- Preface
- How Could I Do Such A Thing?
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- Perhaps, as I grow older with the specter of doom breathing down my neck, I am searching for proof of my existence. Suddenly I’m an old guy; the face in the mirror isn’t the one I grew up with and my voluminous middle, while evidence of a good and prosperous life, certainly isn’t something I cherish now.
- What happened and where did I go?
- Whether I’m qualified to pen the why and wherefore of how I arrived at this moment remains to be seen. Nonetheless, I put pen to paper (so to speak) in an attempt to capture every living moment of the story thus far. Will I write too much? Most assuredly. Will you find something of amusement? Hopefully. Will you get bored? No doubt. But in the end I hope the two of us will find a commonality; some memories we can share and old times to relive.
- Calling myself a writer is like screaming in the shower and calling myself a singer. But somewhere in this grammatical malfeasance we'll find things to share, things to make us smile and things to baffle you as much as they baffled me.
- At this point, I care not what anybody thinks and while my follies have been more interesting than any of my triumphs, I'm not glossing over a single conundrum, regret, conceit or foolishness. On the other hand, neither will I be the soul of humility regarding my few achievements of any merit.
- This is not a piece about fans. This is about someone who happens to be a fan and the resultant calamities, mishaps, merriment born therefrom and the world lived in.
- On the subject of name dropping, you will be either delighted or dismayed by what is planned for this tome, for part of the fun is not only remembering what I was doing, but everyone else as well! Who knows, you may find YOURSELF in these pages. Looking back on 50 years of fandom it's time to ask myself "Was it all worth it?" You decide.
- They say if you remember much of this, you weren’t there. So if my time frames are a little askew, please forgive.
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Forward. . . - A pinch of this, a pinch of that - recipe for disaster
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- Ingredients:
- My father Eddie was Chicago born in 1907 smitten by vaudeville at first breath. As a teenager, began his own band, The Parisian Peacocks - “Exponents of Aristocratic Syncopation”. Playing the saxophone and mandolin, his band played lawn parties during the day with nightclubs and speakeasies during the prohibition years. In his twenties, he branched out into dancing, magic and writing blackouts for NBC radio. It was here he met his lifelong friend Red Norvo. Norvo was the first true exponent of the xylophone/vibraphone and has been credited with turning both into instruments of jazz.
- Norvo was working with the Paul Whitman and Benny Goodman orchestras when he decided to strike out on his own with Red Norvo’s Vagabond Tars. My father played sax till the band broke up when Red started a sextet to play many of the clubs in New York.
- With my father’s first wife Eunice as partner, they danced on many of the larger venues in Chicago and New York.
- When times were tough he did illustrations, signage and tattooing.
- In the late ’30s, he and she went their separate ways and with the advent of World War II found himself in the U.S. Coast Guard stationed in Australia as a gunner aboard the supply ship U.S.S. Mintaka.
- With the war at end the Coast Guard dumped him off in Long Beach, California; a long, long way from Chicago. Here he opened a dance studio at night and by day tended bar at a local dive.
- Oh, I didn’t mention my father’s sister, Kay? Being of little import in the scheme of things, she was a stage dancer in vaudeville and made an early migration to California in pursuit of a movie career. She found her way into several Busby Berkeley films and would laugh and point hysterically at herself on the wing of a plane in “Flying Down to Rio”.
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- Into the Oven:
 My mother, Saxon Jacqueline Rosebud Sullivan (named for a character in Jack London's "Valley of the Moon") sprang from an eclectic gaggle of Bohemians in 1913. Artists, writers, fortune tellers, astrologers giving her an artistic background she enjoyed her entire life. In the ‘30s she illustrated greeting cards and being a smashing beauty, dabbled in modeling as well. - Two of her cousins, Hugh and Fred Harman were making names for themselves. Hugh was half of the Harman Ising animation studio, creating many of the silent cartoons such as the controversial “Bosko” series. Fred was the creator of “Red Ryder and Little Beaver” comics strips.
- At some point she was smitten, probably by a military man she never talked about. From this unholy union sprang a boy named Robert - severely stricken with cerebral palsy who would spend the entirety of his short life in an iron lung.
- With all the bars in Long Beach, she had to walk into Eddie’s.
- Soon they wed and with a flash of light, a gasp of air and a hearty scream I entered the world and thus begins our tale. . .
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