The fall semester of school was going very well and I found myself growing more and more fascinated with history.  Dr. Brockhausen was my History 102 professor. He moonlighted at UTA but his real job was teaching at TCU. He never let us forget about that fact either. We were told from the beginning that none of us would get an A in his class. No lowly freshman could possibly do well enough in his class to do better than a low B. That's what he told us. And that just made me want to prove him wrong. 

It was my book review on Grover Cleveland that put me in the cat seat with Brockhausen. Somehow I had managed to hit it out of the park. When he handed the papers back to us he paused as he got to me, patted me on the back, and moved to the next person. I was a little stunned, wondering why he'd done that. Then I saw why. Across the top of my paper were four huge red stars, and under them he'd written the following in bold red ink:  "A++++  This is absolutely the best paper I have ever seen from an entry level student in all my years of teaching! Bravo! Well Done!" I felt like I'd won the Nobel Prize. 

The other students were craning their necks to look over and see what was going on. After all the papers were handed out he made a little speech recognizing me and my accomplishment. I couldn't believe what all the fuss was about. Frankly, I'd just followed his instructions exactly as he'd given them to us. It wasn't hard. It was just a book report about one of our most overlooked presidents. My classmates, most of which were far younger than me, were smiling and patting me on the back and I soon found myself being approached by several of them for tutoring help. I did get that A in his class after all. It was good to be getting a little attention again. 

(Two decades later, I still think of Professor Brockhausen every time I hear Rush Limbaugh on the radio. They sound very much alike. I also think of him every time I fly into Milwaukee's Billy Mitchell Airport. I'd learned who Billy Mitchell was during one of Brockhausen's fascinating lectures.)

My communications class was pretty cool too. I couldn't just write a simple boring speech. All of my presentations were over the top. For one speech I brought in Jimmy, my ventriloquist dummy to demonstrate the art of ventriloquism and how the mechanics of the dummy worked. Another time I brought the McDonald's robot. Still another was about performing magic. I loved giving those presentations and the class always looked forward to my next wacky endeavor. I suppose part of my success came from the fact that I was older and had already practically lived a life before starting college. I had "stuff" to talk about. I was the King of the Show and Tell. 

One night my communications professor, Dub Fisher, had car trouble after class and I offered to give him a ride home. It was the night of the Robot speech and I had the robot's trailer hitched up to the back of my car. During the short drive to his house near the college he commented on my creativity. It was encouraging to hear those things. For the first time in my life there seemed to be some kind of possible method to the madness. Dub Fisher would be my last passenger in the old '77 Volare'. Only a few days later it would throw a rod on the way to a big "mascot" event in Plano. The engine blew just as I pulled in the parking lot of the McDonald's on 15th and Central Expressway. The store supervisor and his son, Kevin and Mark Lilly, were kind enough to drive me to the airport after the show so I could catch my flight to Beaumont. From there I drove in to Silsbee, Texas for another event the following day. I would never see the Volare' again. 

On November 29, movie legend Cary Grant died. Three days later the world would say goodbye to beloved Ricky Ricardo - Desi Arnaz. In December, congressional hearings revealed that the US government had secretly sold weapons to Iran in 1985 and traded them for hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian militias, and used the profits to supply right-wing Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua with arms. Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North and National Security Advisor John Poindexter both resigned, and plead the 5th at the Senate investigative committee hearings. The big question seemed to be, "Did Reagan know about it?" The Iran-Contra Affair came to be known simply as Irangate, and was major news on all the channels for months on end. 

In December, RJ called and told me that Rick Miller had offered him a gig with the Savvy 3 piece deal, but he'd turned them down. I figured that must have been what I'd read about in the paper, and why it had never taken off.  I took Rhonda to Savvy's on her birthday (December 9) and we had a terrible time. The club had taken a major turn for the worse since I'd been there last. A heavy metal garage band was blasting noise at a handful of tattooed customers dressed in black leather and spikes. Rick Miller was still running the place and seemed to be in a really bad mood. I was familiar with that mood from back when we had slow nights. I'm sure I didn't help matters by lecturing him on how different the world was outside those club doors, and how great it felt to be free from the music business. It was only a small lie.  Local musicians Dicky Fergeson and Buck Judkins were there, probably wondering the same thing I was; "What the hell happened to Savvy's?" . I talked to Dicky for a while. He was really friendly and I enjoyed our conversation. Still, there wasn't much going on there so we didn't stay long. 

A few nights later the phone rang at 2 am. It was Ricky Lynn calling from Milwaukee. He had played a gig earlier in the night with Head East and was feeling lonely and a little depressed. He just wanted to talk to a familiar voice. It had been a while since we'd talked and it was really good to hear from him. It didn't take much to cheer him up. We'd shared so many great moments during our years of living together and playing with Savvy that we rattled off one hilarious memory after another, laughing out loud until my chest hurt. There was the story about Ricky's chunk of ear wax, and the one about the rotting, stinking tater in the kitchen window. We laughed about how someone would fart in the car during road trips and we'd have to roll the windows down - even when it was FREEZING outside. We talked for hours, and it was good.

During a Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the Galleria Mall in Dallas, I was hosting the event when a little boy grabbed the microphone and started shouting "DOODY! DOODY!"  It was as if he'd waited his entire life for the opportunity to hijack a mic and shout his favorite naughty word at the world. He was giving a juvenile "shout-out" and it echoed throughout the entire facility; a show biz moment I would never forget. Even the ice skating Santa was speechless after that. My agency-assigned driver was tanked - AGAIN. I had to tell him that I wasn't going to do any more appearances if he was going to be drinking. 

We had our family Christmas  gathering at my parent's house on Onyx Drive South in Richland Hills with mom, dad, Chris, Ray, his wife Terri, and Rhonda. Then it was off to Burleson for Christmas Eve night with her family. We took our new little puppy with us, which turned out to be a big mistake. Rhonda's dad, Roger, met us at the door. It was his first time to see Suzie and he couldn't resist reaching out to take her from Rhonda. When he did, Susie peed all over the front of Roger's starched western shirt. 

Suzee Q. Jones

Rhonda's parents were divorced, which meant we needed to divide the visits between her mother and father's sides of the family. It didn't take long to evolve into a routine for everyone involved. Christmas Eve day would be at my parent's house. Christmas Eve night would be with Rhonda's dad's side of the family. Christmas Day morning was our own family private time. Then later on Christmas Day, Rhonda's mom's side of the family would converge. (There would be very little variation from this theme until my parents passed away years later. After that, my brothers would usually come over and hang out for a while on Christmas Day.)

But this particular year, Christmas Eve night was held at Rhonda's cousin Scotty's brand new house. Their three kids were the center of attention - and they got presents from everyone. As I watched them playing, I couldn't help recalling all those wonderful Christmas mornings I'd spent with my own brothers on Lincoln Avenue in Ft. Worth. But the torch had been passed. Maybe I still felt like a kid on the inside, but I sure didn't look like one on the outside. I could only watch and pretend that I wasn't interested in toys and games and such. On Christmas Day we went to Rhonda's Grandmother's house on her mother's side. That one is called "Grandnanny." The grandmother on her father's side was "Grandmere." It would take a few years of the holiday gatherings for me to get my "meres" and "nannys" straight. 

New Years Eve was spent with our friends Cliff and Carla Valentine at TGI Fridays, and then to their house in River Oaks. It had been a stressful year. I felt like I'd been on a tightrope doing a death-defying balancing act the entire time. I did end up with a surprising 4.0 gpa after 24 hours of college, and I even joined the Phi Etta Sigma thingy. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. Jim Wise's dad came up from Gulfport to stay a few days. I had a lead on a job at General Dynamics that I thought might be the answer to all my problems, and a life long career to boot. I had no way of knowing that a normal job would not be in the cards for me. 

A few days into 1987, I sat in the living room of Jim's house and watched the lights flicker on the Christmas tree. Jim was at work and his dad was cooking something in the kitchen. Rhonda had gone to the store and Suzee was chewing on something that turned out to be the carpet.  I was bored and scared all at the same time. It was that feeling that something was going on out there in the world that I was supposed to be doing - but I had no idea what it was. It was then that it dawned on me that 1986 had been the first year I'd gone without playing a gig with a band since 1974. And with that, I stood up and unceremoniously unplugged the festive light show and began packing up all the holiday decorations. Back when I lived with Ricky, or other guys in the band, the Christmas tree could sit out until Valentine's Day without anyone really giving much thought to it. But with my thirty-second birthday fast approaching, I figured it was time to start practicing being a grown-up.  

CHAPTER 8

AFTER SAVVY MENU

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