"Characters In Our Life"
Archie Campbell came off stage at the Michigan State fair.
We were in the wings, waiting to go on.
I said:
"Hey, Arch, windy out there, huh?"
He smiled and ran his hand suavely across his hair,
and said:
"I don't have to worry.
I bought the casual style."
We miss him.
A neighbor of ours,
a woman in her forties,
dyes her hair a different color a couple of times a week.
Not spray-on or rinse.
Real dye!
When it gets too damaged
she wears various colored wigs until it grows back,
and then she starts dying it again.
Today she painted the interior of her home purple.
Not violet or lavender.
Purple!
We met a young DJ
at a radio station in Palm Beach,
who got into radio in an odd way.
As a teenager,
he was picked up by a tornado and carried out to sea.
He said he realized he was running forward
while moving backward.
His feet were treading air.
He was saved,
and interviewed on TV and radio,
where he got a taste of fame,
and so made radio his career.
I was talking with Grandpa Jones about a mutual friend...
a country music star.
Grandpa was worried that our friend was taking a lot of drugs.
I said: "He takes drugs?"
Grandpa said:
"Why, he'd take a overcoat button!"
We miss Grandpa too.
At our concert at Walt Disney World,
the stagehands lowered the stage
at the BEGINNING of our closing number!
We watched the audience disappear.
We must have looked like puppets.
Stagehands don't always watch the show.
The bartender at the Hollywood lounge
where I played piano,
was a tough guy.
He got the job because he could double as a bouncer.
He looked it and talked it.
He said he was an ex-Navy Seal.
He was also manager,
and picked on my little drummer a lot.
He was a bully.
In the first fight that ever broke out,
the tough guy got beaten up.
After that I started picking on him.
We bought a trailer on payments in Key West.
It came with a free chain link fence
so we couldn't take off with it.
Misty started feeding a stray dog...
the biggest, ugliest, pit bull I've ever seen!
There was the remnant of chewed rope
hanging from its neck...
an escaped junkyard dog.
Misty and the dog became friends,
but gradually, over a few days,
her friend would not let me in or out of my own home!
I was a prisoner of love.
Copyright © Feb. 26, 2003 by Jack Blanchard. All rights reserved.
