Wednesday, December 26, 2018

The Cobbwebs

 As I wrote earlier, my two best friends were Del and Chris.  They had been recording some cover songs on Chris's four-track at his house.  We started talking about doing some original songs.  I had written songs since the fourth grade, and Chris was very good in writing music, as well as lyrics on his own.  Del was a very good singer.  The three of us decided to form a group.
 There were a few names that we considered including Rave On and Eastside Project.  The one that stuck was The Cobbwebs.  It kind of had a double meaning.  We were writing songs that were inspired by groups from the 1960's, so the meaning of "cobwebs" made sense for old sounding songs.  Del had relatives in Georgia named Cobb.  One had been a Southern general during the Civil War, so we settled on The Cobbwebs.  Also, there was a group called The Cobwebs, so we had to add the other "B".
 Chris played lead guitar and drums.  Del was the lead singer, and he also played bass guitar and keyboards.  Chris also mixed the tracks, as he majored in technical recording at Memphis State.  On a trip out there, Del and I joined Chris to record two songs on a professional soundboard in a real studio.  I learned how to work the board and produce the songs.  Even with Chris's four-track, he made the two of them sound like a full band.
 We heard of a project that a local radio station was producing featuring bands from the Columbia area.  We submitted a song and was accepted for a CD and cassette tape release called "The Burning of Columbia".  We went to a guy, who had us sign a contract.  It said that they would record our song at their studio, and we would have to pay them to get promotional photos made.  We pooled our money, and got that done.  They never used the pictures.  When we got into the studio, Chris wanted to work their soundboard, but they told him no.  The recording lasted almost all of a Sunday afternoon.  The radio station released a cassette.  We never saw a CD.  We were the last song on side two of the tape.  The song was called "Cry Baby Cry", but when it was listed on the tape, it listed "Cobbwebs-Cry Baby".  We weren't pleased with that either, but we had signed a contract.  We did get the radio station to play our song a couple of times, and another radio station in town played it, and we were interviewed about it.
 After Del and Chris moved to Nashville, they continued recording songs.  I continued to write lyrics and send to them.  We were looking for a record label to sign us.  They would send out sample tapes to labels along with sheet music.  The labels would return the tapes because of unsolicited material, but they would keep the sheet music.  I sent one to Elton John, but the tape was returned.  I also sent one to Yoko Ono.  She kept it.  We gave a tape to Gary Lewis.  He listened to it, and said he liked it.  We sent one to Peter Noone, and he said he liked to play it while driving in his car.  We started getting some buzz that our music was good.  One independent label wanted to represent us.  We put a cd together of 20 original songs and called it "Magic Boat".
 I wrote six songs that were included on the CD.  In 2001, the label sent copies to mostly college radio stations and some foreign stations in Europe.  We sold a few copies in Oregon, but mostly in Europe.  At the end of 2001, we were rated in several top-ten lists in Italy, Bosnia, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and other countries.  Two of my songs got a lot of airplay in Europe--"She Said No" and "She Said Yes".  The first was a song about a guy asking a girl for a date, but she said no.  The second was a song about a guy asking a girl for a date and expecting her to say no, but she says yes, and then he doesn't know what to do next.  These two songs in effect became our single release.
 In regards to labels keeping our sheet music, we were concerned that they would steal our songs, so everything was copyrighted.  The law basically says that two songs have to have eight measures the same in order before it can be said that the two songs are the same.  We listened to a lot of radio after submitting our songs.  One song had six measures the same but not eight.  Too bad.  We could have made a gazillion dollars had it been eight.
 Our independent label wanted us to perform at a oldies festival in California.  We wanted to go, but it became almost impossible, since two guys played all the instruments and did all of the vocals.  The promoter said that he could provide a backing band for us, but we only would have two weeks to get that all together, so we passed on the festival.  Soon thereafter, we had some creative and marketing differences within the band, so we split up.  Chris and I were still writing songs.  In 2007, Del and Chris got back together and recorded another CD.  In 2008, the three of us got back together in Nashville and recorded a third CD.  Those last two have not been released formally, but you can find some of the songs on social media, if you look hard enough.

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Macca

 It was 1993.  Paul McCartney was doing his New World Tour.  It was announced that he was going to play in Atlanta at the Omni.  Del, Chris and I had to go.  After all, this was Paul McCartney.  A Beatle.  We had seen Ringo Starr in Charlotte earlier, so it just was a must see for us.  I got tickets on the left side of the stage in the stands.  We made reservations at a "motel" outside of Atlanta near Snapfinger Rd. (One should always snap their fingers when passing by Snapfinger).  The concert was scheduled for May 1st.
 A couple of weeks before going to Atlanta, they announced that Paul would be coming to Columbia to play a show at Williams-Brice Stadium on May 7th.  We already had our tickets for Atlanta, but we couldn't pass up seeing him again, so we got tickets for that show too.  Our tickets were in the upper deck of the stadium.
 The State Newspaper put out a call for anyone with a big Beatles collection to contact them about running a story on them.  We reached out, because at that time, our combined collection was valued somewhere around $200,000.  They scheduled a time for us to come into their offices and bring our most expensive stuff.  We brought picture sleeves, memorabilia, and other stuff.  They put us in a room with a sheet on the floor.  They wanted us to lie down on the sheet with our collection around us.  The photographer stood on a ladder and shot down at us.  We had to be very careful not to lay on our stuff to damage it.  A reporter interviewed us on how we got interested in The Beatles.  They used a quote of mine where I said that I was zapped through the TV screen, when I saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.  As we were finishing up the interview, I asked the reporter not to use my age in the article.  I was acting, and I was doing roles that were younger than I was.  I looked younger than my age.  The reporter said he would do as I asked.  When the article came out, it said "Walter Durst, 39".  I was livid.  I called the reporter, and he said that his editor made him put my age in the article because it was "company policy".  I was irked to put it mildly.
 Anyway, we went to Atlanta and saw the show.  It was great.  We sang along with almost all the songs.  A few months later, I got audio and video copies of that show from a guy in Alabama.  It was good, except for telling his friend to go get him a beer just as Paul finished singing "Yesterday".
 The show in Columbia was almost exactly the same as the one in Atlanta, including all the intros to the songs that Paul spoke about.  The only difference was in Atlanta he had a false start on "Michelle", and a scenery piece fell down during "Paperback Writer".  They had told everyone not to bring audio or video devices into the concert in Columbia.  There turned out to be no one checking for that.  One could have brought an entire TV crew in, and no one would have said anything.  I didn't get a copy of that show, but I do have a video of the soundcheck.
 It was amazing to see Paul McCartney.  I saw him again in 2015 and sang along to all of the songs again.

Friday, October 26, 2018

The Program

 During the early 1990's, I had an agent for work in film and television.  One night, she called me with a proposal.  There was a film that was being planned for Charleston and Savannah.  I asked her what the film was called, and she said "something Gump".  I asked who had been cast for the film, and she told me that Sally Field had.  The part that was being offered to me was of a man sitting on a park bench next to the male lead.  At that time, the male lead had not been cast.  I asked my agent what the film was about, and she said that it was about the South in the 50's and 60's.  So, Sally Field was in it.  I had worked with Burt Reynolds in "Semi-Tough" and had not had a favorable impression of him.  Sally Field had done the "Smokey and the Bandit" films with him.  I just thought this "Gump" movie would be a redneck movie about the South, so I turned it down.  I asked my agent what else she had, and she said there was a movie being filmed in Columbia called "The Program".  I asked her what that was about, and she said college football and steroids.  That sounded more interesting, and I wouldn't have to travel, so I took that.  By the way, every actor has a story like that where they passed on a project that would later turn out to be a hit and instead took a job where the film was not as good.
 My friend Del and I were cast as football fans.  The job was kind of like the one I had in "Semi-Tough", where they moved us around the stadium, depending on the game.  It was November and very cold.
 One of the stars of the film was Halle Berry.  It was one of her first roles.  She played a college student tutoring Omar Epps.  At the time, she was married to David Justice who played baseball for the Atlanta Braves.  He came over from Atlanta one day to visit her.  During a break in the filming, I went over to David and we talked about baseball.  All of a sudden, Halle Berry came over to where we were and pulled him away.  She was mad and told him that he should be talking with her.  He said he was just talking with me about baseball, but she said she didn't care and that I was nobody.  It was obvious who wore the pants in that marriage.  They got divorced a few years later.  We were to shoot a scene that afternoon, where Halle would introduce Omar to the actor playing her father.  All she had to say was "This is my father".  22 takes later, we lost the sunlight and had to come back the next day for her to get it right.
 After seeing the film in the theater, there were huge continuity problems.  The biggest was one of the games.  They wanted to film an actual game during the football season to get the flavor of excited fans.  The game they chose was a South Carolina-Tennessee game.  The game was in September, and the fans were in short sleeves.  By the time they filmed us in November, it was cold and people had on winter coats.  So, one side of the stadium had summer clothing, and the other side had winter clothing.  It was as if there was a 50 degree change from one side to the other.  Also, those fans were wearing garnet or orange.  Neither team on the field wore those colors.  It was as if those fans showed up at the wrong game.  There were other errors, but that was the worst.
 James Caan was also in the movie, but he came in for a week of filming after most everyone else had left.  So, I didn't get to work with him.
 As for my agent, she left town with money from her clients including me.  I guess that was for the best.

Monday, October 15, 2018

Ginger

 In 1991, I sent a letter to an actress named Ginger Lynn Allen.  It was mostly a letter to sign up for her fan club.  She had been an adult film actress, and had done some mainstream roles too.  She responded to my letter, and I was put on her mailing list.
 As time went on, we became friends, more than just a fan to her.  She had recorded a 12" dance single, which was never released.  She sent me three of the records.  I gave two of them as Christmas presents.  I kept the third, which was autographed to me.  A few years later, a record producer in California contacted me about letting him borrow the record.  It seems that he had heard about Ginger's record and had contacted her about releasing it on a compilation cd.  She told him that I was the only one that she knew that had a copy of it.  So, I asked her permission and sent it to the producer.  He released the cd, and I got a credit on the booklet.
 I got Christmas presents from her each year, including a teddy bear one year.  It sits in my living room today.  I told her early on that I would not judge her for her work.  I knew that was just her job, and she was not like that in real life.  After a few years, I shared the gospel with her, and she accepted it.  I also helped her with a charity close to her heart--cystic fibrosis.
 She also was engaged to Charlie Sheen.  I knew that was not the best relationship to have, but sometimes love is blind.  After they broke up, and he married Denise Richards, Ginger was going through her attic and came upon some of Charlie's clothes.  She asked me what she should do about the clothes.  I told her not to give them back to him, but rather sell them to make money for her charity.  She did just that.
 When I moved into my apartment in 1994, Ginger was one of the first people to call and congratulate me on my new digs.  We didn't talk long, but it was great to hear from her.  In 2009-10, I was homeless.  I will talk about that more in depth later, but Ginger was very helpful in keeping my head in the game.  Her support helped me in not giving up on myself.  And, I supported her when she contracted cancer.  We are a mutual support bond.
 Even though we are 3000 miles away, we still have a bond.  Friendship is something between two people.  I am glad I can call her my friend.

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Martha Franks

  It was 1994.  Taking care of my parents was taking its toll.  Every time the phone would ring at work, my first thought was something had happened to Mother or Daddy.  Most of the time, it was something else.  Daddy was becoming increasingly forgetful.  He would go visit someone at the hospital and forget where he parked in the garage.  He would go to the wrong level and then think his car had been stolen.  He became a regular with hospital security.  They would take him up the levels until they found his car.  He was also getting into minor fender-benders.  Mother was getting around better from her stroke, but she had to use a walker.  My brother and I decided that we had to take the car keys away from Daddy.  He cried a lot about that.  I had to do the grocery shopping, because we just couldn't let him drive.
  An option came our way.  Since Daddy was a Baptist minister, they could get into Martha Franks Retirement Center in Laurens, SC.  It was run by the SC Baptist Convention.  In order to get money for their move, we had to sell the house, their two cars, and most of their stuff.  We got an auctioneer to come and sell the stuff in an Estate Sale.  On the day of the sale, I went around to prospective buyers and told them the history of the pieces.  The prices they paid got to be a little bit more with my stories.  Yes, I could sell.  After all, I was in retail.
 My brother and I drove our parents to Laurens, which was about 70 miles away.  I drove Mother, and my brother drove Daddy.  Mother was resigned to the move.  She knew she could no longer stay in the house.  Daddy cried all the way there, because he was going to miss his friends.  He cried for 3 months after moving in but got more used to it, because he had friends there too.  Later on, he found to love Martha Franks as did Mother.
 I had to find an apartment to live in, since the house was being sold.  I found one at Ravenwood Apts. in Forest Acres, about 10 minutes from work.  It was a two-bedroom which worked well, because I had so much memorabilia and records.  My last day in the house was my birthday.  June 17th.  It is kind of funny how one can equate a date with something else.  I was in the den, lying on the floor, watching my 13" TV.  All of the networks were showing one thing--the low-speed chase of the police and OJ Simpson.
  I was not part of the sale of our house.  I left that up to my brother and the real estate company, so I didn't know who bought it other than it was a couple from Charlotte.  A couple of years later, I was working in the TV Department at Rich's.  One Saturday, a woman came in to buy a TV.  As I was putting her information into our computer, I asked her for her address for delivery.  She said:  "1810 Belmont Drive".  I added before she could say:  "29206".  She was surprised I knew where her house was, and I explained that was my parents' house where I grew up.  She proceeded to tell me about all the stuff that was wrong with the house that she and her husband had not been told about.  Things like the den's toilet overflowing due to roots in the line; the crack down the wall of my old bedroom because of the weight of my records that messed up the foundation; and the drain in the patio outside that floods the den when it rains.  I just said I was sorry.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Caregiver Part Two

 My Mother got out of rehab after her stroke.  She was doing pretty well, but she needed someone to stay with her during the day.  My father did that mostly during the week along with a woman he hired.  On Sundays, Daddy was the interim pastor of a church, so I was put in charge of being with Mother on Sunday mornings.  As I wrote earlier, I was very active in the church and a big part of the Singles Sunday School Department.  Since I could no longer go to church, most people knew the situation and supported me in my decision.
 About six months after my Mother's stroke, I got a letter in the mail from my Sunday School class.  It was from a woman that I didn't know, and she apparently didn't know me.  She wrote that they missed me being in Sunday School and hoped everything was all right with me.  She had no clue why I had been gone.  Two of the church's ministers had hurt me by ignoring me at the hospital, and now this woman had written me a somewhat generic letter of concern.  I had grown up in that church.  I had been very active in that church.  Now, I felt the church was turning its back on me.
 My friend Del was a member at St. Andrews Baptist Church.  I also knew the pastor quite well, because he used to be my pastor at my old church.  I joined St. Andrews.  I liked that church a lot, even though I was not as active as my previous church.  Later on, we got a new minister who liked to have Drama done during services.  A friend and I started a Drama group in the church.  I wrote several skits that were used to support the pastor's sermons.  I stayed at that church for almost 20 years.

Saturday, September 15, 2018

Caregiver

 I had been living with my parents to care for them, since I moved back to Columbia from Ft. Worth in 1979.  In exchange, they let me live with them for free.  It was a good arrangement.  I was able to work and travel, but at the same time I took care of them and notified others when I would be gone.
 In 1991, I was looking to go to Williamsburg with my friends Del and Chris.  We wanted to go to Busch Gardens and ride roller coasters, as well as visit Jamestown.  We rented a car.  We got there and toured the area.  After leaving Jamestown, we were almost involved in a head-on collision.  The rental's battery also died.  Upon getting that fixed, we went to Busch Gardens.  The park was fantastic.  On one roller coaster, I was going downhill toward a lake.  As I was screaming, a bug flew into my mouth.  It was not good for me or the bug.  Adjacent to the park was the beer factory.  We got to see how beer was made.  At the end of the tour, they offered free samples.  I had been sober for 7 years, so I declined.  There was a 17 year old boy on our tour who wanted the excess samples.  So, we all gave our beer to him.  As we were on the trolley to take us back to the park, the boy was standing up.  You could tell the beer was starting to take effect.  The trolley lurched, and he fell flat on his face.  It was pretty funny.
 When we left Williamsburg, we decided to drive down the coast toward Myrtle Beach.  It was a very long journey passing through small towns with even smaller speed limits.  We finally got to our destination.  We stopped at a miniature golf course.  As we were playing, a thunderstorm rolled in.  We ran to a nearby shelter carrying our golf clubs.  Smart move.  Carrying lightning rods.  Thankfully, we weren't struck by lightning.  We then left Myrtle Beach.  The traffic was bad, so we tried to bypass it all and got hopelessly lost.  We drove around the upper part of SC for quite a while until we came to I-77.  Everyone has GPS now, but back then we didn't even have a map.
 We got back home and went to our separate homes.  The next morning, my Mother had just cooked breakfast and went in her bedroom to rest.  She did that a lot.  My father and I were in the living room reading the newspaper.  I saw something that I thought my Mother would find interesting and went into her bedroom to read it to her.  She was babbling.  I couldn't understand her.  I was perplexed and went back into the living room.  I sat there for a minute and then remarked to Daddy that something seemed wrong with Mother.  He went into her room and came out frantic.  "Call 911!  Get an ambulance!"  I did.  The ambulance came and took her to Baptist Hospital.  Daddy was distraught, so I drove both of us to the hospital behind the ambulance.
 When we got to the hospital, we went into the ER waiting room.  Daddy was crying.  I was sitting nearby, having a hard time processing what was going on.  The doctor came out and told us that Mother had a massive stroke.  As we were sitting there, word spread that Mother was in the hospital in serious condition.  Our pastor and music minister came running into the waiting room.  They went right past me to my father.  They didn't even acknowledge my existence.  Two church staff members came running in and saw me sitting alone.  They came over to me and asked me how I was doing.  I have never forgotten their kindness.  I had done many things for that church.  I had written Stewardship dramas.  I was in the choir.  I had helped organize the Singles Sunday School class.  I had been on mission trips.  None of that seemed to matter to some.  It quite frankly hurt my feelings.
 I called my brother, and he came to help.  Mother stayed in the hospital for some time and then went on to HealthSouth to rehab.  She got a little better over time but was never the same.  I was her caregiver, and I dropped the ball.  I felt guilty for years that had I acted sooner that her paralysis would not have been so bad.  I just saw her condition and didn't say anything for a few minutes.  The doctors told me later that my response time would not have mattered.  The damage had already been done.  They told me I saved her life by getting her to the hospital in time.  I guess I would have to dwell on that.  Also that this happened after I got back from my vacation.  I think God prepared me for it by being rested.  What if I was in Williamsburg when she had her stroke?  I think she would have probably died that day.  I live in a world of "what ifs".

Monday, September 3, 2018

Legs

 The store came up with an idea to have a Sexy Legs contest.  They asked several men around the store to participate.  I agreed just as a joke.  We went to the Belk Advertising Department and were asked to take off our pants (of course in a private room).  We then put on a white bathrobe to take the picture.  One leg was exposed, and a Polaroid photo was taken.  They only showed the leg, not any other part of the body.  That way, the voters would only see the legs and not vote for the person.
 The pictures were put up in the break room with a jar in front of each pictures.  The idea was to have the other employees to vote for the sexiest legs by putting money into the jars.  A penny counted as one vote.  If they put in a dollar, that counted as 100 votes.  The only people who knew whose legs were whose were two people in the Advertising Dept. and the "models".
 My co-workers just knew that I was in one of those pictures, although I would neither confirm nor deny one was me.  Then, they wanted to see my legs, but I refused.  They felt that was a confirmation.  Of course it was.  Then, they tried to figure out based on the age or color of the legs.  I never said which one was mine, but they figured it out.  I got the most votes.
 The money was given to charity.  It was the first time I had ever won anything based on my looks (or my sexy legs).  The only beauty pageant I ever entered.  My legs have gotten less sexy now.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Receipts

 On a Sunday night, a guy was riding his bicycle not far from his house.  He went around a corner rather fast, and a car hit him.  The force was so great that he flew into a tree.  As he lay dying on the ground, the first car that arrived on the scene was a woman who knew the man from church.  She knew how to get in touch with his mother.  An ambulance came and took him to the hospital, where he died.  The man worked at Belk in the warehouse, which had moved from downtown out to Columbia Mall.  I had known this man for a long time.  It was very sad.
 Upon hearing the news of his death, our store manager called me into his office and offered me the job of this guy.  I was interested, but I told the manager that I would have to think about it and decide after he was buried.  I thought it was out of respect for the deceased.  After leaving the burial service, I was walking with the store manager and told him I would take the job.
 The job was to check merchandise receipts against the purchase journals, which determined whether the inventory was more or less what was supposed to be in the store.  This helped the buyers and finance folks know how much inventory we had at any given time.  I also had to investigate if there seemed to be a major discrepancy.  When an item came into the warehouse, it was counted by the clerks in the warehouse.  They would put price tags on them and send them to the floor.  The sales associates would note on the receipt what the count was and turn the receipt back to the warehouse.  I would then get that receipt and compare it to what was ordered.  It was tedious but necessary.  I would then take the receipt to accounts payable, where they would compare the receipt to the invoice and then pay it accordingly.  I had an office off of the warehouse floor.  I brought my cassette player/radio with me, and jammed to music while I worked.  I could also wear jeans and casual shirts, because I was no longer directly dealing with the public.  Because my predecessor had died, there was really no one to show me how to do my work.  I settled into it okay.  Another big plus was that the warehouse closed on holidays, so I got Memorial Day and Labor Day off.  Sales people were not so fortunate.
 As I controlled the inventory numbers and checked behind the buyers, there was a time when it got bad.  I was approached by the store higher-ups to find a reason to fire one of the buyers.  They didn't like one of the woman buyers, but they couldn't find a reason to fire her.  They came to me and told me to find that reason.  I poured over all of her purchase orders.  Everything seemed okay.  I did find one order where the markup she had done was not quite up to what it should have been.  She had put the markup at 40%, when it should have been more like 60%.  I went to the managers to show them that order, and they used it to fire her.  I felt very badly about it, but it was part of my job.  A few years later, she and I worked at another store.  She had not known that it was me that found this mistake that got her fired.  She was very cordial to me.  I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth.
 I stayed at this job for a couple of years, until I was promoted to the Accounts Payable Department.  More on that later.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Shoes

 I had been in "exile" at the downtown Belk store for about 9 months.  It was time for me to come back to Columbia Mall, and there was a full-time opening in Men's Shoes, so I took it.  I didn't know much about selling shoes, but I immersed myself in the different brands and qualities.  I got to know a lot about tennis shoes, running shoes, cross training shoes, dress shoes, you name it shoes.
 One Saturday, we were very busy with a back to school sale.  Our small department space was swamped with customers.  I had one other sales person helping me.  We were trying to take them in the order they had come into the area, but it got increasingly difficult to do so.  As I began waiting on a woman, a man stepped ahead of her and announced rather rudely that he and his son were next.  I apologized to him, but I said I thought she was ahead of him.  She agreed with me.  This man, who I will not name, was a well known African-American in the community.  He got madder with me, and then yelled out that I was a racist for not waiting on him first.  He may have been trying to score some points with his son, and I apologized again.  I told him I would get to him as quickly as possible.  He was demanding to speak to my supervisor.  He told me he wanted to have me fired.  He asked me what my name was, and I told him "Walter Durst".  He said, "Durst?  Are you related to John Durst?"  I said "Yes, he's my brother".  To which he kind of calmed down and said that he knew my brother, so he wouldn't have me fired.  The ironic thing about this story that the man didn't know what that he knew my brother from his days in Public Relations.  This man hired my brother to do some work on a five-year plan for his group.  My brother didn't have time to do that job, so he gave the job to me to do the research and write the plan.  I then gave it to my brother, and he put his name on it, and gave it to this man.  So, the man, who wanted to have me fired, had no idea that I was the one who wrote his plan.  I don't think he ever did.
 Another fun day was the day of the gang fight.  We had heard that two rival gangs were in the mall and had come into the upstairs entrance to our store.  There had been a skirmish upstairs, but there was a full-blown war that erupted in the Men's Department.  The kids were all in high school.  They were throwing punches and pushing guys into fixtures.  Many of them broke.  They also picked up plastic hangers and were hitting each other with them.  One guy found some walking canes with ducks on the handles.  They used those as weapons and broke many of them,  One guy picked up a boot from Shoes and hit another guy in the head with the heel causing blood to get on the shoe.  Most of the customers and associates were stunned watching this.  One associate yelled out to them, "Who's going to pay for all of this?"  We were afraid they were going to turn on her, but she stood her ground.  I went to my phone and called security.  They came out of their office, which was nearby, and got the gang members out into the parking lot.  They could fight out there without harming any more merchandise.  The police came and broke up the fight but didn't arrest anyone.
 There was a lot of down time during the day where nothing was happening, so I used that time to write songs.  Some of them were pretty good like "She Said Yes", "She Said No", and "Dream Girl".  Chris and Del would record them later on, and I'll write about that later.
 One day, a man came into the department and wanted to order a pair of Stacy Adams lace-up boots in grey.  He had always wanted a pair, but we didn't have them in stock, so I had to order them.  When they came in, I gave the man a call, and he came in to get them.  The man was in his 70's.  He was so proud of them that he wanted to wear them straightway.  As they were new shoes, he had not gotten used to them.  He went outside, and one heel caught the curb, and he fell into the parking lot.  He came back into the store.  His pants were torn, and he was bleeding on his hands and knees.  The first thing out of my mouth was asking him if he was okay.  He said he was, but he was just embarrassed that he had fallen.  The heel had come off of the shoe, and he wanted me to order another pair, which I agreed to do.  About a week later, I got a call from the Belk Legal Department in Charlotte.  They told me that a customer of mine was suing me for damages for selling him a faulty pair of shoes.  Not only was I being sued but also my supervisor; the Personnel Department for hiring me; the store manager for hiring the HR person; the corporate office for hiring the store manager; and the shoe company for making the shoes.  It seemed that the man had two sons.  One was a doctor, and the other was a lawyer.  They saw some big bucks in their eyes.  I told our lawyers what had happened, and I filled out a sworn document.  Everybody else that was named in the lawsuit backed me up with my story.  The judge threw out the case.  The man admitted that his sons put him up to filing the lawsuit.  He just wanted the shoes.  We gave him a free pair of shoes, and he was a happy man.

Monday, August 13, 2018

Del and Chris

 When I was a buyer at Belk, I needed to hire someone for the Record Department.  I told Personnel that I wanted someone who knew a lot about music.  They told me they found someone, and they wanted me to interview them.  His name was Del.  He came in my office, and his eyes lit up when he saw a Beatles poster on my wall.  He said he was a big fan of The Beatles, and I knew we would get along well.
 Del and I went to record shows and antique stores.  We were both collectors of The Beatles.  It also turned out that we knew a lot of the same people.  He and I became friends.  He introduced me to his distant cousin Chris.  Chris was younger than us, but he had an old love for The Beatles.  He was also from Columbia, but he was going to school in Memphis, TN.  We also had more in common.  Del and Chris had been in a band, where they sang mostly cover songs.  I had been writing songs since I was in 4th grade.  So, we decided to form a partnership, where Chris would write the music, and I would write the lyrics.  Chris also wrote lyrics, and on some occasions he would add some lyrics to mine.  It was a good arrangement.
 When Chris was home from school, the three of us would go to record stores in Charleston, Charlotte, Augusta and Atlanta. We would also go to record shows to build up our collections.  One game you play with dealers is to try and get something worth a lot more than what they are selling it for.  If you can outwit the dealer, you have been successful.  Del didn't have much of a poker face.  He would see something in a bin that he wanted and yell out "Yes!"  That would tip of the dealer that he needed to up his price.  Chris and I would get mad at Del for doing this, but he couldn't help it.  There were many times where Chris and I would go into the hall and move to another area from Del to distance ourselves from him.  That way, we got better deals before Del got there.  During our trips, each person would make cassette tapes to play in the car.  I would mainly do classic rock.  They liked surf and drag.  I hated that kind of music.  They didn't like much of my music, so it worked out well or not.  Another thing we liked was going to amusement parks.  During our time together, we rode on six of the top ten roller coasters in the country.
 We took one trip to Six Flags over Georgia.  It was 70 degrees when we left, and it freezing cold and snowy in Atlanta.  We were not dressed for the cold.  There were very few people at the park.  We had to hold onto the metal bars on the roller coaster through the pockets of our light jackets.  We went into one gift shop there just to get warm, and the employee called security on us, as she thought we were going to steal something.  Another Six Flags trip was around Halloween.  We went into the Haunted House.  I have never been so scared before in my life.  It was pitch dark in there, and some guy started a chainsaw right next to my head.  I ran over people to get out of there.
 One memorable trip was one that Del and I took to Memphis to meet up with Chris.  He was majoring in music recording, so we got to go to a real recording studio.  Del and Chris cut two songs there.  One was a cover song, and the other was one of my songs.  It was cool.  I got to work the board.  Del played the piano and bass.  Chris played guitar.  We had a drummer that Chris knew.  We also went to Graceland to pay homage to Elvis.  After doing that for a couple of days, we went to Six Flags over Mid-America near St. Louis, MO.  We got on a roller coaster and got up to the top of the first hill, when it suddenly stopped.  Off in the distance, we could see a tornado coming.  It had just gotten dark.  We had to walk down the frame of the ride to the bottom.  Most of the other park goers went for their cars to get out of there.  The employees went to an underground shelter.  The three of us stayed with a security guard and watched the tornado spin in the clouds over us.  Thankfully, it didn't touch down until a few miles further on.  Since most of the folks had left, we pretty much had the park to ourselves.  That was fun.
 I will write more about the music collaboration with Del and Chris in the next story.  Needless to say, we were really good friends and had a lot in common.

Saturday, August 4, 2018

Vids

 As a student at Southwestern, I had a roommate for a short time named John.  He had a Beta VCR.  When we separated, he kept the VCR, and I got most of the tapes.  I fell in love with taping shows off of TV, as well as buying prerecorded movies.  I graduated from Beta to RCA Videodiscs, because they were the first to have both James Bond and Beatle movies on video.  I had a lot of those.  I then went onto Pioneer Laserdiscs.  The quality was superior to anything out there, but the selection wasn't too good.  That was when I broke down and went to a VHS VCR.  I converted my other videos to VHS and found that there was a wide range of all kinds of VHS stuff out there.
 One day, I found a guy in KY who was selling Beatles videos and advertising them in a magazine.  I wrote to him for a list.  He sent a list which blew me away.  He had hundreds of titles.  Most were compilations of TV appearances, concerts, interviews, and movies.  He had them pretty cheap.  What he did was record them on blank tape from his tapes and send them to me.  Over the course of a couple of years, I had gotten around 150 tapes from him.  I also found other collectors or video and audio tapes who were willing to trade what they had for what I had.  One guy in NY wanted all Beatles, and he was willing to send me Rolling Stones, The Who, Elvis Presley, Howard Stern and others in exchange.  Another guy in IL had cassette tapes of concerts, which he wanted to trade for my titles.  It got to the point that I was dealing with collectors all over the world.  By 1992, I had the documented second largest Beatles video collection in the world.  Over 1800 hours.  The guy wo had the most was the guy from KY.  Some of his stuff was used on The Beatles Video Anthology release in the mid-1990's.
 It dawned on me that I could make a little money on these tapes, so I looked into the idea of becoming a dealer at record shows.  I had tables at shows in South Carolina and North Carolina.  There was another guy from Georgia who also sold videos.  I undercut him in prices.  He had better labels than mine, but most buyers didn't care about the labels.  There were other dealers there who sold "import" cd's or records.  At one record show, the show got raided by the police looking for illegal items.  One cd dealer had his stuff packed up and out the door before the police got to his table.  I just put my stuff under my table, and they couldn't do anything.
 I did an antique show in SC, which lasted for four days.  I stayed in a motel across from the mall.  After the third night, I went back to my room and found my key wouldn't work.  I went to the front desk, and they told me that my credit card had been rejected and they were holding my stuff until I could make it right.  It turned out that the girl at the front desk had written my number down wrong.  It was their fault, but they never apologized.  I wrote to their parent company when I got back home.  They never responded.  That motel closed up not long after that experience.
 I asked the guy I dealt with from NYC once where he got his stuff.  He told me never to ask him that question.  It seemed that he had connections with the Gotti family.  I never asked him again.  He later killed himself.  His brother worked for the NYPD and died at the World Trade Center on 9/11.  My friend was so depressed over that, because he watched the towers fall from his kitchen window.  He never got over it.  I sent a couple of tapes to a friend in CA.  He was watching them at work, when his boss asked him where they came from.  He protected me by telling his boss that he got them at a flea market and didn't know what they were.  He told me what happened, and I threw a lot of that stuff in the dumpster.  The other things, I converted to DVD.  That took me three years.  Then, I got rid of the videos and cassettes.  I stopped trading with others and doing record shows.  It just wasn't worth it.  Besides, that dealer who packed up his cd's and left one show?  Well, he was arrested for selling cd's to a record store and did some time in a federal prison.  No need to go there.  And here is another thing you might find interesting:  I have never watched all of the videos or DVD's I got during this period.  I said I would if ever I got sick and was laid up in bed, but the thing is that when you are that sick, you don't want to watch old videos.  It has been over 25 years since I did all that.
 One cool thing that came out of that experience was several years ago, I got an email from the author Desmond Morris.  He wrote the best seller "The Naked Ape".  He lived in London.  He had heard that I might have a copy of a BBC TV program that featured him and John Lennon.  It turned out that I did.  He asked if I could make him a copy, and he would send me five of his books, each one from his library, and each one signed by him.  So, I did.  The books came in the mail in mint shape.  Very cool.  So yes, I had a reputation, but no more.

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Hugo

 I know that many people have Hurricane Hugo stories.  This one is mine.  It was September, 1989.  I was working at the downtown Belk store.  The word had come to us that a storm was coming toward the SC coast.  Usually, when hurricanes hit the coast, they dissipate before they get inland.  This one didn't.  It hit Charleston with great force.  Many of my cousins who lived there lost homes or at least had severe damage.  My uncle was a doctor on Sullivan's Island, and his office was spared the worst damage, so the National Guard used it as their base of operations.
 We heard the storm was moving up I-26 toward Columbia.  It wasn't losing much of its power.  Another store employee went with me to the roof of the store.  I really didn't know one could go up there, but we found a door.  We watched as the dark clouds started rolling in toward the city.  It was determined that the store should close early to allow employees to get home.  I was living with my parents at their house, as I was their primary caregiver.
 The storm hit us around 11pm and roared all night.  I stayed up, as it was too loud to sleep.  I kept running around the inside of our house.  As the limbs were hitting the roof, I just knew that a tree would follow.  Our house was surrounded by large pine trees.  The wind grew stronger.  I found myself in a cement storage room near our den.  It was the safest place in the house.  I couldn't see outside, as we had lost power and everything was dark.  It was the sounds that were so frightening.  The unknown.  I could hear trees falling.  It was horrible.  My parents slept through it.
 The next morning, we went outside to survey the damage.  Every house on our block lost a tree except us.  I can't explain why.  Our trees were just as big as others had.  We had a lot of debris in the yards and on the street.  Despite the fact that no one had power, I felt I needed to go to work.  I drove down Forest Drive and had to dodge fallen trees and debris.  I got downtown, and it was dark.  No power anywhere.  When I got to the store, I found that the store manager and I were the only two that had made it in.  We sat in the Plantation Room, which was an in-store restaurant.  There was some fear of looting, so we positioned ourselves at the door to the restaurant.  The manager had a gun, in case we were overrun, but thankfully he didn't need to use it.  He put me in charge of answering the phone for both customers and employees to call in to see if we were open.  He went looking for any food that we could eat.  He found some bread and ham.  We opened the restaurant to the homeless to get something to eat.  We were busy all day.  I answered questions from folks calling the store, and the manager walked around making sure the store was secure.  We both left around 6pm before it got dark.
 After the storm, I found my camping skills came in handy.  It was also a time for the neighborhood to come together toward a common goal.  We went to sleep, when it got dark, and we awoke, when it got light.  One of our neighbors had a generator.  We gathered up all of the extension cords we could find and ran them up and down the street so that people could use their refrigerators or stoves, however briefly.  We worked out a schedule for when each one could cook.  We had community meals.  We were without power for 10 days.
 Slowly, the city got back to normal.  Their was price gouging for ice.  They said Charlotte lost so many trees that they could be stacked six feet high, and the pile would go from Charlotte to Phoenix AZ.  About a week after the storm, I drove down to Charleston.  I couldn't believe the devastation I saw on I-26.  Trees snapped in half.  Charleston was a virtual ghost town.  I did see a lot of folks outside trying to rebuild.  About a year later, I was again down in Charleston.  I was taking the Gray Line tour.  The tour guide wanted to talk about the history of the city.  Some tourists wanted to just ask about Hugo.  I could tell the guide didn't want to address it.  I asked him after the tour if he got those questions a lot.  He said that was all the tourists wanted to know about the city.
 For many years after Hugo, I got very nervous and anxious when I would hear a strong wind come up.  I am a little better now, but strong wind still makes me wary.  I guess I have PTSD regarding strong winds.  I had been in hurricanes before.  In fact, my earliest childhood memory was a hurricane.  I was 2, and my family was staying in Biloxi for that weekend.  I knew about hurricanes, but Hugo was different.  I hope I never have to deal with something like that again.

Friday, July 20, 2018

DC & OK

 One thing that I treasure about life is the people who become a part of it, however briefly.  The impact that one has on another's life can be known or unknown.  Such is the case with two people I came in contact with.
 While at Belk, a part-time employee came to our security department.  Her name was Meredith Thompson, but everybody called her "DC".  She liked it pronounced "Di-See".  She had played on the women's basketball team at USC, and she had majored in criminal justice.  She was from the Washington, DC area.  After graduation, DC wanted to work in the federal ranks of justice.  We had a conversation one night about maybe her wanting to work for the DEA.  She wanted to be where the action was, and she said she wanted to shoot an uzi.  We talked about the danger, but her goal was to make a difference with drug enforcement, and she really wanted to serve in Miami.  I told her to follow her dreams.  So, she did.  She joined the DEA and eventually was transferred to the Miami office.  In 1994, she was assigned to go on a fact-finding mission to fly over suspected drug fields in Peru.  The plane also carried some CIA folks.  Under mysterious circumstances, the plane crashed and all were killed.  I mourned DC's death.  She probably would have gone into the DEA without my encouragement, but I have often wondered if she would have done it, or at least thought twice about it, had the conversation been different.  I can't get into what I found out about the circumstances of the plane crash, but needless to say it was unfortunate.
 So was another encounter.  I met Bob Westbury at First Baptist in Columbia.  He worked for the Federal Government in the Department of Defense.  Bob was living in Columbia with his wife.  He had family here.  He had an opportunity to transfer to another state and receive a promotion.  He was near retirement and wanted to retire with a bigger paycheck.  He and I would talk about him moving to this new state.  I had lived near there at one time and knew a lot about the weather and the people there.  His promotion would be the Special Agent in Charge for the Department of Defense and Investigative Services.  His new assignment was in Oklahoma City.  I told him that he should think about the future of his family, and he and his wife moved to Oklahoma.  In 1995, Bob was one of those killed in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.  Bob had been on the fence about moving.  He made the decision to move.  What if I had told him not to go?
 I live in a world of "what ifs".  There is a little guilt in me for both DC and Bob.  Neither one knew what was coming their way in life.  Most of us don't either.  I am glad though that they thought I was wise enough to be consulted about their future hopes and dreams.

Monday, July 16, 2018

Chattahoochee

 As I was going to lunch one day in Columbia Mall, a man stopped me and asked me if I wanted to be in a movie.  You never know about such things, but his name was Charlie Petersen, and he was looking for extras in a film being made in Columbia down at the Bull Street Mental Hospital, so I felt it was legit.  I told him I had been in two films in the past, as well as some TV, so I was hired.  I went back to the store and told the manager about this opportunity.  He allowed me to go, as long as I would mention that I worked for Belk, and I could work some nights to make up my time.
 It was just before Thanksgiving 1988, when the filming was to take place.  The movie was called "Chattahoochee".  The story was about the abuse that mental patients had during the 1950's in Florida, and two people who took on the system that changed the way people were treated.  It was a true story.  The film starred Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Frances McDormand, Pamela Reed, M. Emmet Walsh, Matt Craven, and others.
 When I showed up the first day, I fitted with denim overalls.  They wanted me to bring black work boots, but I didn't have any, so I wore brown shoes.  They didn't really notice the difference until the last day of shooting.  When I got to hair and makeup, the hair guy asked me if I wanted them to shave my head.  I really didn't, but he told me that if I wanted to be in the movie, then they would have to do it, so I said okay.  They left a little hair but not much.  I was to be a mental patient in the movie.  I was one of several.  After the first day, the casting folks said that they were going to put me in a special group of 5 extras called "The Looneys".  I was "Looney #4".  Our job was to make sounds and act like we couldn't help ourselves.  In the film, there were three groups:  The Criminals who had done some horrific crimes that put them in the hospital; The Crazies who could do for themselves; and The Looneys who had no concept of what they were doing.  This made the shoot much more fun for me.
 The first day had us filming one of the last scenes of the movie.  I couldn't wear my glasses during the scenes, so I looked down a lot.  It kind of fit into my character.  The next scene filmed was walking down a steam corridor toward the cafeteria.  We were told not to talk to Gary Oldman, because he was concentrating on his Southern accent, and we were not to throw him off.  I had been walking next to him during this scene.  Over the course of the shooting that day, we had a little break.  He turned to me and asked me my name.  I told him.  He then asked me about the South.  What was it like?  He used me for his research.  The director, Mick Jackson, saw me talking with Gary and wanted me throw off the set.  Gary stood up for me, and they allowed me to continue working.  Gary and I became good friends on the set, and I gave him pointers on how to walk and talk.  He also had a dialogue coach on the set.  I could see how great an actor Gary Oldman was.  I'm glad he finally won an Oscar in 2018.
 Another scene we shot was us walking down a walkway behind Gary and Dennis.  I told the guy behind me that I was having trouble seeing, so he put his hand on my shoulder and guided me.  It took a while to film that scene, so we are walking around and around them several times.  I was actually in ten scenes during the movie, but only three I am identifiable.
 My favorite scene was the lunch scene.  As a Looney, my job was to play with my food and be hit in the back of the head by another patient with some grits.  After each take, I would be taken outside and hosed off before going back in and doing it again.  One of my talents has been to do the same thing over and over again to avoid any bloopers.  By the end of the takes, the grits had gotten harder, but I just took it.  They didn't actually use that part in the final cut of the movie.  However, there was a lot of downtime during that scene.  I was standing next to Dennis Hopper, as we waited for the next camera setup.  Dennis turned to me and asked me if I knew anything about Charleston.  He had a couple of days off coming up and wanted to go down there and look around.  He said he especially wanted to look at the historical stuff, so I told him about the Market, the Battery, and Patriot's Point.  Two years later, he directed a film called "Chasers", and all of the places I had told him about were in his movie.  I felt like I helped him with locations.  Also, while we were standing around, another guy came up to Dennis and asked him if he had been to the State Museum.  Dennis said no, and that after shooting, he would go back to his hotel and watch ESPN.  Dennis then turned back to me, and we talked more about Charleston.  He was a nice guy.
 In the afternoons, Emmet Walsh would hold court with some of us telling stories about all of the movies he had been on, and then we would tell jokes.  Most of them were pretty raunchy, but it was a good time after the intense scenes shot.  For lunch, the principals would eat separately from everyone else.  One of the guys in our group owned D's Wings in Cayce.  So, after one day of sandwiches, he called his restaurant, and they delivered food to us.  The principals heard about how good we were eating and later came over and joined us.  I was offered $1000 to show my naked butt in a shower scene, but I declined.  I didn't think that Belk would be too pleased to have their Credit Manager nude in the movie.  The owner of D's Wings took the money.  They didn't have him in the final cut.  If only I had known...
 The one real problem on the set was the cold.  It was November, and we were outside much of the time.  It was set in Florida, so we wore short sleeve shirts.  They gave us blankets between takes.  The other problem for me was one of a personal nature.  Not to be gross, but I was plagued by hemorrhoids during this time.  If you see me walking kind of slow, or if I have a pained look on my face, that's why.  What an actor needs to put up with for the show to go on.
 The movie was released in 1989.  Besides the scene of me being hit in the back of the head with grits being cut, there was also another one.  It was a scene where Gary and Dennis plan a bank robbery outside of the hospital.  I was in that scene.  In the final cut of the film, that scene was in there, when they played the movie at the Toronto Film Festival.  Some viewers thought the film ran long with that scene in it, so the film was taken back to the editor, and that section was cut out.  I asked Hemdale if they had an uncut version of the film that was shown in Toronto, but they said no.  I would like to see that if anyone has the bank robbery scene from "Chattahoochee".  I have to say that of the four major films I have done, "Chattahoochee" was the most fun.  It was grueling, but I got to be around some greats in the movies.  And, just as a bit of trivia, Gary Oldman and Frances McDormand both won Oscars in 2018 as Best Actor and Best Actress respectively.  They were both in "Chattahoochee" early in their careers.  I didn't work with Frances, but I must say that I don't know too many people who were in a movie with the Best Actor and Best Actress in an earlier film.  And, it took 6 months for my hair to grow back out.

Thursday, July 5, 2018

The Trial

 While Credit Manager for Belk, I got a visit from a process server.  He gave me a document wanting records from our credit files for a particular Belk charge customer.  I called the legal department at our corporate office, who told me to comply with the request.
 It seemed that a woman from the Upstate had been raped in Columbia at a downtown motel.  She said that the man stole her wallet with her credit cards.  One of those cards was from Belk.  The request was for any activity on the card after it was stolen.  The trial was coming up, and I was called to testify.  I contacted the Greenville Belk store to get a copy of her credit application, which had her signature on it.  I then checked the records of charge sales from the date they told me of the crime to a few days out.  I found a purchase on her card from the day after her rape.  I got the receipt and compared the signature to the one on her credit application.  What I found was that a purchase had been made for a dress in her size and a Belkie Bear, which was a white teddy bear.  She had a small child at home.
 It was time for the trial, which was in the Richland County Courthouse.  I was called to testify on what I found.  The defense tried to destroy the credibility of the woman by saying her card was not stolen, when in fact she had used it the next day after the rape.  If she was lying about her card being stolen, maybe she was lying about the rape.  The lawyer for the woman called a professor from USC to testify on DNA.  This was the first trial in Richland County (and maybe SC) to use DNA technology.  He told the jury a lot of scientific stuff that went right over the head of those on the jury.  No one understood what he was talking about.  Even when the professor said that it was a three billion to one chance that the rapist didn't rape the woman, the jury still didn't understand.  So, when the verdict was read, the jury found the rapist not guilty.
 About eight months later, the man was to be tried again on a separate charge relating to the rape of the woman.  Once again, I was called to testify.  They gave me the court records of my testimony from the first time, and I basically read my earlier testimony in open court.  Then, the lawyer for the woman asked me one question:  "Were you personally there when these items were purchased?"  I said, "No", and the lawyer concluded that I could not assume that the woman actually bought those items.  I did not see her with my own eyes.  They then called the same professor from USC, and this time he explained DNA in a more understandable way to the jury.  The new jury found the rapist guilty, and he went to jail.
 I felt badly for the woman, because it turned out that the reason she had lied about her Belk card being stolen was that she wanted to hide her purchases from her husband.  She testified on the stand that she did in fact buy those items and hid them in the trunk of her car until she could sneak them into her house.  I also felt badly, because my testimony had helped sew doubt in the minds of the jury about what had happened to her.  Thankfully, the new jury understood DNA, so my testimony didn't matter as much the second time around.

Friday, June 29, 2018

Credit

 As a result of the incident involving pushing the girl in Candy, I was "promoted" to be the Credit Manager for the Belk Columbia Mall store.  They had one already at the downtown store.  Instead of supervising 30 people, I had about 12 to deal with.  Instead of having departments spread out in the store, this was a more confined space.  Within the Credit Dept., there was the switchboard, gift wrap, the cash office, layaway, and credit.  I had an office that was surrounded by glass, so I couldn't go in there and hide.
 The switchboard was mainly run by two ladies at various shifts during the day, but at nights and on weekends, it was run by mostly high school and college folks.  The cash office had one person assigned to it.  If that person couldn't be there, then it was my responsibility to do it.  Gift Wrap was run by one person, which was good, because I can't wrap presents to save my life.  They always turn out messy.  That would allow those receiving my gifts as knowing they came from me without having to read the cards.  We had a back stock room for all of the layaways, and the shelves were organized by the letter of the last name of the person that put that item on layaway.  There was one woman who put everything she wanted on layaway.  So, there was one shelf devoted just for her stuff.  The credit area was mostly to look up credit card numbers for those folks who had forgotten their cards.  We had everyone's numbers on microfiche.
 There would be days that made it hard to cope.  I had a pretty bad temper, but I made sure that the customers wouldn't see it.  So, I would go into a stockroom and kick a box to relieve that anger.  It worked pretty well, but one day I couldn't find a box.  I did find a file cabinet.  Rather than hit it with my heel, I hit it with my toe.  I broke my big toe on my right foot.  One thing about breaking that toe, it can't really be fixed, so it basically has to heal on its own.  I was hobbling for several days.
 Of all the places I had to oversee, I mostly enjoyed working in the cash office.  You had to count the money from the registers from the day before; make up a bank deposit; and put together the money for the registers for the next day.  Since you worked by yourself, you could do the work at your own pace.  The one problem with the cash room was that there was no ventilation, so you got hot if you were in there too long, so most people wanted to get in there and get out as quickly as you could.  Normally, it would take about three hours to do the work in there.  During Christmas, it took a lot longer.
 I also enjoyed working on the switchboard.  People would call into the store, and you would connect them with the department they wanted.  It could get kind of hairy at times, especially during sales, but the time went by fast.  I had one college guy working the switchboard one day.  Someone had found a wallet on the ground and had brought it to us.  I asked the guy to announce that a wallet had been found.  He should have asked for that person's name to call the operator.  Instead, he announced that whoever lost a wallet come to Credit.  We had a bit of a stampede up the escalator to claim the wallet.  Thankfully, we got it to the rightful owner.
 I had some good people working for me and with me.  Just as with my being a Buyer, I needed a couple of people to shadow me, so I could remember what I had done from the previous day.  Those two were Debbie and Denise, who were both in college.  Denise was a bit more serious of the two.  Debbie was incredibly fun to be around.  We went out at times.  She was funny and very creative.  She mainly worked nights, so when I came in the next morning, I had a long letter that she wrote about things that went on the night before.  A lot of the letters would just be her rambling about her life.  I still have so me of those letters.  We would also go through the credit card files and pick out the strangest sounding names of real people.  I really liked Debbie.
 As I mentioned before, we had a woman who put everything on layaway.  She tried to hide her buying stuff from her husband.  She had a lot of money, as her husband was the head of a big company in Columbia.  She really had an addiction to shopping.  If one did not pay out the layaway by a certain time, the customer was sent a letter and the item was returned to the department in the store.  We kept meticulous records of how something was paid and the balance owed.  One day, I was called into the head of Operations for the store.  He told me that this woman complained that I stole her money by not recording her payment and returning the item to the floor.  I told the manager that I had not done any such thing.  The woman was threatening to cut up her charge card and tell all of her society friends that I stole her money.  Even though everyone knew this woman was a little off, it was decided to remove me as the Credit Manager, after working there a year.  I was sent to the downtown store to work in Stationery and Luggage, where I had been back in the mid-1970's.  I was pretty much sent into exile to get me away from that woman.  So, for a few months, I worked downtown.  I got to see Pope John Paul II drive down Assembly Street in his Pope Mobile.  He waved to me.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Candy

 One of my rules, as a supervisor, has been to not take the word of an employee. if they are complaining about another employee.  After all, no one can get along with everyone, because there will always be some quirk that will not sit well with everyone.  So, when I started getting complaints about a girl who worked in Candy, I felt I needed to see what was going on to make a judgement if something needed to be done.
 Paige, Vicki, Michele and Lynn were my best workers on the Stationery/Candy side of the floor.  All four had told me that there was a girl up in Candy that refused to ring up anything except Candy on her register.  The registers were programmed to ring up anything in the store at any register.  The four girls were coming to me on a regular basis about this Candy associate.  The story that was the worst was two elderly ladies walking up to the Candy Department to have their cards rung up, and the associate telling them she couldn't do it, and the ladies had to walk a pretty good distance to buy their cards.
 So, I left my office and went out on the floor to watch this girl in Candy.  I watched as an elderly woman with a cane walk up to Candy to buy a card.  I saw the associate refuse to ring it up, and I watched the old woman walk slowly down the aisle to find another register.  This made me mad.  I went to that associate and asked her why she had done what I had seen.  The girl denied doing it.  I told her that other people had seen her do the same thing, and she told me that they just didn't like her because she was black, and the other girls on the floor were white.  This made me more incensed, as I didn't care what color you were, as long as you did the work assigned to you to do.  She continued to deny to my face that she was doing anything wrong.  I know I shouldn't have done this, but I hit her shoulder and knocked her shoulder padding awry.  I was just trying to get her attention, but I went way out of control.  I had never pushed anyone before (or since).  So, I told her that I was going to Personnel and have her fired.
 I went to Personnel and told the head of that department what had happened.  He told me that she would be fired, and I left.  She then went into Personnel and told him that I had assaulted her.  He didn't believe her, and she was fired.  However, word got out how the situation had escalated, and to keep from having a lawsuit, I was asked to leave being a Buyer.  The excuse was the children's dinnerware buy from the Chicago Market that had not sold.  Everything was hushed up.
 The manager didn't want to lose me, so I was made the Credit Manager for the store.  They called it a promotion.  I really didn't see it that way, but at least I still had a job.  It turned out to be a lot of fun, which I will write about later.  However, they brought in a woman to take my place as a Buyer.  My former co-workers didn't like her and would constantly complain to me about her.  I felt it wasn't fair for her to try and fill my shoes as a Buyer, but I told them to give her a chance.  The problem was, too, that the woman had no clue how to buy for those departments, so I was basically doing her job and my new one for the first three months of her stay as the Home Store Buyer.  It got to the point, where I just had to tell her that she needed to do it on her own, as I had another job to do.  She stayed for about a year, until one day she was driving to the downtown store along Gervais Street.  She had stopped at a light at the corner of Gervais and Sumter, when a man jumped from a tall building and landed on her car.  She turned in her resignation that day.

Friday, June 15, 2018

Stephen

 I did a play at my church called "Let the Church Grow" in 1987.  I played Stephen who was martyred.  The play was written and directed by Kevin McAfee, who was on the staff of our church in creative ministries.
 There is one thing I am very sensitive about when it comes to writing stuff.  I don't like it, when someone alters what I have written.  If you remember from my post called "Smyrna #2", you remember how mad I got about someone changing her part, after I had written it.  So, Kevin had written this play surrounding the early church, and he had written a long monologue for "Stephen" to deliver.  It was mostly taken from the Bible.  Because of who I was (my ego was as big as all outdoors), I felt that the monologue was too long.  I rewrote it and condensed it to half of its length.  Kevin was not pleased.  I really didn't blame him, but I did it my way anyway.  One thing about a live performance:  the actor can do anything and get away with it as long as it is in character, because the audience don't have the script.  You can go back to my post on "Blithe Spirit" to see what I am talking about.
 We were using mics for the play.  I told the sound guy to cut my mic way down, because I was going to project to the back of the church, and I really didn't need a mic.  He said he wasn't going to cut it down.  His soundboard was about halfway back in the church's auditorium.  When I started my monologue, I was shouting.  I saw him rip his headphones off.  It made me smile.
 Another thing about the play was the makeup.  Kevin wanted most of us to have beards.  One of the actors grew his own.  Everybody else had fake beards.  Mine was black against my brown hair.  I did have my hair covered, so the beard could be black, and no one would know the difference.  I have the play on video, at least my part, and a close up shows my fake beard coming off from around my mouth.  The fake hair got into my mouth, and I was spitting out the hair, which caused the spirit gum to start failing.  There is a spot on the left side of my mouth where there is no beard.
 So, I did my part.  A lot of people thought I did great.  I was just glad to get that beard taken off of my face.

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Chicago Market

 In January 1987, I was invited to go to the Home Show market in Chicago.  I went with Mr. Brusack, our merchandise manager, and Bill Belk, the executive vice president of Belk Stores in Columbia.  We went up there to shop at an international market, mostly Housewares.  It was a big deal.  We flew to Chicago and landed at O'Hare.  It was the dead of winter and had snowed the day before.  The roads were slushy, and the wind cut right through us.  To say Chicago is "The Windy City" is an understatement.  They had strung rope in between parking meters on Michigan Avenue to keep pedestrians from blowing out into the street.
 We stayed at the Ambassador Hotel.  It was nice and right downtown.  I wore four layers of clothes which didn't seem to matter.  The cold was unbearable.  We went into stores just to get warm.  You couldn't walk more than a block without freezing to death.  We took a cab two blocks.  The driver drove like we were on a roller coaster.  Mr. Brusack and I shared a hotel room.  He smoked a lot, so I made him smoke in the bathroom with the window up to let the smoke out.  I know he froze doing that, but it was the only concession I made.  He was, after all, my boss.
 The market was in the Merchandise Mart downtown.  It was a huge facility.  Mr. Belk joined us to look over what they had.  He didn't allow us to have lunch, as we had to keep moving to see everything.  Mr. Brusack and I snacked on candy at the vendors' booths.  We came upon some old woman celebrating her birthday at a booth.  We sang "Happy Birthday" to her, and they gave us a slice each of her birthday cake.  It wasn't very filling, but it kept us from fainting from starvation.  Mr. Belk wanted to suggest what I should buy for the stores back home.  I couldn't say no to him, because he was the big boss.  His name was on the side of the building.  We came to a vendor of children's dinnerware.  Mr. Belk had small children, and he really liked it.  Mr. Brusack and I weren't as enthusiastic about it, but we listened.  The plastic dinnerware had different pictures on them from balloons to Peanuts cartoons.  He wanted us to buy a lot of them, and we would be the only store in our area to have children's dinnerware.  (There was a reason for that).  No one in Columbia wanted children's dinnerware.  It was the worst buy I made while a buyer for Belk.  We brought in a bunch of it.  Thousands of dollars of it.  It sat on the shelf for months.  Even though Mr. Belk made me buy it, I was held accountable for it not selling.  It turned out to be a giant fiasco, and other stores laughed at us.  It went to clearance.
 At one point during that day, I got lost in the large mart.  I turned around and the other two were gone.  Although I was a bit frantic to find them again, it did give me some time by myself to look around and get something to eat.  I ran back into them later.  Mr. Brusack was mad at me for getting lost.  For me, it was kind of nice.
 We got back to the hotel, and Mr. Belk wanted to show me some pictures.  They were aerial views of some land in the northwest area of Columbia.  He was also in Chicago to meet with some developers of a new mall they were planning, and he wanted my input.  He said that we wanted my opinion, because I lived in Columbia.  Mr. Belk lived in Charlotte.  I saw pictures of two tracts of land, and he wanted me to pick which one would be a good place to put a mall.  I picked the tract on the right side of a road.  He told me that the other tract was bigger and could expand more with other buildings.  I told him that if one comes off a road, they are more likely to turn right than left.  It is just one of those psychological things about people.  If you go into stores, the better merchandise is on the right side of the door.  People just like to go right before they go left.  Mr. Belk went to the developers that night and gave them my recommendation.  They agreed with me.  So, Columbiana Centre was built on the tract of land that I suggested.  The mall has been a huge success for many years.  Across the street on the left tract is Best Buy and Walmart.  Neither one has been very successful.  Both of them are harder to get to.  Case closed.  I think I should have a plaque on the wall of the mall thanking me for my suggestion.
 I had wanted to visit the Second City improv club while up there, but I couldn't find it.  After I got home, I found out that the club was a couple of blocks away from where we were.  I was kind of mad about that.  We flew back to Charlotte.  At the end of the runway was a billboard with pictures of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker welcoming folks to Charlotte.  That made me smile, because during the time we were in Chicago, the scandal between Jim Bakker and Jessica Hahn made the news.  Kind of ironic.

Monday, May 28, 2018

Atlanta Market

 As a buyer for Belk, one went to market in Charlotte to buy merchandise for their stores.  After all, Charlotte was the headquarters for Belk, and all of the vendors there were approved by the corporate office.  At least twice a year, we would travel to Charlotte to buy goods for the stores.  Most of those times, we would stay in motels rather than driving back to Columbia.  And, most of those motels were nice, except for the one Howard Johnson's that we stayed at that was next to a biker bar.  Toward the end of my tenure as a buyer, we commuted from Columbia to Charlotte for market to save money.  That wasn't near as fun.
 Belk did not like anyone to use unapproved vendors.  As I wrote earlier, sometimes it paid off to use an unapproved vendor like Best Luggage.  I understood the Belk plan to use vendors that they liked, because they wanted customers to see most of the same merchandise at each of their stores, but we found that there were other vendors out there who wanted to get noticed in the largest privately-owned department store in the world, so we went to other markets outside of Charlotte.
 The first one I went to was Atlanta.  We went there for their Home Show.  I was in the car with our store manager, and the others went in the car with our merchandise manager.  I would have much rather been with them, but I wanted to get to know our store manager.  He was a man who never talked to people.  In fact, you had a hard time even getting him to say hello.  When he would walk by my Candy counter, I would say hello to him, and he would either grunt or never respond at all.  The rumor was that he was thinking all of the time about business and had no personal skills.  I just thought he was rude.
 Our first stop on our trip to Atlanta was Macon, GA.  Our manager wanted to visit that Belk store, because he had come to Columbia from Macon.  He and I had said nothing on our entire trip to Macon, until I turned to him right outside that town and said, "So, I hear you are from Texas."  I was going to talk to him about my time there, as I was trying to find common ground.  He said "Yes", and that was the end of our conversation.  We got to the Macon Belk, and he was treated like a rock star.  He ate up all of the attention.  He seemed like a different guy from the cold and boring person we knew.  We left Macon and got on I-75 to Atlanta.  He cut on the radio, as he was totally ignoring me, and started singing along with the R&B station.  This guy was an older white man who was singing soul and hip-hop.  It was as if I was in a time warp.
 We got to our motel, which was near the Atlanta airport.  We decided we wanted to go to an authentic Chinese restaurant.  Our store manager got into a debate with the restaurant employees about the pros and cons of Communism.  These employees had escaped the brutality of Communist China, and they didn't want to hear anyone praising China.  We barely got out of that restaurant alive.  We spent the rest of that night watching planes take off and land from the airport.
 The next day, we went into the city.  We had rooms at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Atlanta.  It was the fanciest hotel that I had ever stayed in.  The rooms were paid for by a vendor that wanted us to buy his stuff.  Everyone had a private room.  I wanted to steal one of the bathrobes, but I never got the nerve.  I had a friend who lived in Atlanta, so I left the hotel and took the MARTA to have supper with him at his house out near Lenox Mall.  I just wore jeans and an old shirt to see my friend.  When I got back to the hotel, it was 10:30pm.  Even though I had a room in the hotel, I couldn't walk in the front door, because I wasn't dressed "appropriately".  They made me come in through the service entrance to go to my room.  The next morning, we went to the market.  I bought a lot of cool stuff for the store.  One of the buyers bought a bunch of Chinese lace, which turned out to be a great buy for our store.  It was another vendor that corporate took notice of, like my Best Luggage.  That night, the vendor that paid for our rooms, took us out to eat at a very swanky restaurant in downtown Atlanta.  The meal for all of us cost him around $1000.  He made a very good impression on us.  We didn't buy anything from him, though.  We used him and abused him.  Oh well.  We left on a Sunday.  Breakfast of cereal and strawberries in the hotel's dining room cost $15.  I sat at the next table to Verne Lundquist who was in town to call the Atlanta Falcons football game.  He got a full breakfast.  No telling how much that cost.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Buyer Stuff

 As a Belk store buyer, I had a little freedom into what to buy for my departments.  The corporate office had guidelines into what to buy, and they bought goods that would be advertised in mailouts and special yearly sales, but we could buy merchandise that would be sold in the stores on a daily basis and be advertised in our local newspapers.  The concept was to tailor the merchandise to the individual markets.
 I had a steady stream of vendors coming into the store to pitch their wares to me.  Some vendors were slick, but I came from a sales background, so I knew their tricks.  One vendor brought in water purifiers.  I asked her where she sold the most, and she said at the beaches.  I didn't buy any from her, as she was too honest with me.  Another vendor wanted to sell me some vibrators.  A great idea for sore muscles, but we were a family store, and I just didn't like the connotation, so I passed on her.  I did buy some picture frames from a guy who drove a Gremlin.  I felt he needed the money.  One thing I did, when I didn't know how well something would sell would be to give the vendor a certain amount of money and a purchase order form.  They would fill out the form with their best selling product.  If the product didn't sell, I wouldn't reorder from them.  It was in their best interest to pick some good stuff for me.  One vendor brought in some baby seals plush toys.  If we sold them, a portion of the sale would go to the World Wildlife Fund.  That seemed like a good idea and would make great advertising for the store.  That was until I asked the vendor how much of the $19.99 seal would go to the fund.  They told me 5 cents.  I didn't buy the seals.
 In the Gifts Department, I tried to find items that had been advertised on TV.  I watched a lot of infomercials.  My goal was to find something like what was advertised and bring it in to sell.  My crown jewel was Tummy Toners.  This was an item that had stirrups for your feet and a handle, separated by a tight spring.  One would pull up on the handle and the exercise would work on one's abs.  I found a vendor who sold them for $5/each.  I bought 100 of them and retailed them at $19.99 as seen on TV, and then put them on sale for $12.99 or $9.99.  We sold out of the first 100 in a day.  I had to reorder.  In all, I bought 10,000 units and sold them all within 6 weeks.  I was reordering them on a daily basis in increments of 1000 per order.  We had to stop selling them though when a man, weighing more than the recommended weight for the use of the item, pulled up on the spring and the plastic stirrups broke, putting a gash in his leg.  He tried to sue the store, and we agreed to stop selling the Tummy Toners, but we had made a lot of money for the store.
 Another success story was Jelly Belly jelly beans.  I worked off of the fact that Ronald Reagan loved them, so I used that in the promotion.  We sold more Jelly Bellies than any other Belk store.  I got exclusive Jelly Belly fixtures, and I was written up in their corporate newsletter.  The company also sent our store some artwork made from jelly beans.  They were framed and we had to have security there every day they were on display.  The "pictures" included the Mona Lisa and the Statue of Liberty.  We were the only store in the Belk company to show them at that time.
 With my successes also came gambles that didn't work.  One was the Snuggies Bear.  It was used in the TV advertising for the fabric softener, so I bought 200 units for the Toy Department.  They sat on the shelves.  No one wanted them.  I ended up having to mark them down to clearance.  It took a year to sell them out.
 I did have one success story that was my favorite.  It was called Best Luggage.  A couple of guys from Miami came to see me one day.  I had one of the best luggage departments in the company, and my sales had been noticed by this company.  They imported cheap luggage from overseas.  The one item that interested me was an attache case.  It was made of a wood frame with a leather exterior.  It also had a brass combination lock.  If I bought them in bulk, they would cost us $12/each.  I bought 25 and spread them out between our two stores.  They came in black and brown.  We sold them at a retail price of $99.99 and a sale price of $49.99 or $59.99.  We sold out almost immediately.  I reordered 100 units and used them as a doorbuster.  They blew out.  They sold better than Samsonite or American Tourister.  The Belk corporate office took notice of them, and they bought from Best Luggage for all of the Belk stores.  It was a huge success for a small company, and I would like to think I started them on the path to success.
 I got numerous sales awards from Belk, and I was named the Best Buyer in our store.  My merchandise manager also took notice and thought we should do something that no other department store had done.  A videotape rental business like what Blockbuster was doing.  I researched it and found a company that would be our distributor.  We put together some rules concerning what kind of tapes we would rent.  We would major on new releases and family films.  One could use their Belk charge card to rent the tapes.  After a certain number of rentals, we would sell the tapes and make back the cost of the tapes.  With about a week to go before we were to launch this new rental department within our store, my merchandise manager was forced out, and they brought in a new guy who had no concept of how to be creative.  He nixed the video rental department, and I had to cancel all of the orders.  We also had a Madame Alexander doll show planned, with the VP of the company flying down from New York.  Invitations had been sent out to many doll collectors in a five-county region of South Carolina.  That show was nixed, and I had to cancel the VP's trip and all of the dolls coming with him.  I had to send out notices to all of the collectors.  It killed our doll business.  The new merchandise manager wanted us to buy lean.  We lost a lot of customers, and I was not able to buy things for the store like I once did.  Life became hard.
 On Mondays, Mr. Belk would come down from Charlotte to go to the Columbia Rotary Club meeting.  He would come by the store and access everyone's performance.  He would fire on Mondays.  So, every buyer would come in on Mondays and take everything personal off of their desks and put them in a box.  When Mr. Belk left at 4pm to go back to Charlotte, and he hadn't fired you, then you could unpack your box and put everything back on your desk.  That was the pressure we were under with the new supervisor.  I did get to go on some nice trips, while I was a Buyer, which I will write about next.

Monday, May 7, 2018

Buyer

 After about a year working in Books and Candy at Belk in Columbia Mall, my supervisor announced she was going to retire.  She was also the store's buyer for much of the Home Store.  She asked me if I would be interested in her position, and I said yes.  It would be more money than my minimum wage job, and there would be more prestige.  She recommended me to upper management, and I was named the new buyer for Home.
 My departments were:  Bedding, Bath, Window Treatments, Rugs, Housewares, Small Electrics, Luggage, Toys, Stationery, Greeting Cards, Records, Candy, Christmas, Notions and Books.  A daunting task at best.  I had to buy merchandise for all of these departments plus supervising all of the employees.  And, it wasn't just the Columbia Mall store.  It was also the Belk Downtown store.
 I realized quite quickly that this job was going to be far more impossible than I thought.  I didn't know what a "duvet" was, much less a "sham".  As far as the Bed and Bath areas, I had to depend on the sales people to guide me through it.  I had a little more knowledge of the other areas, and I had "bought" Luggage for Belk, when I worked in the downtown store, so I knew about that.  I also knew something about Stationery, Greeting Cards, Books and Candy.  However, I was drowning in the paperwork.  I went to our merchandise manager, who became my retail mentor, and I told him how much trouble I was having.  He hired a woman to come in and be the buyer for Bed, Bath, Window Treatments, and Rugs.  That was a huge weight taken off of me.
 I started with the rest of the departments and found that I had some of the best employees to supervise.  I had one girl whose main job was to remember what I did the day before.  With 11 departments to buy for, I often forgot one day to the next what I had done.  She was my invaluable assistant.  I also had employees who cared about the business.  I would get samples from vendors of things, mostly in Housewares.  I didn't cook, so I had no use for skillets or cake pans.  So, I would use them as sales awards for my people.  They loved it.  I would get them presents on their birthdays and just treat them as people.  I found the more I did for them, the more they did for me.  Consequently, I had the lowest turnover ratio in the store.  The store's average was 3 months.  Mine was 2 years.
 I also had our merchandise manager show me how to buy effectively and read reports.  He also told me that I would not be fired for a year of buying, because I was working off of my predecessor's numbers.  They sent me to buying school in Charlotte for a week of training.  There were about 50 people in the class from all over the company.  On the first day, the facilitator went around the room to ask how was business to each buyer.  Almost everyone said business was great.  When he asked how did they know, the stock answer was that their manager told them it was and for them to say that in the class.  When he came to me and a buyer from Savannah, we both said business was okay but could be better.  He asked us how did we know, and we told him that was what our reports said.  The two of us were far ahead and the others, and the facilitator used us to teach the class.
 One of the faults of the previous Housewares buyer at our store was she bought too much Pfaltzgraff 5-piece place settings.  In fact, we had over 100 of them, and they were stacked to the ceiling in the stockroom.  I called Pfaltzgraff to see if they would take them off of our hands, but they said no. They wouldn't let me move them to clearance, because they were very protective of their prices, so I called up a friend at J. B. White's Department Store who was their Housewares buyer.  He sold them to him at cost, and they took them.  It was a win-win for both of us.  One thing I tried to do was to make relationships with other stores in the area.  We would refer customers to them, and in turn they would do the same for us.  Belk wasn't very pleased in that relationship, but it worked.
 More Buyer stories coming soon.

Friday, April 27, 2018

Fajardo

 Early in 1984, my church was approached by our Home Mission Board to take some people to Puerto Rico to do Vacation Bible School in three locations on the island.  The places were San Juan, Ponce and Fajardo.  We decided to also take our One Voice singles choir and do a musical in Spanish in a park in San Juan.  As we made our plans, it was also decided to send some guys down there to do construction on a church.
 We chose the musical "Celebrate Life", which was already translated into Spanish.  Many of us, including me, did not know any Spanish, so we took a two-month crash course in the language.  They told us that they still spoke Spanish in the outlying areas of the island, but English was spoken in the tourist areas.  That wasn't entirely true, but we learned some phrases and words that would get us by.  We performed the musical in a Spanish church in Columbia as practice, and it was well-received.  I did a lot of research on Puerto Rico and prepared the choir in some facts before going.  We were to be there from the end of June until just after the 4th of July, so they told us it would be hot and to wear wide-brimmed hats.  They were not kidding.  It was hot.
 We flew down to Puerto Rico.  While over the ocean, the pilot announced that we were in the Bermuda Triangle.  I got kind of scared and was relieved when we got through it without incident.  When we landed in San Juan, it was hot.  We stayed overnight in San Juan before moving out into the countryside.  My assignment was at Fajardo, which was on the eastern side of the island.  Fajardo was a mixture of poor and very rich people.  The poorer people lived near the coast, and the richer ones near the marina.  I did not do puppets at this VBS, because we decided not to after the fiasco of the previous year in Smyrna.  Instead, I helped in games and crafts.  We met at a church, which was at the preacher's house.  The "church" was in his garage.  He backed his car out of the garage, and we put down carpet squares to cover the oil spots on the cement.  There was an altar at the back of the garage.  One day, he was pulling his car back into the garage and broke the altar.  We fixed it for him.  Our games were played in his backyard and in a field nearby.  All of this had to happen before noon, because the heat became unbearable in the afternoons.
 We stayed at a hotel in downtown Fajardo.  It looked like it was out of a Hemingway novel.  A tree grew up in the lobby, and the two-stories of rooms surrounded the tree.  The hotel was across from the post office and near the water.  There was also a chicken slaughter house across from the hotel, and we woke up every morning to the sound of screaming chickens and that smell.  Some would say it was "quaint".  I wouldn't say that.
 Our afternoons were free.  One afternoon, we went to the rain forest.  That was pretty and very cool.  Coming out of the heat into the cool was delightful.  Another afternoon, we went to the beach.  Another cool day.  Still another afternoon, some of us went to Ponce to visit those folks.  It took three hours to drive that distance because of animals in the road mostly, which made for slow going.  One night, we went to the richer part of the area for dinner.  It was quite a culture shock from where we were staying.  We also went to a larger church on Sunday morning.  They didn't have air conditioning, so they opened windows to try and get a breeze going.  It didn't work too well, and I just about passed out.
 One afternoon, I stayed in the hotel room.  I wanted to go to Burger King and order in Spanish.  I practiced all afternoon to order a hamburger, fries and Coke in Spanish.  I got it down and went to BK to give them my order.  When I successfully completed it, the cashier asked me something back in Spanish that I didn't know.  They all laughed and said "Gringo" to me.  I found out later that she asked if I wanted Ketchup with my fries.  I was embarrassed.
 They gave us a van to ride in, while we were there.  As we were coming back from the rain forest, the brakes failed.  Our driver had to crash into a mountainside to slow down.  The other side of the road was a drop off into a valley.  When we got down the hill, the van was dented but we were still alive.
 On July 4th, we were to sing "Celebrate Life" in the San Juan park.  When we got there, we found no one had showed up to hear us.  It turned out that the mission folks in Puerto Rico had failed to advertise our concert, so we sang to a handful of tourists that happened to be in the park.  They didn't speak Spanish, so the concert was rather awkward.
 The Saturday before we left to go home, some of the group wanted to go over to the Virgin Islands to shop.  A girl and me wanted to go into San Juan and experience the casinos.  You were supposed to be a guest at the hotel to use the casino.  I made up a room number, and they let us in.  I first went to the slot machines and won around $400.  I then went to the blackjack table and lost it all.  I started cashing in some traveler's checks for more chips.  I was losing those and realized I needed to quit.  I needed money to get home.
 About a month after we got home, our Fajardo group wanted to get together to share our pictures and to party.  I really wanted to go, but I was working that night at Belk.  I went into my supervisor's office and asked her if she needed me for anything.  She said no, so I clocked out and went to the party.  The next morning, I came into work.  My supervisor came over to me and said, "Don't you ever do that to me again."  I never did.  But, I had a good time at the party.