time. If they want pictures of everything they can come over here and take 'em themselves. Then they can paste 'em all together and have one big photograph of the entire United States.

Little did I know they would!

Lesson: Sometimes you can be psychic and not even know it.

When we first arrived in “The City” I landed a non-paying job as public relations director of the San Francisco Repertory Theater on O'Farrell Street. They had the habit of putting on full length Greek tragedies.

Obscure Greek tragedies. Six hour long obscure Greek tragedies. Trust me, “Nicholas Nickleby” it wasn’t.

Audiences were encouraged to bring box meals.

Coffee, wine, soft drinks and finger munchies were sold at intermissions. Seating was cafe style: an eclectic assortment of chairs in varying degrees of discomfort with tiny round top cafe tables to hold the munchies, not to mention the sumptuous box meals.

There was no truth to the rumor that Kampgrounds of America was negotiating for space.

We saw one show there, once. I haven't any idea what we looked at. It went on and on and on with a couple of intermissions thrown in for good measure, and then they all came out and took bows to appreciative applause.

Lesson: It’s all Greek to someone.

It was a very hip audience.

Lesson: You can be hip and still not have a clue.

In trying to promote the theater I got a chance to meet Herb Caen, the renowned “three dot” columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted not only for his humor but for his style of linking phrases with ellipses...three dots.

I just walked into the newsroom of the paper one day with some copy about the theater and asked to see him.

Yes, there really was a time when people could just walk right into a newspaper office and ask to speak to the writers without being stopped by armed security behind bullet proof glass.

Caen -a tall weathered man with a kindly face- strode across the newsroom toward me and shook my hand vigorously.

I introduced myself and handed him the press material and told him a little about the theater. He'd heard of us and said he'd look at what I'd given him. He wished me well and then he went back to work.

Years later, when Jeanette and I were living in Denver and I was trying to become a great and famous writer myself, I wrote to him a couple of times about my work.

I was thrilled he was kind enough to answer me on his personal note paper. I still have the notes. I have no idea if he ever published any of my submissions.

I have no idea how long the San Francisco Repertory stayed in business after Julie and I left; but it's most notorious reincarnation was as the O'Farrell Street Theater: a live-action/porno film palace run by the Mitchell Brothers -one of whom shot the other to death in the early 90's.

For fun Julie and I attended a couple of meetings of the San Francisco Comedy Workshop, a fledgling group of comics intent on improvising their way to fame and fortune.

Nothing came of the meetings. I didn't feel they had too much going for them but the seed of an idea was planted in my mind that wouldn't come to fruition until we returned to Dallas.

After a month in the Haight our money was gone again and San Francisco seemed less and less like the town I would become great and famous in. We packed up and went back to Dallas.

I had started to think about becoming a great and famous comedian myself.

I sent press releases to both the Dallas Morning News and The Dallas Times Herald announcing my formation of The Dallas Comedy Workshop.

Several people came to the meetings and we immediately began putting together a show. The fun of it was that it was a lot like in the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland Andy Hardy movies: “Hey! Let’s put on a show!”

We all started working on bits and gags and refining routines and were having a grand time doing it.

Everyone had their own schtick they wanted to do. We put it into a semblance of an evening's entertainment and rehearsed it a few times.

I rented the Highland Park Town Hall across from Julie’s old home, for two nights and sent out invitations to the press and all the talent agents in town. I was a guest on TV and radio talk shows to promote it. We sold tickets to family and friends alike.

Justin Moeller’s Showcase of Comedians opened to a packed house. We sold out both nights! Everybody and his brother was there. It was marvelous. We had a hit!

One member of the workshop was Patrick Cranshaw.
Pat Cranshaw -I changed the caption

His claim to fame at the time was a poster of him sans teeth, gurning at the camera, dressed in an Air Force Pilot's helmet and uniform with the caption below saying: "Sleep Tight tonight. Your Air Force is awake".

“Somebody made a mint on that one”, he’d say.

Unfortunately, Pat wasn't a participant in the financial success of the posters. He’d only been paid for the photo session. No royalties. It's probably still around, hanging on old auto repair shop walls or in nightclub back rooms.

He attained cult star status in 2003 with his role as “Blue”-an 80 year old Frat boy in “Old School”, when star Will Farrell screamed out “You’re my boy, Blue!”

He died in his home in Ft. Worth in December, 2005.

Meanwhile, I parlayed the "success" of the show into a fledgling nightclub career.

My first stand-up job was at the Pompeii Club in Dallas.

The liquor laws in Texas in the sixties made it illegal to sell liquor by the drink, so people had to belong to private clubs.

Membership was about as easy as falling off a toothpick; such was the legislation the Baptists had made the Legislature come up with.

It was a formality. The Baptists were certain it was saving the state from Godlessness: you signed a card and paid a buck. Boom. You’re a member.

I was hired to do two fifteen minute shows a night between band sets for a week.

I spent my entire week's pay on a full tux and a white dinner jacket. The dinner jacket, formerly a rental, had been the regular tux for an up and coming young singer at the time: Trini Lopez.

One of the regulars of the club was Eddie Fontaine, an actor and singer who'd always do a set or two with the band. Eddie played Pvt. D'Angelo on the classic World War II TV series Combat.

He used to tell me after my sets that my delivery and timing was fantastic, that I was a funny guy, but my material stank.

I agreed with him, but it was all I could steal and get away with. I was a comedy re-cycler in the mold of Milton Berle: I recycled old jokes off party records along with some original material that needed a lot of work.

All clubs in Texas closed at midnight. But at l am The Pompeii reopened again as a hot after-hours breakfast club.

People would lineup around the block to get in, mostly because of the WRR-AM radio show that broadcast live from the club every night (everything was AM in those days…FM was for Dentists offices).

Entertainers from around town and any luminaries in town for various reasons made an appearance and most of them graced the audience both on hand and next to their radios with a song...or in my case, a joke or two. I was a recurring regular.

The first week I worked there the club was owned by the Felix Brothers, Nick and Frank, who also owned the Fred Astaire Dance Studio franchise for the area. They were kind to me and took care of me. I’ve always been grateful to them for giving me my 1st break.

At the end of my week’s run I was told to come back for another week. I was thrilled. But when I came back to work the next day the Pompeii had changed hands.

It was now owned by dapper Tony Caterine.

Tony was good to me too. He put up with my mediocre material and let me grow as a performer.

In the sixties there were no comedy clubs with open mike nights where a comic could try out his material.

We got experience working in bars and strip joints or wherever we could find an audience to sit still long enough to get a joke out. I was grateful, too, to Tony for letting me stay on.

I started getting gigs at other clubs around town: The Golden Garter, The Oar House, The Rafters, The Fire House –where I first saw Cranshaw’s Air Force poster- and a slew of others that let me come in for a few minutes during band breaks.

Julie rarely came with me to these gigs preferring to stay at home. I'd make the rounds nightly. I'd hit clubs all over the Dallas area trying to get a few minutes at the mike. More often than not, I was paid in drinks.

I liked screwdrivers in those days. And whiskey sours. I was a pretty big man, weighing in at around 300 -and gaining- and it took a lot of liquor to get me drunk. As a matter of fact I rarely got drunk. I’d never really finish a whole drink when I was working and when I was table hoping I'd make sure to leave the drink behind.

I never liked being drunk. And most of all, I detested drunks. I didn't mind a person who was drunk as long as he or she wasn't "a drunk". I wouldn't give them the time of day.