Darkstone
Immortal
Aug 17 2011, 5:37pm
Views: 878
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As a kid I worked on Dr. Arvilla Taylor’s North Texas Woodwinds ranch. (Named after her partner Jean Barnes’ surprisingly gentle stallion, aka “Woodie”. And we're still friends. She knows a lot of people, being from an old Texas family (she is the great great niece of the three Taylor brothers (Edward, George, and James) who died at the Alamo.) She is a leading expert on English literature from Beowulf to Chaucer to Shakespeare. She also knows a lot of the dirt that’s gone on in south Texas politics, including details about the fraud in the 1948 election that put Lyndon Johnson into the US Senate. (The 200 votes “discovered” that gave him an 87 vote win were all cast in alphabetical order.) She also talks about watching a certain southern Texas courthouse burn down along with all the contested votes before a recount could be conducted. I was always impressed by her courage as she had been crippled by polio as a girl and had to walk (and ride) the rest of her life with heavy leg braces.
Anyway she was part of a local theater thing that had brought Vincent Price to town to do his one man show as Oscar Wilde. She put him up at her ranch before and after the show (which she took me to). He was quite funny and charismatic, though he looked very old. I made one faux pas at the ranch after the show. I had decided to bring a bottle of champagne to the gathering, the best I could find. Later I apologized for bringing regular French champagne, having looked all over town for the pink stuff. Mr. Price explained quite nicely that champagne could be either French or pink, but not both.
Dr. Taylor also put up Benazir Bhutto who was doing a speaking tour a bit after the 9-11 attacks. Somehow I found out she had the same birth year as I (though I would have never asked a lady her age.), and also that her mother suffered from Alzheimer’s same as mine had. During her short stay there she did enjoy riding horses. She was quite an accomplished equestrian. Who knew?
Rusty McDonald was my dad’s little brother. They formed a band with Aunt Maudie and a friend named “Pee Wee” Stewart (who later became a judge and officiated at my first marriage). Dad’s nickname was “Sleepy”. So Rusty (vocals & guitar), Sleepy (fiddle), Maudie (steel guitar), and Pee Wee (drums) formed the Oklahoma Wanderers. Uncle Rusty was always restless, so the band eventually broke up. He went on to front vocals for people like Tex Ritter’s band. At one point he and Dad were part of Bob Wills and the Light Crust Doughboys. The group broke up at the start of WWII. Dad joined the navy but eventually was discharged out when they found out he had three young children at home.
Rusty again hooked up with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys after the war, and convinced Dad to join too. Dad had this great fiddle that Bob Wills greatly admired, and he offered Dad $1000 to buy it. Dad liked the fiddle and refused. A bit later Dad took the fiddle to a shop to get it restrung and refurbished. Tthe next night the shop burned down and the fiddle was no more. Uncle Rusty was the lead vocalist for the Texas Playboys, and many said he was the best they ever had. He sang the lead vocals on one of their biggest hits, “Faded Love”. According to family legend Bob Wills dropped into the hospital when I was born. When he saw how fat a baby I was he was inspired to write another one of his big hits, “Roly Poly”. Dunno if that’s true. By the time I was five Mom said I was frighteningly skinny and she had me taking a spoon a day of this vile tasting vitamin mixture. Didn't work. Anyway, Hollywood eventually called Wills to make a singing cowboy movie. Rusty went but Dad stayed in Texas with his family. Family legend has it that in Hollywood Wills picked up a pretty starlet as a girlfriend, and later found Rusty with the girl. Rusty was immediately fired and found himself adrift in California. He joined a Black R&B band, worked a bit, then drifted to Arizona where he met young musicians just starting out, like Marty Robbins and Glen Campbell. Eventually he started up a honky tonk in Lawton Oklahoma where he played in his own band. Marty Robbins often played there, both before and after he became famous. Robbins, a country western musician, often would play Hawaiian music to break things up. Uncle Rusty eventually got his own local TV show, his oldest son became a news anchorman, and the younger a restaurateur with a small local chain. Dad would occasionally play on the show. Much later when Uncle Rusty was dying in the hospital I visited with my girlfriend and he was the first in my family to know we were going to be married.
Lessee. I met William Ruckelshaus, Christine Todd Whitman, and Lisa P. Jackson at various EPA conventions. I was always impressed by how sincere about protecting the environment they all were. It's easy to criticize and demonize, but they were all obviously doing their best. In the 1980s Ruckelshaus told me that the EPA had a secret agenda, not to ever be mentioned on record, of achieving zero industrial waste discharge by 2050. I've never had anyone mention that since.
Bob Dylan and Judy Collins I met in Austin while I was at college. After a Judy Collins concert, most people had left when Ms. Collins came back on stage dragging Bob Dylan along with her. (I still don't know where he came from or what he was doing in Austin.) She motioned the ones remaining, about a dozen or so, to come sit up front and the two put on an intimate performance, talking with the audience like we were just a bunch of friends. She was really sweet. As for Dylan, he was quiet at first (except for singing of course), then got all enthusiastic about being a born again Christian and almost wouldn’t shut up. Who knew?
Also while I was at college in Austin Willie Nelson had retired there and sometimes hung around the Armadillo World Headquarters music hall. We met and talked about country music. He was especially interested in my Uncle Rusty. Eventually he got itchy, started singing on the stage again, and finally came out of retirement and on to greatness.
I’d gone to a student lecture by Vincent Bugliosi and afterward he hung around signing autographs. As he was finishing the session my date, a very lovely and charismatic girl who is now a medical doctor and head of a local hospital, invited the few students still around over to her apartment. She then rather nonchalantly (The little minx!) asked Bugliosi if he wanted to come along too. He agreed, and we all had a great time all squished up in her little apartment talking about law and legal cases. The next morning she, he, I, and a few survivors still awake had breakfast at the local Denny’s and then we drove him back to his hotel. He was very funny and intelligent.
When William Shockley came to lecture at the local college a lot of the students and faculty protested due to his statements on eugenics. Some students set up a picket line in front of the lecture hall to prevent attendance. Despite previously having no interest in attending, having a bunch of people telling me I shouldn’t attend set off the contrarian in me so I walked through the picket line, smiled and waved at the jeers and boos, and attended a sparsely attended but pretty intelligent discussion. I pointed out his ideas were widely implemented in the 1920s and 1930s and had since been discredited. His point was that more modern study methods were needed. He was pretty intense, and quite defensive, but he seemed genuinely sincere. I was quite impressed by his intelligence, if not his ideas. I like to think he was impressed by my honest and civil discussion.
I met James Cameron when he was guest of honor during Wunderfest, a local scifi convention that’s lucky to break a couple of dozen attendees. This was just before the first Terminator was released. The studio was nervous, and he was doing publicity anywhere he could. I think we were one step below grocery store openings. Anyway, it was the second film he ever directed. He had some funny stories about his first, Piranha II, which he shot in the Caribbean, and most the cast and crew spoke only Italian. He said he had horrible nightmares all during the production, from which he got the idea for The Terminator. We mainly talked about Hollywood FX in general rather than the movie in particular, but he had brung along some Terminator t-shirts to hand out. Mine wore out long ago. Of course Terminator turned out to be a huge success, surprising the heck out of everybody, and propelling him to superstardom so he would never have to shill in a small college town scifi con ever again.
I met Harlan Ellison in the early 1980s. Austin scifi groups were putting together a bid to host the World Science Fiction Society’s WorldCon. Of course that year Melbourne Australia was a shoo-in, but Austin ended up with the consolation prize of the North American Science Fiction Convention. Anyway, he was actually a lot nicer than I thought he’d be. He had some really funny horror stories about Hollywood. He would especially go on about how Hollywood thought nothing about stealing scifi and fantasy plots, almost like they weren't "real" literature so any ideas scifi/fantasy writers had were automatically in the public domain. I also met Steve Jackson, founder of Steve Jackson Games. Because of the meeting my gaming group ended up test playing their GURPS Arabian Nights game, for which our payment was a copy of the GURPS Arabian Nights game each, which I actually thought was pretty neat.
I met Carl Barks while I was helping Alfred Stewart publish his Cartoonaggio fanzine. It was amazing how fast Barks could draw. Not many know that Carl Barks’ style inspired the big-eyed style of Japanese anime. Dr. Stewart also introduced me to the second “Dean of Science Fiction”, Jack Williamson, and I got autographed copies of his Legion of Time series. I have to say Dr. Stewart did most the talking and I mostly listened so the “meeting” was pretty superficial on my part.
I met Buckminster Fuller at a party of a Britisher friend of Dr. Taylor. He was extremely intelligent and very engaging, but about a couple of hours into the party he suddenly came to a stop in mid sentence, looked confused, and then hurriedly excused himself and left in a limo. The English guy explained Fuller was very sensitive about his increasing age and felt very humiliated and embarrassed whenever he lost his train of thought. Of course that’s just part of the natural aging process, and happens to me a lot nowadays, but as I reflected on it I could see how it would horrify such a brilliant man.
Lessee. Once as part of protocol I asked Mrs. Imelda Marcos to dance at a ball. I was told she would graciously decline and that would be that, but apparently somebody forgot to tell her and she shocked everyone in the room by saying yes. She was a really small woman, very pretty and charismatic, and I really liked her personally. (I guess that’s why she was so successful politically.) She asked what I liked most about the Philippines so I said the lovely ladies and the beautiful forests, which seemed to please her. Indeed the forests of the Philippines were very beautiful, and I enjoyed hiking through them very much. Ironically a decade later most of the forests had been cut down and the wood shipped to Japan.
Troy Aikman, Emmit Smith, and Michael Irvin were constant sights in restaurants, night clubs, and shopping malls in Wichita Falls in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Dallas Cowboys had their training camp here. They were quite personable and very patient with their fans. At Parkway Grill some friends and I were discussing old cars, especially my cousin’s restored 1957 Chevy. From an adjacent table Mr. Smith joined in the conversation. Aikman and Irwin were with him and eventually joined in as well. They were very friendly and quite likable. Kinda reminded me of big kids.
Jeez, this is long! Aren't you sorry you asked?
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Brothers, sisters,
I was Elf once.
We danced together
Under the Two Trees.
We sang as the soft gold of Laurelin
And the bright silver of Telperion,
Brought forth the dawn of the world.
Then I was taken.
Brothers, sisters,
In my torment I kept faith,
And I waited.
But you never came.
And when I returned you drew sword,
And when I called your names you drew bow.
Was my Eldar beauty all,
And my soul nothing?
So be it.
I will return your hatred,
And I am hungry.
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I am a famous person myself, actually, thank you <<<<<<WIN!!! That's awesome. Mods up...
But, anyway...here's my list... 
) 
Still, I got to see the picture and sigh over it 
A girl my dad knew when he was in his 20's won a million dollars from the lottery too. 
I love Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill etc... never meet them though. 
