| After Savvy: Real Life Begins by Steve Jones |
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| Chapter 3 October 7 through 11, 1985 was spent with Rhonda in Disneyworld. It was the first time for both of us, and we agreed that it lived up to the hype. The first day was spent in airports, on planes, and in busses. Once checked into our hotel, we made the mistake of walking in search of a restaurant. I would soon wish that I'd been warned about the "time share" racket. As we walked along an area of small shops, a friendly young couple asked us if we would like free tickets to Sea World. The only catch, according to them, was that we listen to a short presentation, and take a quick tour of a condo complex nearby. They promised to feed us and get us out of there with the tickets in less than an hour. Rhonda and I had nothing else to do that evening, so we accepted. Big mistake! The meal was bad and the presentation went on way too long. Afterwards, we were put through a hard sell; the more adamant I got about wanting to leave, the more they pushed us to buy. We weren't getting the tickets until they were done with us, and it was getting nasty. It was after dark and we were on foot, several blocks from the hotel. They promised to get us a ride back to the hotel, but after practically throwing the tickets at us, we were ignored as far as the ride was concerned. We knew better than to walk back, and after threatening them with legal action, we were eventually give a lift back to the hotel by a maintenance man on the property. The entire ordeal lasted over four hours. Lesson learned. With the time share fiasco out of the way, the rest of the trip would provide us with an excellent experience. Day one of our trip was spent at Disneyworld's Magic Kingdom. We saw the whole thing, and rode all the rides we cared to ride, in a single day. There were some interesting things going on during that trip, and I was able to take some of the best photos I would ever take. The first thing we noticed at the Magic Kingdom was a giant crane towering above Cinderella's Castle. We were told it was getting a "facelift".
I'd been looking forward to checking out the Submarine Voyage - 2000 Leagues Under the Sea Attraction. It was built amid two giant man made lagoons. One held 7.1 million gallons, and the other 11 million gallons of water. It was officially the world's eighth largest fleet of submarines, and the largest fleet of non-combat submersibles. What I found interesting about the lagoons was that directly beneath them was the Magic Kingdom Wardrobe Department. As the 58 ton subs "rolled" along a track, it caused water to leak into the departments below. (The attraction was shut down for good in 1994 due to the leaking problem.)
The following day, we went to Epcot Center. I'd seen the TV documentaries about Walt Disney's vision of building Epcot, so being there and seeing it first hand was amazing. There was a short shower in the afternoon, and I noticed that a fabulous rainbow was arching across the sky as if it were emanating from the top of the giant geodesic dome that houses the Spaceship Earth Attraction. Luckily, I was able to get a great picture of the scene, creating a marriage of natural and man-made phenomena.
Epcot was fascinating. Because of my experience with McD3 (Mac Dee Three), the McDonald's robot, I was interested in watching a similar robot being operated at Epcot. The operator blends in with the crowd, controlling the robot's movements with a transmitter hidden in a carry bag.
At one point during our visit to Epcot, we were standing by a large pond, taking a moment to catch our breath. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something that couldn't have been possible in my everyday normal life. But this was Epcot, so there was a reasonable explanation for the flying bullet of water that had shot in an arc over my head. It was the famous Jumping Fountain. There were wonderful and exotic fountains all over the place, which added to the allure of the landscape.
So far, everything (besides the time share episode) had been upbeat and exciting. Then on day three we used our free tickets to Sea World. There was a bad tropical storm along the Florida coast, making for a very gray and rainy day in the Orlando area. The major attraction, Shamu the Killer Whale, was not performing because she'd recently given birth to a calf - baby Shamu - the first killer whale born in captivity! Baby Shamu's birth name was Kalina, but adoring park-goers preferred "Baby Shamu", so that name stuck. (Baby Shamu would grow up to give birth to several young of her own, and is still going strong as of this writing in 2004.) Scientists believe that if a killer whale survives the first six months, a female's life expectancy is 50 years and a male's is 30 years.
We didn't get to see the Killer Whale show, but we did get to see Shamu swimming with Kalina, and from what we were hearing about it, this was a pretty big deal to see since it hadn't happened in captivity before. Many of the other exhibits and shows were shut down because of the weather. All in all, aside from seeing the Shamu family, we found Sea World to be a bit of a drag, particularly when compared with what we'd experienced the previous two days. The trip wore us out, and the last day was spent in more airports, planes, and busses. I returned home to learn that while we were gone, Rich fell off a ladder at Savvy's and sprained his foot pretty bad. He had temporarily moved in with Jan and Wayne Addington (Rick Miller's sister and brother-in-law) so they could pamper him until he healed up. The phone continued to ring off the wall for him the entire time he was gone. It was almost as crazy as the phone traffic I'd dealt with back when living with Ricky Lynn. In one evening I took calls for Rich Mauch from Bo, Karen, Lisa, Jo Ann, Lor'ia, Little Brian, and several girls who didn't leave their names. It was unnerving! Some left long, rambling messages that would use up the entire side of a phone answering machine cassette tape. There was a time when it was much easier to take those things in stride, but it had simply become near unbearable. It wasn't Rich's fault that he had a lot of people calling. He was still in the middle of the club scene, working at the club, and hanging out there just about every night. He hadn't changed. I had. Terrorists from the PLO hijacked the Achille-Laurel, a cruise ship out of Italy. They killed a wheelchair bound man by throwing him overboard. On a lighter note, I went to the State Fair of Texas with Rhonda, her dad, his girlfriend, and her daughter. This was sort of a tradition with Rhonda's family. I never had been a big fan of the fair, but the company made the excursion painless, and even somewhat fun. I bought a chimpanzee puppet which Rhonda named Bonnie. I took a drive out to see my old school friends, Jimmy and Chetta, on Love Circle, on Lake Worth. They weren't home. I'd been feeling a bit melancholy and thought visiting old friends might cheer me up. My new life after Savvy was full of ups and downs, but it felt like mostly downs so far. Growing increasingly edgy, I sometimes found myself getting uncomfortable when I couldn't seem to find time alone at the house. Jim was always wanting to run a comedy video for me, or Rich had a crew over from Savvy's, or Rhonda was there. I was feeling a strong need for solitude, but it rarely seemed to come - and when it did, it usually came at a price. I didn't know how to tell my friends that I needed / wanted to be alone at times. So it was MY bad. Not theirs. I wasn't doing a very good job of rationalizing it at the time. The trip to Florida had forged a new bond between Rhonda and I that we hadn't felt before. I likened it to a smaller scale example of how I imagined Rick Miller had felt after going on his trip to Europe. Rhonda and I had experienced something together that we don't get to do too many times in a lifetime. We'd had a great time together, and discovered that when we were away from our usual surroundings, and friends, we did alright together. But less than a month after the Florida trip, Rhonda started bringing up the subject of moving in together. She'd mentioned it a time or two before, but suddenly it seemed to be much more heartfelt and emotional with her. Then one night, as she was discussing it, she broke into tears. A lot of bad behaviors and habits had been forged during my years of playing in bands. One of them was the knee-jerk reaction I'd felt anytime a girl brought up the topic of moving in together, since breaking up with Lilly back in August of 1980. I was doing it again, pulling away in fear, without a real reason. Rhonda sensed my rejection of the idea, no matter how hard I tried to appear that I was mulling it over. She wanted us to be together, and I didn't know how to even begin. I was waiting for something that I knew wasn't going to happen - and I didn't even know what THAT was... There was one thing for sure. I knew that the smart thing to do was to monitor our progress to make sure we weren't going to go back to our old ways of being off and on, before taking the step of moving out together. I certainly no longer harbored idiotic notions of being a "macho bachelor", so that wasn't the stumbling block for me. This was a new wrinkle for me - a milestone that I didn't want to take lightly. Then, one afternoon when I had nothing to do but torture myself with idle thoughts, I took a drive back over to the north side of Ft. Worth, where I'd grown up. It was like going back to a planet after it had been destroyed by a plague. Nothing looked the same. All the homes on Lincoln Street were suddenly rundown and dilapidated. All those wonderful trees that had provided the shade for my imaginative childhood days were gone, along with the good people who had once owned the homes in the area. It had become a dangerous barrio and I was getting telling looks from the new residents, letting me know I didn't belong there anymore. I drove on up to the old High School and barely recognized it. Then I drove out to the old Oak Hill Cemetery, where graves dating back to soldiers from the Texas Cavalry can be found. There is a monument there to John Peter Smith, "the father of Fort Worth." Oakwood Cemetery is also famous for being the haunting grounds of "Diamond Bessie" - a prostitute murdered by her husband in 1877, or so the legend goes. But the sentimental reason that I chose to go there on that particular day was to check out the old spot under the Jacksboro Highway bridge, where my brothers and I used to go fishing in the Trinity River. It was a long bike ride in those days, and we didn't worry about getting kidnapped, or anything dangerous happening to us. We just grabbed our gear and went fishing! Oh, gentler times. I climbed up on a huge concrete bridge support - part of the Red River Texas and Southern Railway Bridge (built in 1902), the one we used to fish from, feeling a bit self-conscious about someone coming along and hassling me. But they didn't. There were a few artifacts lying about, obviously from some homeless individual who had sought shelter there not long ago. I thought about the times that my childhood arch enemy, Charles Bailey, had shown up during our fishing excursions, ruining our lazy summer day by threatening to kill me with his cheap Boy Scout knife. He'd obviously stolen it because he was never a scout. I almost wondered what had ever come of Charles, but that train of thought was interrupted by another - out of nowhere. It hit me like a bucket of water drawn on the spot from the Trinity below. I finally knew what I needed to do, and would devote all energies into getting it done. The decision was thus; at 29 years old, I was going to apply for college.
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