During a weekend visit to with the parents I told dad about my IRS situation. I'd decided to get a loan from the bank and pay it out, but dad wouldn't hear of it. He suggested loaning me the $1,800 I needed to pay taxes that year. Mom and dad were retired and had to watch their spending so I didn't want to borrow the money from them, but they insisted. It helped out tremendously and allowed me to gradually get back on my feet again. (That loan came at a very important point in my life. It was the last time I would have to borrow money for anything other than a house or a car.) 

By the end of May, 1986, I'd completed my first semester of college at UTA. I'd been anticipating college to feel like a jacked-up version of High School, but it wasn't like that at all. In fact, there was no way to compare what I was experiencing in college with what had gone on in High School. Of course there was a huge difference, but the biggest difference was within ME -- not with the institution. I was focused and ready. There was purpose and self-motivation involved this time around. The partying was well behind me now. There were NO distractions. Just me, those incredibly expensive used books, and my will to succeed. I was relieved to discover that really, those were the core building blocks of what I would need to make it in the college scene. 

English and Psychology were a breeze that first semester. All we did was write essays in English, which I loved doing, and I found  Psychology and History intriguing, which always helps with a college course. Our History 101 professor, Dr. Reinhartz, was pretty amazing and managed to instill an interest in the topic that endures to this day. Political Science was more tedious and a little boring, but my desire to learn kept my head (long hair and all) in the game.  (I still see my poly-sci professor, Mark Cichock as a talking head on the news now and then.)  

Radio talk show host Art Bell reminds me of Dr. Kopp, whose approach to Psychology was to have us read a chapter and come in the next time and take a test. I made 100 on every single one. That happens when you are really trying. I certainly wasn't that darn smart. It baffled me to see all those young minds fresh out of High School struggling so much. I suppose their lives were much more chaotic at the younger age. And they seemed surprised to see the old hippie dude (me) doing so well. It didn't take long for many of them to seek me out to help them on the side, which I was tickled to do. 

I wrapped up that first semester with a solid 4.0 gpa. I didn't even realize what a cool thing that was until my roommate, Jim Wise, pointed it out to me. Soon after grades came out, I began getting letters of congratulations from the president of the college, as well as offers to join various clubs and organizations around campus. I'd turned into a real Poindexter. But I wasn't there to socialize. Nor did I make a lot of friends at college. It was pretty much balls to the wall learning for me there.  

On April 15, Ronald Reagan authorized a U.S. attack designed to kill Libyan Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, after Libya was determined to be tied to the bombing of a popular West Berlin discotheque, often frequented by Americans. Qaddafi's headquarters were demolished, but the Colonel survived to talk about it.  Operation codenamed "El Dorado Canyon" involved more aircraft and combat ships than Britain employed during its entire campaign in the Falklands. 

The smoke had not cleared from the Libyan conflict when another major news story would make the world forget about war and turn its attention fully to a nuclear power plant in a city near the Pripiat River in Russia. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, releasing thirty to forty times the radiation of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing. It was ultimately deemed to be an accident, blamed on careless experiments performed by plant technicians. If only one of six fatal errors had been avoided, the plant could have been saved. It took twelve days to put out all the fires, and radiation spread as far as Ottowa, Canada. It had been almost exactly seven years since the scare of Three Mile Island had me thinking the world was coming to an end because of a meltdown. The science world may have increased their knowledge about such things in those seven years, but to me, any talk of a nuclear facility blowing up or melting down was extremely worrisome and frightening. 

It's a funny thing how usually, no matter what terrible disasters may happen in the world, life goes on everywhere else. As radiation spewed from the ripped-open dome at Chernobyl, the corporate blimp came to Dallas, which meant another cool mascot gig. Local elementary school kids were bussed to a local airport, where the "mascot" performed on a stage with the blimp docked in the background. It was a windy day, which meant I didn't get to ride, but I did get to go into the gondola and check it out. Very interesting machine. I got some great video of me on the ground running out to meet the airship.

Mark B. was in charge of the mascot program, and he'd been causing a stir among many of the people I worked with. Rumors abounded at almost every gig that he was the source of a lot of problems. My biggest issue with him was that he often reeked of smoke and alcohol, which just wasn't consistent with the image we were trying to promote. 

The big semi-annual corporate mascot convention was held near Chicago. Mark B. managed to get the local co-op to send him along too. We had intensive media training, discussions about contracts and insurance,  and my good friend Aye Jaye married his sweetheart Annie in a traditional circus clown ceremony. I choked on food twice during the trip. 

There was obviously something wrong with me that was causing my food to get lodged in my esophagus more and more frequently. It wasn't strange to me since I'd seen dad suffer from it all my life. He used to just get up and leave the table during a meal without saying a word. I would hear all kinds of theories from my friends and family members about what caused it, but none of them really knew what they were talking about. I had a handle on it. As long as I had a clear path to a restroom, I'd be able to survive the episodes. That was my twisted logic at the time, anyway.

Dad had more surgery. This time they cut out his testicles, trying everything possible to curtail hormone growth and stop the prostate cancer from spreading. As a result, his crankiness was cranked up a couple of levels for a while. We were all just happy to still have him with us. Then in June Rhonda totaled her Mustang, but thankfully she wasn't hurt. (She'd been in a really horrible accident back in High School in which her face went through a windshield, and her bottom teeth cut through the skin below the lower lip, just above the chin.) We went car shopping and she ended up with a new Skyhawk. I had an oil pump put in the Volare'. My brother Chris bought a four track cassette recorder.  

As dad continued his valiant battle with Cancer, several others weren't so lucky. In the same month we would be reading obituaries for family friend Heiny Braur, neighbor Carl Blackburn, my High School principal Frederick Murphy, and legendary actor James Cagney.

Change was coming at a fast and furious pace and there was no stopping it. There seemed to be a lot more bad than good. But in July, one change would be bittersweet. My Aunt Bettie was moving to Tennessee, and was offering to sell her house to my parents. It was the great old house over on Onyx in North Richland Hills; the house next to Mackey Creek that my grandfather (Pop Jones) originally bought new for $12,000. It was the house where all our big family gatherings and holiday functions happened. I remember the house always being filled with family visiting from all across the nation. We had many cousins and there was always lots to do. The family was also very much into music, so someone was always playing a guitar and singing; usually my Uncle Ancie. As my brothers and I got older, we took over as the family musicians. But all those memories of family home movies shown on a sheet in the backyard, Uncle Okie's homemade go cart, and Aunt Bettie's Fruit Ambrosia Salad, and Aunt Iris' homemade ice cream were ghosts from the past. After Pop died of Cancer in 1969, the family gatherings seemed to get fewer and further between. Many of the cousins were grown and married and beginning to have kids of their own. Our parents generation had done a wonderful job of keeping the family together, but aside from my two brothers and myself, it seemed my generation had no interest in socializing. After Uncle JC (Aunt Bettie's husband) died in a trucking accident, the house on Onyx lost its charm. There were no more family gatherings there. Bettie eventually moved away leaving my cousin Julie living there with a roommate and cats until Bettie decided to sell the house to mom and dad. 

The old neighborhood I'd grown up in had turned into a dilapidated barrio. It had become very dangerous as gangs took over the area. They needed to get out, but it would be tough. Dad was retired and mom was working occasionally. My brother Chris was still living at home with our parents and offered to go in with them in the purchase of the house. That was the saving grace. Their combined resources gave them enough to make the move. Still, even though the neighborhood had changed for the worse, the old house still held a library of magical boyhood memories for me - many which dad had documented with his cameras. When I think back, one part of my brain recalls those days in black and white, because of the black and white photos dad took. But another part of my brain sees those memories in vivid color, thanks to the 2,000 plus color slides dad took after buying a new camera in 1961. 

Every corner of the old house at 2404 Lincoln Avenue was documented - inside and out. I had a sense as a kid that it wasn't anything fancy inside, but it was home. We had everything we needed. It was while growing up in that house that we went from using water cooled blowers - to real air conditioning! We saw the innovation of the first color TV's. And we watched the first moon landing together in the dining room there. All of our childhood birthdays, Christmas mornings, Halloween trick-or-treatings, and other special memories happened there. Even though I was thirty-one years old when they moved out of the old house, I had a really tough time knowing that soon I wouldn't be welcome in that house any longer. It just didn't seem possible. Nostalgia took over for weeks leading up to the actual move. I spent a lot of time just walking around the place, trying to take in as much as I could before that chapter of my life closed forever.

I helped them move. I recall clamoring around in the old dusty attic with a floodlight, looking for things I might have overlooked all those thousands of times I'd been snooping around up there before. That old attic had been a kind of magical hideaway at times. There wasn't a stairway, and the house had really high ceilings, so getting up there was always a challenge, and usually meant a day or two of asthma was sure to follow. After a final good look around, I climbed down from there for the last time, very aware of the finality of what I was doing. We knew this was a great thing for the family. The house on Onyx was much nicer, and was practically luxury compared to the old house. I was happy to know that mom and dad would be able to live out the rest of their lives in a decent home; one that had actually been a part of the family heritage for decades already. So I loaded the last box of stuff into the back of a borrowed pickup truck, took a long look around, and said a solemn final silent farewell to my childhood. 
   

CHAPTER  6

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