DESIRE UNDER THE BIG TOP

I've always loved to make people laugh but the true object of my desire, for as long as I can remember, has been to don the greasepaint and run into one of the Ringling Brothers 3 rings as a bona fide clown. I discovered the talent to amuse at an early age. I was 6 and, as was the normal course of my school day, cutting up in my first grade classroom in the hopes of eliciting a giggle or 2 from my friends and fellow students. The teacher was, as expected, the one person who was not amused and had finally had it with my hijinx. Livid, she jumped out from behind her desk, realizing, in all the wisdom that she could muster up in her 24 or so years, that the best way to deal with me would be to embarrass me by treating me just like I was acting. “Bobby B,” she yelled, unable to pronounce my then 14 letter last name, “if you are going to act like a 5 year, then there is no place for you here. Pick up your things and go back to the kindergarten where you belong.” Semi dejected, with shoulders bent and head bowed, I found my way back to the kindergarten classroom, opened the door and saw, to my delight, that it was somebody's birthday and they were having cake and ice cream. It was right then and there that I realized that comedy pays. My course was set by the ripe old age of six. I maintained, to the best of my ability, my status as class clown for as long as I possibly could, occasionally going toe-to-toe with Billy, the spitball king or Eddie, the 3rd grade poet whose “The cow went up the drainpipe” piece made me scramble for anything remotely funny to counter with. If nothing else, they kept me on my toes and my creative juices primed. All through junior high and high school, which I was thrown out of for flushing plastic cherry bombs in the boys room, and, eventually 3 years of boarding school and 6 months of college, I worked on my “chops.” I got into trouble all along the way, of course, but always attributed it to a sadly lacking sense of humor among any and all authority figures. I was determined to be a clown. As I got older, I continued to pursue my passion and ended up doing a morning radio show which allowed me the luxury trying out new material every day but I still wasn't satisfying the initial desire to paint my face, put on a big red nose and baggy pants with giant, floppy shoes and run around the big top. Then, one day while I was doing a morning radio show in Philadelphia, the circus came to town. I was beside myself when I got the call from the Ringling representative who said, “We like to use local celebrities as guest clowns when we are in town and were wondering if you'd be interested?” I could barely contain myself. This was my dream come true and it was actually going to happen. I had a few weeks before the performance and I used that time to become a fairly astute student of the art of clowning. I read up on the master clowns like Emmett Kelly and Felix Adler, read all about the Feld family and everything they had done with show since buying it from the Ringlings, everything I needed to know to fulfill my lifelong desire with aplomb and grace. Finally, the day came. I was so excited I could barely contain myself and hadn't slept a wink the night before. I went to the circus and brought my oldest daughter, who was about 5 at the time, knowing she would have every bit as much fun as I would. As we were sitting in the complimentary box seat provided by the Ringlings, my daughter mentioned that, being about 3 feet tall, she was having trouble seeing the animals so, being the good dad I was supposed to be, I hoisted her onto my shoulders, immediately pulling a muscle in my neck and rendering me unable to turn my head. “Let's go,” I heard a voice behind me say, “you're up next.” I wanted to cry. I just couldn't do it. I could barely get back to my car for the drive home. I never DID get to be a real clown. My daughter is now a 42 year old chiropractor in Orlando and a very good one. She also teaches chiropractic at UCF. If she had only decided to pursue that profession when she was 5.

KICKS CHANGE

“Some get a kick from cocaine I'm sure that if I took even one sniff That would bore me terrific'ly too Yet I get a kick out of you.” In 1934, Cole Porter wrote these lyrics for the Broadway musical, “Anything Goes.” It was sung by Ethel Merman. 2 years later, the film version was released with a new lyric because of, what was known as, The Hollywood Production Code of 1934. It, too was sung by Ethel Merman. In 1886, Dr. John Stith Pemberton of Atlanta used cocaine to create his own concoction, which became known, based on it's most active ingredient, as Coca-Cola. By 1903, Middle-class whites started to worry worried that soft drinks were contributing to what they saw as exploding cocaine use among African-Americans. Southern newspapers reported that “negro cocaine fiends” were raping white women, the police powerless to stop them. “Coke” took coke out of it's recipe and replaced it with sugar and caffeine. By 1904, it was illegal. The thrill was gone and so was the lyric. In the mid 70's, I decided to see if the original lyric was correct and found that, for me, it was, except, it did more that “ bore me terrific'ly,” it hospitalized me – twice, before I was able to focus on the fact that it was Sigmund Freud's powder of choice that was making my heart seem like it was about to jump out of my chest. Not only did it screw up my heart, pretty much for the rest of my life, but I never really liked it. In the world of rock & roll radio in the 70's, it snowed constantly, not just in the winter. It was everywhere you wanted it to be, so, in my case anyway, I just did it because it was there and everyone else was “playing.” It was the second hospitalization that reminded me of the question my dad had asked me often growing up, “If Billy Hart jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, are you gonna jump off the Brooklyn Bridge?” It was at that point that I was able to pick up the phone, call my dad and give him the answer he had been looking for throughout my formative years - “No.” My short lived cocaine use did, however, lead me to a new source of kicks – meeting characters during the numerous ER visits and hospital stays over the years. A couple of years ago, as I was being moved from an ambulance to an ER bed, I couldn't help overhearing the lady in the next bed. She was 82 years old and had, apparently, had an episode of very low blood sugar and had fallen getting out of a car. She had a huge gash in the back of her head that had to be stitched up and had broken her neck. It was a fracture in a spot where it had broken before. I heard them talking about how she was hit by a trolley car when she was a teenager and how her leg had never been the same, but, she hobbled through life and faced one challenge after another. She was told that she would have to wear another “halo” to allow her neck to mend, but she was having none of it. The doctors said that if she didn’t wear it, she could be permanently paralyzed. This was obviously not the entertainment portion of the show. That came when she would doze off, reacting to the morphine they had given her for the pain. That’s when her daughter and her daughter’s best friend would start to chat and it always seemed to be about booze. Every conversation involved who could hold what liquor, how to mix drinks that wouldn’t give them a headache, how many bottles of wine it would take before they became totally useless and, in one particularly enjoyable segment, how a guy had given one of them a gift of a wooden box with 2 bottles of Sutter’s Home Wine, which she perceived as the ultimate insult. She was worth a more expensive wine than that. During my most recent visit, I had a roommate who had broken his hip while stepping off a cruise ship. He was 72, his name was Bob and he had Alzheimers so, every three or 4 minutes, he would be buzzing the nurse to get help peeing, pooping, standing up, lying down, turning on the TV, changing the channel, turning off the light......you name it, Bob was asking for it. He kept saying, “I can't.” He said that a lot. He seemed pretty depressed so I loaned him my i-pad, on which I recorded a number of old movies. He watched “Topper Returns” and seemed to enjoy it. When he gave my my i-pad back, I realized that he had watched about 23 minutes of the film. Bob was gay and his husband made it a point to stay away as much as possible. It seemed to be his only respite from the incessant demands and having to cater to Bob's every whim. I, finally, while struggling to be understanding, had had enough and as I heard him trying to get out of bed right after hip surgery, I yelled, “DUDE, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” To which he yelled back, in a moment of lucidity, “WHO DO YOU THNK YOU'RE TALKING TO?” I explained that I was concerned and I didn't want to see him hurt himself and I told him a story: When I was about 5 years old, my parents took us to the annual 4th of July Parade that wound down Main Street in my hometown, Manchester, Ct. My mom looked down and I was gone. They couldn't find me and had begun to panic. That's when they saw me marching along the parade route playing a drum with one of the marching bands. When my parents addressed the fact that I didn't play the drums, I responded that, “Nobody told me I couldn't.” That was the day I removed the words “I can't” from my vocabulary, Earlier, Bob and I were chatting about our respective lives and he told me that he was impressed with many of the things I had done and told me that he thought it took a lot of talent. I reminded him of the earlier conversation and told him that it much less to do with talent and everything to do with the fact that nobody ever told me that I couldn't. I told him to get the words. “I can't” out of his head and off his lips. He listened and seemed to perk up at the suggestion. He said that was some of the best advice he's heard in quite a while and he was grateful. Then, within about 40 seconds, he was buzzing the nurse's station and telling them, “I can't change the channel,”as he was pushing all the buttons on his phone, thinking it was his remote. Bob will be fine but a little concerned for the mental well being of his partner, Richard. He was pretty frazzled. I still get my kick from doing drugs......all of which have now been prescribed because of the maladies caused by earlier experimentation. Metformin, Amlodipine, Lisinopril, Eliquis......I could go on but my keyboard is getting writers cramp. I'm sure there's a pill. Bottom line – new kicks caused by old kicks – and yet, those “kicks just keep getting harder to find.”

GRAND THEFT AUTO

        Every single one of us is, occasionally, guilty of gross stupidity and, although the consequences differ depending on the severity of our idiotic choices, we, ideally, learn from them.           This is a story that I have not told often and I'm not really very proud of it. In the world of stupid choices, for me, this one takes the cake.          It was a dark and stormy night. I say that because I've always wanted to open a story with that line, but, it was a pretty nasty night. The year was 1967 and I was in the Air Force, stationed at Sewart AFB in Smyrna, Tenn. which is about 30 miles south of Nashville on the way to Murfreesboro. There were about six of us who shared an apartment in the projects in North Nashville, not far from Tennessee State University. We called it “The Flop House” and it was the site of an ongoing party. The door was always open to our friends, be they military, college or other and our refrigerator was well stocked with the finest wines. OK, maybe not the “finest,” but, as we used to be very proud of stating, “we didn't drink that cheap dollar shit – we paid $1.09.” Gypsy Rose, Ripple, Twister, Bali Hai....nothing but the best rotgut on the market for our friends. There was always good weed and bad wine at “The Flop House” and everybody knew it. We were young and as carefree as we could be with a tour of duty in Vietnam looming over our heads, although, the more time we spent at the place, the less we cared about much of anything. On this particular night, two of us had to get back to the base for our work shifts. We had no car and were left to our own devices when it came to traveling to and from the flop house. We decided we would rely on our usual mode of transportation - our thumbs. I don't remember my friends name (I don't remember very much from those days) but, I know we called him “Superman” or Supe. He was a pretty good sized guy, but, the appellation came from the size of his afro. It was enormous – super, if you will – and he had to buy the biggest hat he could find to “stuff” it into when he was on base. We were close enough to the entrance to the highway that led to the base that it didn't take very long for us to get to. Then, we had about a 30 mile “hitchhike,” a straight shot, to get to the front gate.                   The weather was a very uncomfortable mix of snow, rain and ice that was falling at a light and steady pace. The roads were slick and we were high, drunk and cold, staggering backwards with our thumbs out. There was no traffic. Not a single car to be seen going either way. There were no lights on this particular stretch of road either. It truly was a “dark and stormy night,” and we were smack, dab in the middle of it. We had gone about a mile and were both uncomfortable and oblivious, conditions that could only coexist on the heels of our massive consumption earlier in the day, when we noticed the used car lot we were fast approaching. I'm not sure what prompted us to look in the windows of the cars, but, in one of them, we spotted.......the key. It was in the ignition and the doors were unlocked. It was almost as though one of the employees knew we would be hitchhiking in the middle of a very cold and sleety night and “had our backs.” We got in and Supe drove. The windshield wipers didn't work, so, I reached out of the passenger window and maneuvered them manually.                   We drove about 2 miles when we reached a traffic light that was red. The car died and wouldn't restart. That's when I got creative and told Supe that we should run down a side road and head back in the direction we came from so that we would be hitching towards the stalled, abandoned car in the middle of the road as if we had never gotten that far. We made it back to the car and, as before, the roads were completely empty.                   We got back in, the car started and we were, once again, on our way to the base and our military responsibilities. We had gone about another 4 or 5 miles when I saw the flashing lights approaching us from behind. They didn't pass us, they closed in on us and we pulled over. That was when the drugs and alcohol began to speak for us as we droned on about going to Vietnam in a week anyway, so, “go ahead and take us to jail.” The cop informed us that he pulled us over because we were driving without a license plate and asked to see our “off-base passes.” I showed mine. Supe didn't have one. He was off-base illegally and the AP's (Air Police) were summoned. They got there and took my friend away in handcuffs, leaving me, in a somewhat altered state (although the situation was a bit of a “buzz kill”) to deal with the situation alone. That's when I reached deep down into my creative psyche and explained that we had bought the car earlier in the day and that the paper “temporary tag,” that was taped to the back window, must have flown out when I opened the front window to make the wipers work. My first experience with the art of improv.              I'm not sure if the cop was really tired or just wanted to wrap things up and get in out of the cold, but, he bought it and asked if I was able to drive back to the base. I was not and I told him so, but, I DID know a place where I could park it until the light of day. I asked him follow me as I parked it. I now had a police escort as I drove the car right back to the lot and the parking space that we stole it from.               I then stepped back into the cold, dark night and “thumbed” my way back to the base. I even made it to work in time. Despite the intense exercise in stupidity, I learned a couple of very important lessons that night. I learned that I had a real creative instinct, which, in time, I was able to parlay very nicely into a career and I never again hitchhiked on a “dark and stormy night.” Oh yeah – and it's not nice to steal a car.

NO NOSTRADAMUS

I tend to shy away from making predictions because I honestly believe that the only thing I can predict with any amount of certainty is that I'm full of shit and my predictions will be wrong. With the notable exception of the fact that I, along with, pretty much everybody I know, will continue to get older every day. I feel like I've been waiting my whole life to understand what it means to get old. Until recently, I didn't even realize that getting old was a “life zone,” for lack of a better term. Not aging, mind you. That's a logical process that just, sorta, comes with the territory. I remember always being dissatisfied with whatever age I happened to be at any given point in my life because I was able to make, what seemed to be, credible predictions about what my future held and it was always rosier than where I was at the time. I just knew the grass would be greener in that next phase. I always considered my younger brother fortunate because he had the advantage of looking at me and saying, “Hell no. I gotta find some greener grass than THAT!” Each year of our life is spent with the anticipation of being a year older, especially when it is a milestone year. We reach these milestones by simply existing for any given amount of time. Get past the first nine years and you're in..... “double digits.” Three more years and you're........a Teenager. Once you realize that being a teen comes with it's own set of issues, you can't wait to be done with all the awkward nonsense. You know that eight years into this particular leg of the journey, you'll reach a milestone that gives you a glimpse of what adulthood will be like. You'll be.........18. The age of majority, where you will now have the opportunity to make some of your own decisions. You will be able to serve your country and, in times of war, you may be drafted.......I was. You can now be thrown into the middle of a conflict and, quite possibly, die. Don't try to get a beer, though. For that, you have to reach the next milestone......21. Now, the wait to quench that thirst is finally over and you can freely walk into a bar and feel like an adult. This is where the prediction of a more idyllic existence is split into 10 year increments. We are aging as well as getting older but that concept is still too abstract to make a difference. “Gee, I'm 25 but when I look in the mirror and I still see 19. Man, I can't wait 'til 30 so I can feel like a real grownup.” This is a general rule of aging but occasionally, rules are meant to be broken. For MY particular segment of the baby boom, part of our generational mantra was, “Never trust anyone over 30.” Once we tuned 30 and began to grow up, we understood that it was time to put down the Daffy Duck doll (that I carried in my back pocket) and start getting serious about raising a family and doing the things responsible adults do as they age as gracefully as they possibly can. After the trauma of turning thirty wore off, the aging process just “was.” The predictions got a little easier. At least for a decade or two. In fact, the only prediction I made at 30 was that I would see the next milestone.....hitting the big 5-0. Fortunately, that one came true. I try not to make them too difficult. Then came the next big one - turning 60, which meant you were now in a decade where it was all supposed to pay off. Words like – retire, pension and Social Security enter our lexicon. And yet, for the most part, I can still remember looking in the mirror and, just like when I was in my 20's, seeing that 19 year old me. I didn't appear that way to anyone else, I'm sure, but I preferred to keep the image in my minds eye alive and milk it for all it was worth. It's a nice perception and it can keep you young until......one day......out of the blue, simple aging becomes “getting old.” It just happens. Real fast. You really don't expect it and you can't predict it. Things start to hurt and fall and clog and change colors and sizes. Your hair turns gray and your prostate gets bigger than your ego. The wait is over. All that preparation and anxiety has come to this. You are now officially getting old. I don't see 19 in the mirror any more.........I see my grandfather and it's pretty unsettling. I certainly never could have predicted, as I took part is the mass drug experimentation of the 70's, that in my 70's the only drugs I would take would be those prescribed to do things like keep my blood sugar steady, keep my heartbeat steady, keep my blood pressure steady.....you get the idea. All the crap that was caused by those years of messing around with all those other drugs. I really can't tell you a whole lot about the experience though. It was the 60's and the 70's and I was there. That's about the only fact that I can accurately remember. These days I don't even try to predict tomorrow. Each morning I wake up and take stock of what aches and pains are waking up with me. That is how I can gauge the “normal” for the day. Each day is a new “normal” and you adjust accordingly. This is what I've waited my whole life to understand? That Bette Davis was spot on when she said, “Getting old ain't for sissies?” I have to be honest. I'm digging the wisdom that comes with getting old. I miss an awful lot about being younger but most of it is physical. I would give anything to be able to play a game of baseball but, I can't. My body will let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I will, if I don't sit down and act my age, most likely break a hip. I've accepted the fact that the list of my contemporaries is getting shorter by the day as is the list of things that I can do without pain and weird noises coming from parts of my body that I didn't know existed. There is, of course, the BIG milestone. The one that we will all reach. As close as it may seem to be getting, I won't be making any predictions. The plan is to stretch the “wait” as far as I can.

A MOVING EXPERIENCE

When someone tells me they would like to pursue career in radio, my first response is to ask, “Are you out of your mind?” Next would be to let them know that part of the job description is to be prepared to pack up and move at a moments notice. You can go into work on a Tuesday morning and be actively pursuing another job by Tuesday afternoon. In between, you might as well pack up the car because the odds are pretty good that you'll be moving.......again. I've made some pretty substantial moves since deciding to venture forth into my chosen profession. I've moved from Connecticut to Puerto Rico to Northern New Jersey to Philadelphia to Chicago to Dallas to Miami. With each move came, not only the hassle of packing up and moving myself but, eventually, moving a family as well. As the family grew, the moves got tougher but we all seemed to turn out OK. I was more fortunate than most in that the last major job I had lasted for 25 years so a few of my kids got to “stay put” and grow up in one place – well, actually two places since the company moved from Chicago to Dallas but, at least, there was a semblance of stability. One of my earliest moves was also one of my most memorable because of some friends I had made in a local band and, ironically, it was between radio jobs. In 1970, I had come home from a little 18 month visit to South East Asia and, after a reception that included being spat upon for serving my country, I moved to Puerto Rico for a radio job. It only paid about $150 a week but, I was young, single and pretty limber when it came to negotiating the twists and turns of my 22 year old existence. While in San Juan, I met a young lady from New Jersey, married her and left the island. It all happened in about as much time as it took for me to type this sentence. What did we know? We thought it was a good idea at the time. We moved to New Jersey and I got a job selling clothes at Archie Jacobson Clothiers in the Menlo Park Mall. I didn't last very long at that job for any number of reasons, the main one being that when I sold someone a suit, I would send them to J.C. Penney's at the other end of the mall because the shirts and ties were cheaper. The boss kinda frowned on that since I was supposed to be selling Archie Jacobson shirts and ties at twice and thrice the price. While I was there, I also decided to go back to school and enrolled in Brookdale Community College. I had the GI Bill to pay for it and I took full advantage of that particular benefit......any number of times. Looking back on my career as a scholar there is nothing that would have distinguished me or that would have even justified my being there in the first place but it was at Brookdale that I met someone who made quite a difference in the avenue I decided to follow. It was during an English Lit. 101 class that I met a guy who became a good friend. I suppose I could lie and tell you I remember his name but I don't. It was 1971.....if you know what I mean. I know that we shared a common talent. We bonded over the fact that we both played percussion, in general – conga drums in particular, the major difference being that he was in a band and I wasn't. He invited me to one of the bands shows in a club at the Jersey Shore and, subsequently, to other shows. I became pretty friendly with a number of guys in the band, particularly the sax player. He had gone to high school in a small town in North Jersey with another friend named John who the sax player called “Abe.” John called him “Nick,” so, I did too. Nick had an apartment at Sandy Hook Beach where we could almost fish from his balcony and we were all hanging out there, one day in July, when my now ex wife was preparing a surprise birthday party for me. They kept me occupied and then we all went back to my apartment where the surprise was waiting. I was taken aback and everyone had their laugh. The party came off without a hitch. The band had a gig that night at a local Catholic School and I accompanied them into the school gym where I climbed a rope and enjoyed the concert from the rafters. It was a little dangerous but, I was still young, nimble and stupid and it was a fun evening. I didn't see the guys in the band much after that. We hung out a little but, unbeknownst to us, we were all heading for much brighter times and many better things. I went on to work for a radio station in Plainfield, New Jersey which led to a job in Philadelphia and then a fairly significant radio career. The band recorded an album and changed their name from Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The album was “Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.” Yes, moving is part of the job description when one decides on a career in radio. My move from Puerto Rico to New Jersey was one of the first ones I made and the one that set my career in motion. I'm retired now. I have finally unpacked the car.

NERVOUS, NORVUS?

I used to be a blood donor. It was a quick, easy way to make a few bucks and I knew I was, ideally, helping a fellow human being. Whether I actually was or not was a moot point. I thought I was helping someone and that was all that counted. I prided myself in my readiness to jump in, at a moments notice, roll up my sleeves and pick up a free pair of movie tickets. My altruism blew my mind (he wrote, with all the humility he could possibly muster up). If I saw a bloodmobile in the neighborhood, I knew it was time to catch a movie or make enough to bring home pizza. But, that was then........and this is now. Then – I was young and vibrant......now – not so much. Then – it could be my entree to a movie theater or would allow me momentary hero status by bringing home a surprise pizza or two......now – not so much. Then my blood was a healthy and in-demand commodity - now – not at all. As a rock & roll radio guy in the late '60's and through '70's, my lifestyle gave me enough pause to be a little concerned about whether I ever would reach the, then, dreaded age of 30. If I did, I theorized, then I could worry about the future. In the meantime, anything went...........anything. The lurid details, entertaining though they may be, are a subject for another day. It's the results of those lurid details that turned me from a self serving blood god - the bloodmobile had a poster of me, needle in arm, grinning from ear to ear and flashing a big “thumbs up” - into a pariah......a castaway.......a hemogoblin. The fact that I had made it past 30 told me that I was OK without really having to change anything. Sex, drugs and rock & roll were still the order of the day. No reason for the carousel to stop. It didn't. There was one party, in particular, that comes to mind. It was a record company party for a band from Australia (they were from an area near a little river) that was in the early days of it's looming popularity. At one point, their, then, road manager broke out a huge “rock” of pure cocaine and was scraping off a continuous “line” as he walked down a long table. Yes.....I did. I went on the air a few hours later with no sleep, nasally and dripping into my mustache. It was a two man show but we were useless to each other on the air because we had both been to the party. If I were a prayin' man, I'd pray that no recording of that show exists anywhere. And yet, I still didn't see any real damage. There was no reason stop doing what I had been doing. Unless, of course, you count the fact that I had gotten married and had my first kid two years earlier but not me. My gauge was reaching 30 with little or no consequence and, that, I had done. It was about 6 years into my 30's when, while enjoying a private regimen of Tequila Sunrises, cocaine and cigars – I had stopped smoking cigarettes because they were so bad for my health – that I nearly saw the light. I had been doing a few lines with a friend and went home to mow the lawn. I lit a cigar and went to the garage and got the lawn mower ready. I had made about 5 or 6 passes on the lawn when I started to get light headed and began to turn gray. It seems my heart had stopped beating and was fluttering. I was in Atrial Fibrillation and wound up in a hospital bed. Remember when I mentioned that I nearly saw the light? When I got home, the first thing I did was have a couple shots of tequila and a nice cigar. It was a matter of days before I was back in the hospital and back in A-Fib.....an issue which has now plagued be for well over three decades and for which I still take the same meds. I immediately quit doing cocaine. I never enjoyed it and, really, only partook because everyone else was doing it. Apparently, it was also around this time that I discovered I was part Lemming. I stopped drinking alcohol. All these years later, the most I will drink is a very cold beer on a very hot day. It took a little longer to stop smoking cigars. Over the 30 some years between then and now, I have developed a number of “issues” that dictate a number of different medications. From diabetes to skin cancer to low blood flow in the legs, I deal with these annoyances that often come with the territory. But it was that episode on my lawn that precluded me from ever giving blood again. The doctors gave me medications that affect my heartbeat. One of the meds is toxic and the other controls the rhythm – which, you'd think, as an erstwhile percussionist, I'd have a pretty good handle on. Imagine the look on a blood recipients face if he got some of my blood and his heart started to flutter? Ironically, I was recently diagnosed with severe anemia and had to have a blood transfusion. The last person in the world whose blood I would want transfused into me would be me. But, to whoever was kind enough to donate the blood that made me feel better.....enjoy the movie.

GREETINGS

Everything we do is a choice. From getting up in the morning to going to bed at night and everything in between – what we eat, when we eat, breathing.....technically, all choices. The choices vary in scope and impact, painting some with a more important hue than others. As I attempt to sort through some of the choices I've made over the last 7 decades and put them into some semblance of order of importance in my life (other than breathing. I'll have no problem with breathing in the #1 spot on my choices hit parade), my biggest realization was that I was around in the '60's and '70's and am incapable of judging choices that I don't remember making. Then I remembered a choice I made in late 1965/early 1966 that turned out to be one of the wisest moves I had ever made. I had just spent my first semester of college in what was then a college but is now a university. It was 50 miles south of Pittsburgh......Waynesburg College in Waynesburg, Pa.......in the southwest corner of the state, bordering Ohio and West Virginia. It was a small, primarily Presbyterian Liberal Arts college and it was the one I got into. I was a far cry from class valedictorian. I think I was 57th in my class.......a class of 56. Waynesburg was the college I got into. I realized I wouldn't be there for long when I was first “rushed” by one of the fraternities on campus. I was curious so, I checked it out. I didn't get very far. You see, this was 1965. There were 31 Blacks and 9 Jews at the school and the 40 of us were barred from the “greeks.” I was gone after the first semester. It was while I was on my way back home to enroll at Uconn that I got the dreaded letter. I'm sure you've gotten it/seen it/read about it in the history books – It began, “Greetings… you are ordered to report for induction.” I was 18 years old and it scared the shit out of me. Probably, literally but, like I said....it was the 60's. Many of my friends and colleagues were getting the same letter. Some took off for Canada, some went off to war.......some never came home. The first step was the physical to determine if the Army even wanted you. I decided to go so I could get an idea of what I might have in store. Not to mention, I didn't want to go to jail. There were people who would show up to the physical doing things that made a 4-f rating a certainty. Ted Nugent, for instance, shat his pants to make sure he wouldn't be sent to war, making him, today, perhaps, the world's biggest hypocrite and coward but, that's a vent for another day. I passed my physical with flying colors and walked out with a big “1-A” stamped on my paperwork. NOW, it was time to make a choice. I could show up for my Army basic training and do 3 years with a year in Vietnam being a sure thing - I was 18 and had no training in anything but flunking math exams....I would have been infantry on the front lines - or, I could try to enlist in another branch and have a better chance of doing something a little safer. My dad was in the Navy. He spent part of WWII attached to a Marine unit as a radioman and fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf....the deciding Naval battle of the war. My uncle had been in the Air Force and was stationed in Korea smack dab in the middle of the Korean Conflict. Now it was my turn and I weighed all of my options. I could just go ahead do my Army duty but, instead, I chose to enlist in the Air Force. Even knowing that I was committing to 4 years instead of 3 and that any duty in S.E. Asia was 18 months instead of 12. The deciding factor? I liked the uniform better. When I left for basic training in April of 1966, it was very early in the morning. By the time my mom got the mail that day, I was in a bus, on my way to Texas. In her mail was my reporting date for Army boot camp. I had made it by about 6 hours. I went to S.E. Asia in 1966. I spent most of my time in the Philippines with TDY's (Temporary Duty) in Saigon. It was just across the South China Sea and when they needed extra bodies for a few days we would go to do pretty menial stuff. I spent my entire 4 years either driving a fork lift in a warehouse of typing bills of lading to ship stuff. Not very dangerous at all. On January 10, 1970, I stepped off a plane in San Francisco. I was home safe and semi-sound. As tedious and mundane as my work was for 18 months, there is, to this day, absolutely no doubt in my mind that the joining the United States Air Force had been the right choice.