The
last thing I wrote in my
memoirs ended in 2003. It
contained everything that
was politically correct,
and not salacious,
at the time. Twelve years
have passed,
and now I'm ready to tell
the rest of the story, as
Paul Harvey would put it. As
a regular member of
the " "How
did you decide to come
to the "Our
son is a very famous
person and a member of
the "Were
you circus people in "Why,
yes. How did you
know?" In 1948,
the Communists took
power in After
the requisite introduction,
a clown wandered on
stage stopped, looked
quizzically at the
room waited
for a moment.
In vaudeville,
they call that pause
taking two beats. Googie
took one step forward
and started to raise his hand.
Before he could get
his hand up to ask for
a volunteer assistant,
I was halfway up the
aisle. I knew what was
coming, and I had a
quarter in my hand. Googie
he was surprised that
before he could even
ask for an assistant,
I was already on
stage. My response to
him extending his hand
was that I rolled a
quarter across the
fingers of my hand and
the quarter
disappeared. "Thank
you. I need you." was his whispered response. Knowing that I
was a magician, my
high school friends
were getting prepared
for something unusual,
and they got
it. Googie
later told me that was
the most responsive
audience he had during his tour. He invited me to help
him pack after the
show. He told me that
his show had started
in the East,
and he was heading for
He
also expressed that
this was as close as
he was going to get to
At
the end of the day we
met at the border crossing. I introduced him to the Master
of Ceremonies at the
big nightclub just on
the other side of the
border. At that time
in history,
Being
the poor boy that I
was, I always took
seats in the side
balcony, which was as
any Arabic mosque was,
where the ladies would
sit while the men sat
near the stage. The view is actually
very good there and in
addition to that, the
MC depended on banter
from the audience to
provide straight lines
for his jokes. I knew
his routine well, and
he knew he had a good
confederate to bounce
lines off. I could
tell that Googie
was already happy with
his experience in Then,
we were off to visit
my magician friend
Felix and his bar up
the street. I signaled
to Felix that he was
entertaining a new
magician in town. And
so Felix performed his
famous card to the
pocket routine, with
the pocket not his own
but rather, the target
audience member. The
two magicians sat
nose-to-nose looking
each other in the eye.
And
when Googie
reached to his hip
pocket he found the
card that he had
selected. Wow! Another
home run. The
only thing better
was actually
to find girls
in the girls’ balcony.
Googie
had already expressed
an interest in
finding a girl.
Our next venue was in
Guadalajara
de Noche,
the seedier part of
town. There, Googie
was almost completely
distracted by the fine
performance on stage,
while a young lady (I
use the term loosely)
was trying to start a
casual relationship.
My advice to him as he
stepped away was keep
your eyes open and be
very careful. The
first thing Googie
saw as he stepped
through the curtain
behind our seats was a
large burly man in a
khaki uniform and big
black belt with a Colt
45 automatic on his
hip. At
least the
girl was going to be
safe. The next thing
he saw was a big fat
lady with a red cross sign, sitting behind
the table dispensing
doughboys, not
biscuits, but a
powerful ointment
capable of killing the
viruses that were
killing people who
frequented these
places. If that
doesn't make you want
to be careful,
nothing will. After
passing through the
beaded curtain, he was
able to converse
semi-privately with
the young lady. I am
reasonably sure that
nothing happened
because he would have
been complaining about
the burning ointment
as he returned to his
seat. He urgently
whispered to me,
"We've got to get her
out of here." Googie
was almost in tears as
I dragged him to the
bridge crossing. I
had arranged to meet Googie
in Our
instructions from Googie
told us to take the
light rail to
Growing up bad in the West
Texas town of
And now
my story begins:
20 years
later when I talked to Googie's
parents at the
Ronald McDonald,
as a brand name for
the McDonald hamburger
company, has
gone through many
costume changes and
iterations. One
of the most famous was
closest to Googie.
It was the reclining
statue on the park
bench. That Ronald
McDonald was used
as a picture opportunity.
One of the greatest
victories for Madison
Avenue executives was
putting those park
benches all over the
country. For years,
there were hundreds and
thousands of personal
family pictures taken on
those park
bench that were
cherished and put
into albums.
You can't buy that kind
of advertising on any
signboard on the highway
anywhere.
Everything
I told you up to this
point is the absolute
truth. If I say more,
the story will
phase into
a fiction. Like
if I were
to surmise that Googie
had a family and was
teaching them
the art of magic and
clowning. It would be
even a greater stretch
to conjecture that he
had returned to the West
Texas town of