Russians

  My apartment building had 8 apartments in it.  There were four on the top floor and four on the bottom floor.  The building had four on the front of the building and four on the back.  This information is important to the story.  My apartment was on the front on the top floor.  I lived at Ravenwood Apartments were almost 14 years.  During that time, we had several fires in our building.  Many more than other buildings in the complex.  Almost all of them involved cooking.  

 One strange thing about those fires was that I seemed to be home, when they occurred.  Some of the residents accused me of setting them, as it was suspicious that I was the one to call 911.  Now, I know that I have written about setting a fire in the woods, when I was much younger, but I had nothing to do with setting these apartment fires.  In fact, I think it was a blessing that I was home to call 911.  One of my greatest fears in life is an apartment fire.  After all, I have had a lot of expensive pop culture memorabilia in my apartment, and the worse thing in the world would have had it burn up.  I had it insured, but a lot of it couldn't be replaced. 

 There were several neighbors to come and go from my apartment building.  One was a woman who liked to cook cabbage on Sundays, and that awful smell would come into my apartment.  Another was a woman who liked to entertain male guests during the day.  She was very loud.  I really liked to keep to myself in my apartment building.  I never really knew the names of my neighbors, and I liked it that way.  One of the constant stream of neighbors lived across the hall.  I saw them come and go, and they seemed to not speak English.  I figured out that they were speaking Russian.  I had known some Russians who worked at Macy's, but they lived in Chapin.  I knew a few Russian words and would speak phrases to them in Russian.  It was a way to cheer them up, as they lived in a strange land.  

 I never spoke to my Russian neighbors until one night.  I was watching TV when a frantic knock was on my door.  I opened it to find the young blond Russian woman screaming.  She was pointing to smoke coming up through her carpet.  If you don't know the language, gestures are the next best thing.  I learned that in Europe.  She only knew the English for "911".  I called 911 and ran outside.  I ran to the top of the hill to direct the firemen down the hill to our apartment building.  When they rolled up to me, I was waving my arms.  They went down the hill to the apartment on fire.  I followed them down, and I heard one fireman tell our apartment manager that they knew where they were going, but some guy was trying to stop them.  

 Anyway, the apartment was a total loss.  The tenants had left something on the stove and gone to the movies.  The other apartments, including mine, suffered some smoke damage to our clothes and furnishings.  Everything had to be aired out.  As luck would have it (I don't believe in luck), the firemen said that they had just finished up a call not far from Ravenwood.  They were quick to respond.  Had the fire gotten into the attic, the whole building would have burned down.  There were no firewalls.  We were just minutes away from that happening.  My neighbors couldn't accuse me of setting the fire.  The Russians moved out.  Their apartment got new carpet.  From the kids snickering under my window watching me change to the fires, there was never a dull moment at Ravenwood.  I moved out a year later.

Blinds

  In June of 1994, I moved to Ravenwood Apartments in Forest Acres.  My parents had moved to Laurens, SC and were in a nursing home.  I had closed up their house, and we put it up for sale.  I got a two-bedroom apartment that was upstairs on the second floor.  I needed two bedrooms, because of all of my records and videotapes.  So, one bedroom was for sleeping in, and the other was for storage.  

 My sleeping bedroom overlooked the sidewalk below.  When I got home from work, I would sit in my recliner and watch the news and then head into my bedroom to put on my pajamas.  Most of the time, that would be around 8pm every night.  I was a creature of habit.  During the transformation, I would hear laughter outside, but I didn't think anything of it.  After all, there were a lot of children living in that complex, and they often played outside after dark.  

 There was a girl who lived there and worked at Rich's.  One day, she came up to me and informed me that one could see through my closed blinds and see me naked in my apartment.  I didn't know that one could see inside if the blinds were closed but pointing up.  The laughter outside came from the kids watching me change clothes.  After that realization, I joked with the girl that the show started at 8.  She informed me that if I closed the blinds pointing down, that the kids couldn't see me naked.  I started doing that, and I guess they went away.  I had been offered a nude scene in the movie "Chattahoochee" back in 1988, but I turned it down due to folks at work snickering.  I was even offered $1000 to do it.  I did have some scruples.  As it turned out, that scene was cut from the movie anyway but who knew?  I wasn't going to give a show to others for free, though.

 I had exposed myself before to groups, but that was in the Theatre changing costumes.  One doesn't think about others doing that, when one has to change costumes in a hurry.  Change you costume and off you go.  I also streaked once in college, but it was a very short run between two buildings.  I don't think anyone saw me.  But, the saving grace with the show at 8pm was that there were no cellphones back then, and I wouldn't have gotten on the internet.  Thankful.

Belushi

  Back in 1979, there were rumors that John Belushi was going to leave Saturday Night Live, and they were going to bring in new cast members.  I wanted to be one of those people.  After all, I had been in two movies by then and a whole bunch of plays, so I knew how to work live and on film.  I had also directed an improv group at PC and knew how to act on my feet.  I had even made up the third act of "Blithe Spirit" on opening night at Anderson College.  To top it off, I had done comedy on stage.  It was a perfect fit for me.

 I got a headshot and put together a resume.  Burt Lancaster had said I could use him as a reference, back when I worked with him on "The Midnight Man".  Besides all that, my ego was as big as all outdoors.  When people tell you that you are a great actor, it is inevitable that you want to do bigger things.  That was SNL.  I also had a friend from high school who went to NYC to be on the stage.  Her first audition was "A Chorus Line", and she got the part.  How hard could it be?

 Another plus for me was that I was doing drugs and drinking heavily back then, so I thought I would fit right in with the other cast members.  I could also do a variety of accents.  So, I sent in my resume and picture to Lorne Michaels at NBC.  I waited for a call.  He never did.  Their loss.

Tucker

  I was at home one afternoon in 1980.  At the time, I wasn't working and was taking care of my parents, as they took care of me.  My father had a heart condition, and my mother couldn't take care of him by herself.  I was watching TV in the den, when the phone rang.

 I answered it, and the voice on the other end said that he was Marshall Tucker.  Well, my first thought was the band.  When I was a student at Anderson College, the Marshall Tucker band was starting out and needed an auditorium to rehearse.  The college let them play during a free afternoon to get ready for a gig.  It was a closed rehearsal, but I did get to listen to their music, because I had the reins of the auditorium.  It was pretty good.  

 The voice on the phone said that he tuned pianos and needed help.  I then realized who the voice belonged to.  It was the man who lent his name to the band.  The real Marshall Tucker was pretty famous as a pianist and tuner.  He was blind and played by ear.  He used to live in Spartanburg where the band was from.  His reputation was one of exactness and the ultimate professional.  After my shock that he would call me, I had to tell him that I didn't play the piano.  When I was in seminary, I took a music directing course, where I learned where middle C was on the piano.  In years before that, I had played handbells in church and kind of knew the notes on the treble clef.  And, if you gave me 30 minutes, I might be able to pick out the melody of one sheet of music, but I just didn't play the piano.  Especially, to his standards.

 There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and then Mr. Tucker said that he must have been misinformed.  He told me that he was sorry that he had bothered me.  I was flattered that he had called me.  I don't know for sure who told him about me, but I have a suspicion that it was a neighbor down the street who knew Mr. Tucker.  It would have been cool to work with him.  He passed away in 2023 at the age of 99.  He touched a lot of lives with his music.  I talked to humble greatness that afternoon.

Fire

  I was kind of a juvenile delinquent, when I was in junior high.  I have already written about the shoplifting, but I also liked fire.  I really don't know why, except that it was exciting to set stuff on fire.  I watched some of my plastic army men burn and melt.  I just wanted to see what they looked like.  It wasn't a sick thing.  I was just curious.

 There were a lot of woods near my house.  The kids in the neighborhood would play in the woods.  It was fun.  There was also a creek that ran through the woods.  We didn't think about the creek being contaminated.  It was just a cool place to go on a hot day.  The creek went all the way to a larger creek called Gills which was near Forest Lake Shopping Center.  That was over a mile from my house.  We never walked the entire length of our creek, because we were scared of lions, tigers and bears.  We did walk a few blocks in the creek.

 So, what does that have anything to do with fire?  Well, I went scouting in the woods for a place to set a fire that was near the creek.  I was a Boy Scout, and I knew to set a fire near a water source.  That was the creek.  I found a place near our high school.  I cleared some brush in the woods to set a circular fire.  It was within just a few feet of the creek.  I brought along some lighter fluid and matches.  It was a dry day, and I proceeded to get the fire going.  It was kind of cool.  Then, the wind kicked up.  The fire started to spread outside of the circle and into the leaves.  I ran into the creek to get water but had forgot to bring a bucket.  I couldn't get enough water in my hands to carry to the fire.  I tried stomping it out, but that wasn't working either.  I got scared and ran home.

 A few minutes later, I had sirens heading in that direction.  Somebody had seen the smoke and called the fire department.  They put out the fire and determined that someone had set it on purpose.  They never found out who did it.  Thankfully, the fire was contained to a small area and no trees were burned.  Neither were any houses, or the high school affected.  

 It has been about 55 years since that day.  The woods were torn down much later, and a housing development went up in its place.  I never played with matches after that day.    

Gears

  My parents had cars with automatic transmissions.  Almost every car I had ridden in growing up had an automatic transmission.  The only exception was one of my mother's friends who had a VW Beetle.  We were in Stamford, CT in 1964.  She wanted to show us around her city in that car.  I got really carsick from all the stops and starts from a manual transmission.  Because of that experience, I wasn't very keen on getting into another straight shift car.   When I got my driver's license, I learned on cars with automatic transmission.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.

 During the summer of 1971, our church's youth group decided to do a car wash in a field at the church on a Saturday morning.  Most of the kids wanted to wash or dry the cars, because they could get wet in the heat of the day.  I had a driver's license, so my job was to bring the cars into the field from the street.  It was a short drive of maybe 100 feet.  Some of the drivers wanted to bring them into the field themselves, but that wasn't the plan.  It was my job.  

 A church member brought his car to me and told me the gear shift was on the steering column.  Of course, it was.  Where else would it be?  I got in to put the car into drive, but nothing happened.  I jiggled the arm, and it was very loose.  I tried again and stepped on the gas pedal.  The worst noise I had ever heard came out of the motor.  A grinding noise.  The man came running over to me and screamed that it was a straight shift.  I had stripped his gears.  He wasn't pleased.  I was taken off of driving duty.  The church had to pay for a new transmission for his car.  The other kids thought it was funny.  I was embarrassed.

 A couple of years later, I was riding with a friend who had a straight shift.  I told him that story, and he said he would teach me how to drive his car.  I was reluctant at first, but he told me how easy it was to do it.  Just to interject here, don't tell me that anything is easy to do.  That's one of the reasons I can't cook.  So, my friend and I went out onto a highway, and he taught me how to use the clutch and shift gears.  It did seem kind of easy, once I got the hang of it.  That afternoon was the first and only time I actually drove a manual transmission.  All of the cars I have owned were automatics.  I know that manuals save on gas, but I was willing to get worse gas mileage than to deal with a stick.  Easy vs. Easier.  It was a no brainer.

Governor

  It is said that somewhere in the world, everyone has a twin.  Someone who looks like another person.  I have been mistaken in the past by name, and that was because they didn't know my name, so I was called something else.  Usually, they would call me by my brother's name.  I answered to "John" about as often as to "Walter".  Especially in school, because many of my teachers had also taught my brother earlier.  Sometimes in church, because people would know my father, whose name was John.  For those who didn't know my brother but knew my father, it was assumed that my name was John.  If I corrected them, they would get embarrassed.  So, I wouldn't correct them.  Once in college, I was identified as "William" in the yearbook.  I have a cousin named William.  I've had a few people call me "William" throughout life.  My father sometimes called me "Roger", because he had an associate in the Sunday School Department that was named Roger.  I guess that was one reason why I got into acting.  My talent got be noticed as "Walter".

 Back to doubles.  From time to time, I have had people ask me if I was on a certain show or at some place that I wasn't.  They would say that they could have sworn it was me.  However, the tables turned one night as I was coming home from work.  I stopped by a Wendy's restaurant to pick up some supper and ordered my usual.  The manager of the restaurant came running over to me and told me that my food was on the house.  Had they seen one of my movies?  After all, I had some notoriety around town.  Then, he said that he was so happy to have the Governor in his restaurant.  The Governor of South Carolina at the time was Dick Riley.   He was kind of hunched over, because he had back issues, and so did I. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, and so did I.  He was also about twenty years older than me.  Maybe the manager needed glasses.  I'm glad he didn't see the car I drove up in.  I don't think the Governor would be driving a Nissan Sentra.  

 I took the free food and left.  Thankfully, the manager moved onto another restaurant.  I think I might owe Governor Riley a cheeseburger and fries.