September 1997: In My Wildest Dreams

August 1997: Witness Protection Program

July 1997: Rockabilly, Hot Rods, and Flying Saucers - The Final Chapter

June 1997: Rockabilly, Hot Rods, and Flying Saucers - Part 2

May 1997: Rockabilly, Hot Rods, and Flying Saucers - Part 1

April 1997: The Famous Dan Hill and His Cousin Faith

March 1997: Vacuum Cleaner Salesman

February 1997: Plastic Skin

January 1997: Wild Monkey-Boy of Borneo

December 1996: Separated at Two

November 1996: Motorcycle Riding Circus Bears

Return to Bodacious Lies

But before I get into the dream, I got to gab on and on about dreams and what inspired this one, so that you don't think I'm some kind of nut case or something. First off, I do not believe in dream interpretation: normally. Few dreams have any real meaning or messages. For the most part, it is just your mind and imagination kicking into overdrive using a lot of events, small details, and random thoughts that occurred recently, putting them all in a blender, and trying to put it all into a little story. I just wish they could stick to a more consistent plot sometimes. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy a good dream. And I purposely refuse to think about work or business or anything technical before I go to bed. I absolutely hate dreaming about math or programming or designing or paperwork. I never solve any puzzles or problems through dreaming. I just go in circles and then wake up exhausted. I want a story. A story about people, action, adventure, humor; anything interesting. Just don't make me work all night.

And now for the then recent events that led up to the dream. At that time, Showtime was giving one of those free weekends to try to get new customers. I really didn't have time to sit down a watch any of those movies all the way though, but I did get to see a few scenes here and there. One of the scenes I saw was that scene in "The Grifters" where the rent was due and that girl called the landlord into the bedroom to "discuss" the issue. He walks in and she is laying there topless. The movie goes to the next scene, so I assume they worked out a deal. I also saw the chase scene in "Warlock" where they use some magical nails to nail the footprints of Warlock to the ground and wherever he is, he's stuck. Other things going on at that time at work was some of the people in our department (not me) were getting together and going to visit a former co-worker who moved to Cherokee Village in North Central Arkansas. (We live in North East Arkansas). We (the company) also had to work out a rendezvous with a truck on the interstate halfway between Paragould and Memphis to ship a sample to some customer somewhere to meet some deadline.

The last thing leading up to the dream...  , I'm going to have to be careful in explaining this. I worked side by side with a lady engineer who was noticeable to most guys by her, uh, attributes. If you know what I mean. You could say she had a very large front porch. If you haven't figured it out by now, never mind. She tried to be modest about it and wear loose clothes, but there is only so much you can do. Now a lot of guys was just gaga over her, but not me. Now, I don't mean that in a bad way and I'm not saying this just because Julie might read this. It just wasn't there, for some reason. Maybe it was the quick temper; anger is a big turn-off for me. Also, I'm really not a breast man. We you try to think logically about the subject, what did that woman (any woman) do to get those breasts? Nothing! What did she do to deserve them? Nothing! How do they make her better person or effect her personality? Not a whole lot. If you admire breasts, you are admiring random genetic pairings (no pun intended). Now butts on the other hand is a whole different story. A firm, curvy butt on a woman takes a lot of work because they don't come naturally, usually. You can admire that. But like I said, this is all when you try to think logically on the subject, but who does. I guess I better end this line of thought before I get in trouble.

With all this in mind, let's get on with the dream:
 

I was in a car going up to Cherokee Village to visit the former co-worker. Two engineers were in the front seat and I was in the back seat with "You-Know-Who". It must have been a little while after sundown, because it was just about dark. After a little bit, I look in her direction and she is holding her shirt open and flashing it all to me. Inviting me. I sit there, thinking for a minute, trying to decide. Then I decide. I lift my hands like a praying mantis and turn sideways and boop, we have contact. The very same second that happens, the car comes to a complete stop and Julie is standing in the highway right in front of the car. There was no slowing down either and no being thrown forward by rapid deceleration. It's like the laws of physics came straight out of one of those new Sprint commercials. We were stopped and I was caught.
 
The very next scene, (just like in a movie), it is broad daylight and I am on the interstate down towards Memphis. And when I say, I am on the highway, I mean I am on the highway. I am laying stomach down on the shoulder of the highway and my hands are literally nailed to the pavement. With real nails! I can see and hear the cars racing by and honking their horns. I can feel the sunlight and the wind caused by the cars as they fly by. I am able to lift head up a little bit and I see State Trooper has pulled off onto the shoulder about fifty feet past of me. His lights are flashing and I see his door open and he steps out and starts walking back toward me. I see another State Trooper pulling off the highway past him.
 

I really can't go into a lot of details about how I got into the program, for obvious reasons. Let's just say that I didn't knowingly do anything wrong. All I did was to have a job where I delivered packages for some rich guy. I didn't know what was in the packages and I didn't want to know. The job paid good and I needed the work. During the trial, I didn't have to rat on anyone; I just said what my job was, who hired me, and who I worked for. Stuff like that. Next thing I knew, I was going to have to be somebody else.

At least they were nice enough to give me a choice of identities to choose from. That was awful nice of them. The first choice was to be Fatoomchk HoongaDoonga in Green Bay. "What does he do?" "He tosses fish." "What else you got?"  "Well, we have a Nyoimp Thompson in Wyoming." "Nyoimp!? What in the world is a Nyoimp?! That's not a name! It's a sound! How do you spell that?!" "N-Y-O-I-M-P. It's okay. He's an auctioneer. You'll be selling off estates and reposessed farms." "No thanks, I got enough enemies as it is. What else you got?" "He comes with a wife." "What does she look like?" "Does it really matter?" "What else you got?" "The last one is Danny Hill in Arkansas." "What does he do?" "Engineering stuff; drafting and designing. You get to work in an office with computers." "Tell me more." And they did. It didn't sound very exciting, but something about it attracted me. It seemed so peaceful and dull. I could use something like that. I thought this would be easy. Boy, was I wrong.

Of course, they had to train me for my new job. I had to earn a five year engineering degree in one year. They taught me everything that I absolutely had to know and just skimmed over the rest. You would be surprised on the difference in the amount of stuff that you need to know and what is nice to know. At the end of the year, they gave me a college degree and everything. I even got to march up on the stage and accept my diploma with the Spring 1987 graduating class of Arkansas State University. There was around eight or nine hundred people graduating that day, so I didn't have to worry about anybody not knowing me. Oh by the way, Governor Clinton gave the Commencement Address. That was the first time I met him. But job training was not the only thing I had to learn that year. They had to teach me something more complicated than engineering.

Cultural Training. If you think physics and calculus and chemistry are complicated, you ought to try learning how to be a Southerner. It's a whole different way of thinking. It is a way of life. The war may be over, but the South is still another country all to itself. I had to learn to do everything the opposite of the way I had been raised up to be. For instance, you had to be mean and cruel to your best friends, but kind and polite to your enemies. You never talk or brag about yourself or else people will be kind and polite to you; and you don't want that. You can talk all you want as long as it is about nothing that really matters. Controversy is in poor taste. And the number rule of all time, never offer advise. Offering advise to a Southerner is the same as saying, "You're an idiot and you need a superior human being such as me to tell you how to run your life." I have a theory that that is how the Civil War got started. Sure slavery might be wrong, but don't you tell me what to do. But that's just a theory.

I spent half a day, every day, for a full year with two socialologists and one speech therapist on the ins and outs of Southern Culture. Believe me, they put a lot of work into it to make me convincing. The speech therapist guy made me watch hours and hours and hours of the Andy Griffith Show, the Beverly Hillbillies, and Green Acres. All three of these guys would watch the shows with me and would point out different things to notice and what to ignore. They told me the backwoods log cabin, Snuffy Smith scenario was pure fiction. They would get all worked up and mad with the Darling family or Ernest T. Bass episodes of Andy Griffith, but those were my favorite shows. I would really get on their nerves when I would do a drop dead Ernest T. imitation. I was also told to ignore Elli Mae, Mr. Haney, and Barney Fife. Not realistic accents or attitudes, they would say. I asked if we could watch any Real McCoy episodes and they said no. The accents were two exaggerated and besides, they didn't have any on tape. Whatever.

Anyway, after a year of this programming and getting used to the heat (man it gets hot down here - the humidity is a killer) and ever now and then wondering if it would have been easier being a fish tosser with a funny name, I was ready for my new life. After all this training; all they said good luck, work hard, keep quiet, and don't get noticed. Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,guys.

 

Everything was just deathly quiet. The farmers all squatted down and had oddly seemed to have sobered up. I could barely hear some murmuring from the kids, and I wasn't even breathing. Now, what happened here is a clear memory. This is how I remembered  it way back then and my memory of those events has not changed over all these years. This is not something that has been hypnotized into or out of me. This is not something that I have gradually recalled or that my mind has been spoon-fed through dreams. This is how it happened then and this is how I still remember it today. I was in that same spot that I had been in for almost an hour (though it seemed like five hours), still trying to figure out a way to get out of there without being noticed. I was thinking that if I could get back to the others and explain to them what was really going on, then we would just leave and there wouldn't be any trouble.

But it was too late. All of a sudden there was a shotgun blast. Not from the farmers, but from one of the kids. It wasn't nothing back in those days (or even still today in the south) for young men to be carrying around a bunch of guns. Nobody thinks anything about it. Spacemen had a particular sinister flavor to them that year at the drive inn, so at least one of the guys decided to go ahead and get it over with. As soon as I heard that, I just knew there was going to be big shoot out. I ducked down, expecting the farmers to be scrambling for their guns. But all I heard was complete silence. I slowly looked up again and I couldn't believe my eyes.

All these half drunk good ol' boys that wouldn't "take nuthin from nobody" are just sitting on the ground like someone had just "turned them off". And standing right in the middle of them are these three guys wearing black suits. Where in the world did they come from!? The "Black Suit Guys" (as I called them) just appeared out of nowhere and are just standing there calmly in the woods in the middle of the night wearing black suits, black hats, and black sunglasses. It has just been in the last few years that I have heard the term "Men in Black" or "MIB's", and have just learned in the last year that the UFO believers have a whole mythology built up around these guys. So much so, that one of this summer's major movies is called "Men in Black. But I don't know anything about all that. Search the internet on that subject and you get all kinds of conflicting stories. All I know about is the "Black Suit Guys" that I saw for the first time that night.

One of Black Suit Guys was holding a small but long black box just a little bit bigger than his hand and was pointing it at the kids. The second one was carrying a large black suitcase. He held it up and the third one opened it and took out a big long blobby-looking thing that looked like some kind of weapon for some reason. It was a melted looking gray "thing" and as he held it, it started stretching. It's hard to explain in words only, but it started out being two feet long and stretched out to about three feet long and started glowing with a dull red glow at one end. The second Black Suit Guy closed the suitcase and walking over to one of the farmers and touched his shoulder and he promptly stood up. He got up pretty quick, but he had a dull, blank expression on his face. Guy #3 hands the weapon over to the farmer and says with an accent I can't quite place, "Wait for the order". #2 touches the weapon and up pops a couple sheets of red light just floating over the weapon. Once again, that's hard to explain in words. They seemed to be for aiming. After a minute, Guy #1 say's, "All are registered". With this, the order was given and a bright, red, pencil-thin, steady beam of light shot out the front of that thing. It was followed immediately by the loudest peal of thunder I had ever heard and in the area of where the kids were, all I could see were sparks. Now that I think back on it, it really doesn't make any sense that the weapon should make loud of a noise. I kind of think the noise was added just to scare the kids. But then, I really wouldn't know about that.

Well I decided right then and there, that there was no point in waiting around for the perfect time to sneak off. Buddy, if they were going to shoot me, it would have to be in the back. For all I knew, they could have just killed all my friends. I had this mental image in my head that they were all laying out on the highway, cut in half. I ran like crazy back through the woods to my car and you could still hear the thunder still rumbling when I started the motor and took off back the way I came. That night I learned what the phrase "heart in throat" meant. I thought I was going to puke. I sped down the highway all ducked down, hoping not to get shot too, but also keeping an eye open to what happened to my friends. When I got to the spot they were at, the lights around the flying saucer were already out. All the cars were gone and I could see the lights from their headlights and all the way up the road. They were moving! One strange thing I did notice, there was the top half of a car lay on the side of the road. It looked like someone took a giant knife and started cutting halfway down the windshield and just took the top clean off. And glass was everywhere; but I didn't see any bodies, so made me feel a little better.

I found everybody gathered up at the store in Lunsford. Needless to say, they were scared crapless. They were glad to see me, though. They were wondering if I had been captured or something. We didn't use the word abducted back then. Some had already left for home, others were taking the girls home and may or may not be coming back. Others were showing up for the first time after hearing about it second hand and wanting to know what really happened. I was amazed at how different their version of the story was from what I had seen. And each time the story was retold, it grew more and more elaborate. They all had seen a real live spaceship with real live space monsters walking around; and with every retelling, more and more details were added. I didn't know if they really believed all that they were saying or if they each wanted to be seen as knowing more than the other guy. Either way, they were definitely not interested in what I had to say about what really went on. In fact, I quickly became viewed with suspicion; like I was in with the "space monsters". Besides, my story really didn't make a lot of sense anyway. Whoever heard of farmers with rayguns and flying saucers built out of chicken wire. Anyway, they were all trying to decide what to do: go back and fight it out, call the police or Army, go home and hide, or just stay put and see happens. They never really decided, so "staying put" won by default.

While we were all standing around going over the story one more time, a small convoy of about ten Army trucks went by. We couldn't figure out how they found out and how they got up there so fast. Some of us wanted to follow them, but we remembered what happened in the War of the Worlds movie, so we stayed put. After about half an hour, they were already heading back to town. There was no battle or nothing. But one thing was different, they were led by a big shiny black car. That's when we decided to go back. When we got there, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing! No flying saucer, no lanterns, no empty whiskey or beer bottles, even the top half of ol' Bob Ellis's car was  gone and the glass was swept up. The bottom half was stolen before sunrise.

After this, everything changed. Over a period of two or three days, everyone involved in this, one by one, started forgetting what had happened, or wasn't there, or just didn't want to talk about it. And I did see that big black car around car for those three days. The windows were blacked out and I never actually saw the drivers; even when it would be parked in front of one of my friend's house, I would never actually see them get in or out of their car. I know they were behind the silence, but I just can't prove it. After this, everyone seemed just a little colder, a little more suspicious. Nobody really wanted to race much anymore. The band went from real good to just okay. We weren't playing any worse; it was just that the crowd was a lot tougher.

This is when everything changed. Flattop got engaged and gave Greasehead six months to find a new bass player. It didn't take that long. Grease left town in two months time and headed for Memphis it make it big. Playing in Truman was like fishing in your own bathtub, he said. It gives you something to do, but you don't get anywhere. He never really did make it big, but the last I heard (about five years ago), he was still in the music business. Clubs and studio musician mostly, either in Memphis or Nashville. He goes back and forth between Country and Blues, and sometimes good old fashion Rockabilly when he can. I got a phone call from his dad once saying that Bob (THAT'S IT! THAT'S HIS REAL NAME! I knew I would remember it! Bob!) was one of Gene Vincent's new Blue Caps. So I go out and buy the record and Grease's name is not on it. All it said was that one of the guitar players on tracks three and four on side two was "studio". What had really happened was one of the regular band members had to go to a funeral that day and had to be replaced that day by a studio musician and Greasehead say that it was him. I have no reason to doubt it. I just think that Grease was disappointed that his name wasn't on the cover of the record. I think that was in 1964. Man, I wish I still had that record. It's probably worth a lot today. Me? When Flattop got married, I had to move out. I moved back home for a little while. Couldn't stand it, so I moved back out and eventually left town; mainly for reasons I would rather not discuss. I guess all these things is what led me to a life of wandering. I got it in my head that nothing in life is what it seems to be and that nothing is certain. 
 

Our favorite place to drag was the old Lunsford highway. Lunsford was a dinky little farm town north of Bay, Arkansas which was only slightly bigger. The highway from Bay to Lunsford was all curvy, but once you got on the other side of Lunsford it was a straight shot all the way to the Lake City highway and their was nothing but farmland in-between and the cops were almost never out their. On this particular Saturday night, I was "running point". I was to slowly drive the full length of the highway to make sure there were no cops hiding out somewhere. Well, about four miles north of Lunsford, I see something shining through the trees up ahead on the right. As I pull up along side of it, this is what I see. There was farmland on both sides of the highway and about an eight of a mile off to the right is a tree line and what I saw was in a clearing that was cut into the tree line like a big c-shape. What I saw looked like an honest to goodness flying saucer.

That right! A shining, glowing, saucer shaped flying saucer just like the ones in the movies that we saw down at the Skyvue Drive Inn Theater. We would watch all those science fiction and monster movies and wonder how much of that stuff could be true or could actually happen. Well for a moment, it looked like it could all be true. But I had to get a closer look. I wasn't one to jump into something feet first and wind up looking like an idiot later. So I kept going on down the road and turned off on a side road about three quarters of a mile away and drove the back roads by moonlight with my headlights out. When I came up behind the woods where the flying saucer was, I got out and followed an old trail through the woods that came out into the clearing. This is where I came face to face with my real live UFO.

It was a complete joke. It was a bunch of half drunk farmers that had built this ol' rickety ol' space ship out of wood, ply board, chicken wire, and newspaper and painted it all silver. It was propped up on boards painted black to make it look like it was floating and it was surrounded by lanterns and mirrors to keep it well lit. The flying saucer was in about a dozen sections and assembled together like a pie and all the pieces were held together with wire. Up close it was laughable, but from the highway it looked real. My first thought was to walk right in there and congratulate the farmers for a joke well done; but seeing how they were well lit (and I don't mean from the lanterns) and seeing that pile of shotguns, I thought it best to just stay hid out in the woods until I knew what was really going on.

It turns out (from what I could overhear), that they were fed up with all the punk kids racing up and down their highway and their were going to scare them off once and for all. I thought, "Okay, yall are drunk, you got guns, you got a flying saucer. I guess you really mean business." While I'm waiting for a good chance to sneak off without being heard, some of the other kids got tired of waiting for me and came looking for me. The farmers all ducked down to see what would happen. The car slowed down and stopped and then cut a donut and went racing back to town. Well, this pleased them ol' redneck farmers to no end. They were all laughing and whooping it up and slapping each other on the back. They thought it was mission accomplished. Well it wasn't!

And neither is this story. I really hated to do this to you, but I'm going to have to cut it short again and pick up on it next month. I will finish it in part three, I promise! But I will give you a hint: if you think you know the direction this story is going, you don't. It hasn't even started to get strange yet. Just come back in one month and you'll see why.

But that third weekend seemed to be the favorite weekend for most people our age. We were in our early twenties and Rock and Roll was brand new. We went for the high energy stuff. We would literally wear the people out. We didn't bother with pop rock or love ballads. We also didn't really bother with coming up with a whole lot of original stuff either. To be honest with you, we stole everybody else's songs and changed the sound of them up a little to make them our own. Of course everybody knew that we didn't write those songs and they didn't care. We were the closest thing that they were ever going to get to hearing Chuck Berry or Bill Haley in person. Besides, we were not stealing anyone's act. We played no more than two songs from any one person or group. We stole just a little bit from everyone. That way we wouldn't be branded as "So and So" imitators. One trick we did was to buy the records of well known acts and learn songs that never were released for radio play. That fooled a few people. We did come up with some original stuff, but it was usually instrumentals and still sounded a whole lot like other people's stuff. But the crowd didn't mind; they would pack the place and whoop it up. I think that kind of bothered ol' J.T. He preferred things to be a bit calmer and didn't care much for the hard Rock and the rough crowds it brought in; but at least he was making good money off of it, so he tolerated it.

Now, like I said, there were three members of our band: Greasehead, Flattop, and Stickboy (I was Stickboy). Greasehead was the leader of the group. It was his band. He owned it all. He could replace us all with different people and it would still be the Hepcat Daddys. And that was fine with us. It wasn't a power trip or an ego thing with him. That was agreed to by all of us at the beginning. Greasehead (and for some reason, I can't remember his real name right now; it might come to me later - I think it started with a "B") had big plans for the band. He said he was going to take it all the way to the top. Let me give you a little background on ol' Grease. All three of us lived and worked in Jonesboro, AR at the time, about fifteen minutes from where we played. But Greasehead moved up to here from either Dallas or Austin when he was thirteen years old. He always felt like he was cheated in life because he had to move to a smaller town. Now that he was out of school, about the only job he could hold down was working for his dad as a mechanic. This gave him a lot of spare time to practice the guitar. He had a record player set up in the shop and about a hundred or so records. He would play them real loud and play along with them on his guitar. He could do this since the shop (and their house which was next door) was outside of town, out on the highway. There was a real old couple that lived across the road from them, but they were practically deaf, so they never noticed.

Now Greasehead sort of had this James Dean look about him. And he had the BIGGEST pompadour that you have ever seen on a human being. That greasy, jet black hair of his must have went up at least six inches. That's why we called him Greasehead. We always said he was reusing the motor oil out of them old cars he was working on. And as far as the height goes, he always said "The bigger, the better - and if you don't believe that, I got something else I could show you." Yea, yea, yea, whatever you say, Greasehead. I will say this about him though, he was The Best guitar player that I have personally met in my life. He lived, breathed, and slept guitar. He even gave his guitar a name - Little Suzie.

It was a different story with me and Flattop. We had no plans of escaping our hometown. We just wanted to move out of the house, have a good job, and get on with our lives. And that is pretty well what we had done. At that time, both Flattop and me were working at a small factory in town and were renting a house together to save on the money. Greasehead talked us into joining his band and we did it mainly as a favor to him. Nobody else in the area had the talent or desire to do so and we understood that if anyone came along and were better than us and wanted to be in the band, we would be replaced - no hard feelings.

Now Flattop as you might have guessed had a flattop. It gave him a real severe look. But actually he was quite bashful, until you got to know him that is. He owned on old upright bass that his dad had gotten him years earlier at a pawn shop. Flattop (whose real name was Tim) was a pretty good bass player. He wasn't great, but he could slap it pretty good. The thing about a rock and roll band is that you have to have a bass player. Everyone notices when you don't have one and everyone notices when you have a great one, but nobody notices when you just have an average one. Like I said, you just have to have one.

And last of all was me - Stickboy. I was called Stickboy for two reasons. Number one - Drumsticks, of course. Number two - I haven't always been this big hunk of a man that I am now. I used to be skinny, real skinny! I was six foot tall and weighed one hundred and twenty pounds. I found out that most people once they are grown up won't make fun of fat people, but they won't give a second thought of making fun of a skinny person. But, always wanting to keep the peace and wanting to get a head start on everyone else, I would be the first to make fun of myself. So I became known as Stickboy. I was the drummer. I wasn't a very good drummer, but I was all they had. The drums didn't even belong to me, Greasehead owned them. I didn't even know how to play them until Grease taught me. He taught me a few basic beats and rhythms - enough to get by with. All that stuff I said earlier about needing a bass player and being able to get by with an average one goes double for a drum player. As long as you got a real good guitar player up in front of the band and some good songs, that band will go a long way.

If I had more time, I would tell you about Miss Thompson who played piano for us when we tried to get into the Jerry Lee Lewis mode. But that only lasted for two months before she dropped out. I'll go ahead and wrap it up for now. You'll have to drop by next month to find out what happened to the three of us and the unbelievable event that changed our lives forever, even though most of the people involved would rather not talk about it. Sorry to leave you hanging, but see you next time.

One of the reasons that I am even less famous today than I was a few years back is not just that the general public is losing interest in my work and in Easy Listening Pop music as a whole, but also that I am losing interest in it also. Back in the eighties, I really got into the music. I had it made. I was enjoying what I was doing and making a pretty living at it, both as singer and songwriter. But after a while, you just get burned out on it. You start looking for something different. You start expanding your horizons. I really started enjoying Hard Rock, Country, Blues, Jazz, Swing, Big Band, you name it. After a while, that "la la" music just wasn't doing it for me anymore. I was ready to do something different. The problem was that the record executives didn't see things my way. They tried to explain to me about demographics and target audiences and profitabilities and finally it boiled down to: You're under a contract and you'll do as we say! So I croaked out a couple more albums and I'll croak out a couple more and after that you may never here from me again. Again!? That is if you've even heard of me to start with.

Now my cousin Faith Hill on the other hand, I really envy her. She thoroughly enjoys what she is doing and is one of the top Country Music Superstars today. She is so happy, that she can't hardly stand herself. She's always been that way though. We both grew up together at our grandma's house and we did everything together. Played, messed around, always getting into trouble and getting thumped on the head by Grandma. Faith was always a bit more energetic than me. She was a little ball of fire. One thing she really loved were those variety shows that used to come on TV all the time. We were always having to watch Sonny and Cher, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Captain and Tenille, Carol Burnette, Hee Haw, and her all time favorite, Donny and Marie. She never missed a show. She even tape recorded them so she could learn all the songs. And it wasn't enough to just watch Donny and Marie, we had to play "Donny and Marie". She was a little bit country, I was a little bit rock and roll. I guess that is how we both got our start. So if you don't like my music, blame it on Faith. Like I said, we did everything together.

We even took baths together when we were little. We had to take our baths in the kitchen sinks. We had two sinks in the kitchen right side by side, like most people do I guess. The reason we didn't use the bathtub was that it had a little crack in it. I was told it could hold water long enough to take a quick bath; but over the years of leaking out and having standing water on the bare wood inside the outer shell of the tub, the floor just gave way. One Saturday night before I was born, the tub and floor went crack, thud, and slosh; and Grandma slid out head first into the mud underneath the house. After that, the hole was covered up the best it could be and it was bird baths (if anything) for grownups and kitchen sinks for young-uns. And that is where Faith and I spent our Saturday afternoons. Eventually we outgrew the sinks ( it was hard to fit into those sinks when you are fifteen years old, you know) and had to move it out into the yard and spray each other down with water hoses. That was a lot more fun than those cramped sinks. For some reason, the street would get awfully crowded in front of our house every Saturday afternoon. Old men would come out and sit on they front porch and watch quietly. Kids from all over the neighborhood ride their bikes up and down the sidewalks. Cars would be driving up and down the road real slow. After the third fender bender in front of our house, a policeman kindly asked us not to play our "nude teenage water sports games" in the front yard anymore. We tried to explain to him about the bathtub and that all we were doing was taking a bath, but he was kind of aggravated anyway, especially since it was his car that got hit. Well anyway, we moved it out of the front yard, but he didn't say not to do it in the back yard. Things didn't change much after that since we lived on the corner anyway.

I had never been a salesman before. I had always used my hands or my head to make a living, but never with my mouth. I'm normally shy and quiet around strangers and usually wait for other people to approach me first. On top of that, I never try to change people's minds. I let people to think and do as they wish, whether or not I think it's right or wrong. Those two things do not add up to the makings of a good salesman. But I was in a bind and I read their advertisement about how you can make good money and how the product sells itself and no experience necessary and how they would train you and blah blah blah. So I thought, "Why not?".

I went through the training school (a whole two weeks) and I got a new set of clothes. I got a cheap suit, which was sort of yellowish tan and it had these big ol' lapels. The shirts had huge collars and I had this extra wide Lamont Sanford tie with the great big knot. They wouldn't let me wear my cowboy boots, so I got these brown dress shoes that had heels. Not high heels or elevator shoes or anything like that; just big heels. Oh, the shoes also had these great big fat shoe strings that never wanted to stay tied. I wasn't exactly the fashion plate that I am now. It was about two years after this that I tossed these clothes on top of a passed out Indian laying in an alley between a movie theater and a liquor store in Flagstaff, Arizona. As bad as those clothes looked, at least they were clean and didn't have any holes in them.

Anyway, I spent the spring of 1973 driving up and down those Missouri highways in what seemed to be the wettest spring ever. There wasn't a whole lot of outright downpours, it just seemed to drizzle most of the time. It was like a constant heavy, but invisible, fog. And to make matters worse, Missouri seems to have the lowest highways of any state. I always said that you had to look up to see the ditches. Well, when you put these two things together, you had paved highways that way always covered with thin layer of mud. And half the time, I wound up getting stuck driving behind some tractor or someone pulling a trailer that would sling muddy water and slime all over my windshield. My cheap and crumbly old windshield wipers just wouldn't quite get the job done. So I spent most of my driving time squinting and moving my head around like a chicken trying to find the clearest spot in between each wipe of the wipers. I have to wear glasses now. Thank you, Missouri.

After a month of this, I was making enough money to eat Vienna sausages, bologna sandwiches, potato chips, and generic cokes. I was ready to pack it in and start looking for the nearest riverboat, when my boss called. He said it was my lucky day. A wealthy old lady who buys a new vacuum cleaner once every year or two called and was in the mood for the newest model and I was only ten miles from her house. I was told that no salesman had ever not sold one to her. It was a sure thing. I wondered for a little bit why she would be buying so many. They are guaranteed and they are supposed to last forever. I thought maybe she was giving them away or maybe selling them herself. Rich people always seem to have some money making scheme going on. But I thought; oh well, if she wants to buy one and put a big fat commission in my pocket, that's fine with me. Maybe I could actually buy a hamburger with fries.

I drive up in her driveway at about 3:30 (I remember checking my watch) and rung the buzzer. She tells me over the intercom to wait a few minutes while she gets ready. I had never been to a house that had an intercom before. I wait five minutes and then get the same message again. Finally at 3:40, she says the door is open, to come on in and set up. So I carry all my stuff into the living room and after a few minutes she walks in.

I guess she was in her late sixties. She had unnaturally red hair, bright red lipstick, and bright red nail polish. All she was wearing was some Saran Wrap around her waist and up top she was wearing two medium size Dixie cups with eyes drawn on the bottoms of them. Talk about a shock! She started moving around and half way talking dirty and all. I can't hardly remember much of what she was saying. It was something about.....well, I better not say. Let's just say it was dirty vacuum cleaner talk. She also had a long strip of red electrical tape down each side of her legs which I guess was supposed to be racing stripes. She would pretend to ride a motorcycle and mentioned something about my hot rod. I was completely dumbstruck. In all her moving around, one of her Dixie cups fell off. Please don't take me the wrong way, because I think aging is a natural part of life and nothing to be ashamed of. The older I get the "older" pretty is - if that makes any sense. I don't look down on anybody because of their age. But when that Dixie cup fell off, I could only think of one word - cucumber! She did this over-dramatized "oh" thing with her mouth while covering her mouth with her hand, all the while looking back and forth at me and down at herself. That was enough of this side show for me. I might have been tempted if: 1)I wasn't a woman-hater at the time and 2) if she had been within twenty years of my age (much less forty). I started gathering up my stuff and heading out of there. Her moods started changing and swinging real fast: from shock and disbelief, to begging and pleading, to fiery anger. I didn't care - I was outta there.

The next day, I get a call from the boss to report immediately to his office. He tells me that the woman called and complained that I wouldn't sell her a vacuum cleaner and that she was willing to give me another chance, that he didn't know what the problem was and that I was the only salesman in over twenty years that hadn't sold anything to her. I told him exactly what happened and he basically called me a liar. He said that was the most ridiculous story he had ever heard and the poorest excuse for not making a sell. He said Ms Madore was one of their best customers and that I needed to get down there and do my job. That's when I said, "Hold that thought." I went out to my car, gathered up all the company stuff (vacuum cleaners, literature, company issued briefcase, and so on), carried it in and laid it in his floor and say, "See ya!" After that, I made my way towards Oklahoma. It has been almost twenty five years, and I'm still not too fond of Missouri and I haven't try to sell a single thing since.

Then I wake up. It was either July or August and I think I was in the Philippines. But I'm really not sure. I was in a military hospital and my name was John Doe. I was wrapped up like the Mummy and whenever the drugs started wearing off I would scream and cry a lot. Otherwise, I really just wanted to die. I really don't like to talk about stuff like that. I would rather people didn't know about that side of me, but sometimes you just got to talk about it. It turns out that ninety percent of my skin was burned off instantly, I was the only one to survive out of the platoon alive, and the brass knew exactly who I was the whole time. The doctors came to the conclusion that I was going to pull through (somehow) and the that the pain would eventually go away. On the other hand, I was going to spend the rest of my life as living Crispy Critter. We used to use that term for the burnt corpses of the enemy, but now it wasn't so funny any more.

I'm not going to go into all the details, but a deal was struck. I was to be declared killed in action and I was to have no further contact with my family or anyone that I have known or met at anytime in my life. This was fine by me; I'd rather they didn't see me the way I was anyway. I didn't want their pity or horror anyway. Also, I was never to speak of any United States military involvement in Laos or Cambodia. Sure, why not. And finally, I was to volunteer my body for any and all experimental burn treatments or operations or whatever they saw fit to do. On their part, they would take care of me for the rest of my life. Fair enough, I suppose.

I wore different types of greasy bandages until 1972. That's when they came up with this clear rubber suit thing. I felt like the "visible man" until 1977. Remember the "visible man"? That little GI Joe-size educational toy for kids. The skin was clear plastic but you could see all the insides. That was me. Most of the time, I was waiting for the next little invention to come along and I was bored stupid. Watched a lot of TV, read a lot of books, tried several hobbies. Then things really started taking off between 1977 and 1979. One development right after another. Thank God for those geniuses at Dupont and Dow. They were doing things with color, texture, and thickness that nobody thought would be possible in our lifetime. The new engineered polymers (plastic skin, as I called it) could simulate skin almost perfectly and they were working out the kinks of sealing around the eyelids, mouth, and nails.

By 1980, I was ready to step outside (under escort) and visit the real world. You just don't know how much you can miss riding in a car, going to a mall, or eating at McDonalds until you've lost everything and have been shut around for over a decade. I wore long sleeves and sunglasses in case something went wrong with the eyes and the skin did bunch up around the elbows and behind the knees and in the palms of the hands. But that day was a complete success - nobody noticed me! And on top of all that, it was May. Ironic, isn't it.

Over the next two years, they worked out the little details such as sweating. Until then, I had these little spouts here and there. You know, like those things you use to blow up beachballs with. I felt like one of those cartoon guys that are shot with a machine gun and then decides to drink a glass of water. Whenever I went into a public restroom, people thought it was a whole crowd of people in the stall. But it was only me. They also added permanent hair at that time. No more wigs for me. If you were here right now, I'd ask you to feel the hair on my arms. You'd swear it was real. I also have a permanent twelve o'clock shadow. No whiskers at all or a five o'clock at eight in the morning would draw suspicion. Nobody has noticed the twelve o'clock shadow to this day.

By 1982, everything was ready for me to take my place in the real world. I was more than ready to get a real job and meet some real people and just be an ordinary guy. Only one thing, who was I going to be? Well, they picked some young guy that lived in Washington State who lived off a government disability to be the "mold". I'm pretty sure they might have threatened to cut off his payments if he didn't comply, but I had nothing to do with that. The deal now is that I never go to Washington or Oregon and he never leaves those two states. After all, I am now his perfect double; we even had the same fingerprints. All I can say is neither one of us better not ever get arrested for anything or a great big barrel of worms will be opened up once the police run the fingerprints through the system. They also handed me a list of bland names to choose from. After a week, I settled on Danny Hill.

Now I have a new name, a new face, and a new job. Finally, I have a new life. I am almost normal. I'm pushing 58 years old, but I look 33. I'm testing the new extended wear model that is supposed to last up to ten years, but doesn't. I'm on my fourth one since 1989. I really hate it when the skin goes bad. It usually involves a sudden job change or some other drastic change that will remove from all the people that I know. Besides, I have to move on every five years anyway. It wouldn't do for people to notice that the guy who hasn't aged a day in the last five years to have it all catch up with him over a one weeks vacation, now would it? About the only other things that interrupt my normal life are the visits I'm required to make to the Veteran's Hospital to meet with the "Mule Skinners" (as I call them) and also a team from the FDA. The FDA is studying the long term effects of the skin. Before they would even announce to the world that it even exists, they want to be sure it doesn't cause cancer or brain damage or anything like that.

Other than that, I am the guy with no past. I am the guy that doesn't get to close to people. Once I lose contact with my casual friends, they are lost forever. Always moving on and never staying in direct sunlight for very long. Just like my childhood hero, The Shadow. You may be wondering if I'm afraid I'll get in trouble for telling my story. Not really. Besides, I said it was a lie, didn't I? You're not suppose to be believing this anyway. Besides, I never did say exactly who "they" were, did I? So don't worry; just pretend this is a work of fiction and let's all keep it to ourselves. And if you ever catch that segment on the reruns of Unsolved Mysteries about me and are tempted to call, DON'T!!!

I don't know exactly how I came to be with the orangutans or how long I had been with them, but I don't remember anything else before them. We were right smack dab in the middle of Borneo. The natives didn't even know that white people existed at that time. To them, I was "the little white jungle god" and every new moon, they would bring me baskets of fruit - and I mean a lot of fruit. They would leave it in an opening and hide in the bushes until I started eating and then they would leave. Of course after that, all my ape brothers would come in and help themselves. The orangutans brought me up good, fed me, and took good care of me; they accepted me as one of their own; but, I was still the bottom of the totem pole. No "Lord of the Apes" killing savages here. The natives were actually a peaceful and gentle people who stayed clear of us; and the orangutans... well, have you ever tried to get one of them to do anything? They just don't care about anything. They just eat, sleep, and lay around. That's about it.

Then one day, the British "something or other" Society came through and messed everything up for us all. I won't go into all the details; but, neither to apes nor the natives wanted me taken away and it got ugly. Balance meant alot to all of us and still means a lot to me until this day. Anyway, after all that trouble, the British (or Englishters as I call them) decided to hand me off to the American Consulate after spending a month or so (I don't remember how long, but it seemed forever) at the British Embassy. Their reasoning behind this was that they couldn't figure out where I came from or what Nationality I was. They assumed I was about five years old, but there were no reports of plane crashes, missing missionaries, lost tourists, or anything. Fingerprints turned up nothing. To look at me, their was no predominant traits from any one particular European nation. On top of all that, I looked part Indian. So, abracadabra - I'm an American!

You would think something like this would be big news, but unconfirmed reports just trickled out at first and it all happened when man had just landed on the moon, so it kind of got lost in the shuffle. On top of that, one of those National Enquirer-type papers ran a completely false story about a Tarzan-Boy discovered in the jungle just six months before I was discovered. What are the odds of that happening? So when the grocery store newspapers reported on me, no one took it seriously - except maybe a few trailer park people.

Well anyway, I was shipped around from one research facility to another, and one university to another until one day, I was misplaced! That's governments for you. But I suppose that's all right. It had been a couple of years and I was basically socialized (I am a fast learner, you know). I stayed in a few foster homes and kept my mouth shut and ears open and watched alot of TV. As a result of being raised by apes, I have poor communication skills (hence, the grunts - orangutans do communicate feelings), a short attention span, and unusually long arms. I love to get measured for shirts, just to see the expression on the persons face. You ought to see them scratch their head, remeasure, re-remeasure, check their catalogs and make phone calls. I'm just onery, I guess. I've thought about opening my own clothing store for long armed, big-necked, skinny people called "Monkey-Boys". But I don't think I would be getting very many customers besides me.

Anyways, that's when our parents started thinking they could make some money off of us. But we were getting close to two years old and it was becoming apparent that we wouldn't be able to share the toilet very much longer. Not because of the boy-girl thing; but because we had to sit sideways on the toilet and the walls in both the bathrooms didn't give us the knee space we needed. And we couldn't move due to financial reasons.

So, to kill two birds with one stone, it was decided to cut us in two and sell us on the black market (they couldn't find it in their hearts to sell us to that circus freak show (they wasn't offering enough anyway). And because they didn't want to show us favoritism, they decided to sell us both. Besides, black market babies fetched a pretty hefty price in the mid-sixties; more than enough to cover the cost of the operation.

Well, I was sold to some old couple in west Tennessee. The man had a stroke and I got handed off to a niece of theirs and wound up in northeast Arkansas and my sister wound up in Oregon (eventually). I guess it's a good thing we got separated (literally) since I shot up a whole lot taller than her. I don't know how that would have worked out.

Well anyway, like I said, they were mostly Mexicans with the exceptions of the three of us who were the motorcycle riding circus bears and that skinny white woman who was "The Alligator Woman" who actually just had a real bad rash and scratched all the time. She also smoked a lot too. Us circus bears was two white guys and this Native Indian guy from one of those little countries south of Mexico (Guatemala or something like that). We never knew exactly where he was from since we didn't really know Spanish and the Mexicans didn't really speak English and Boo Boo didn't know either. We called him Boo Boo after the Yogi Bear cartoon, which was new at the time. I was Yogi because I was nicer to Boo Boo than Smokey was. Smokey was the other guy. He really wasn't a bad guy, he just watched out himself and wasn't to worried about other people. For the life of me, I can't remember Smokey's real name. But, oh well. He also smoked a lot too, which is another reason we called him Smokey. I was more interested in Boo Boo and his background, his life story and how he saw the world. But since we didn't speak the same language, it didn't work out to good. Boo Boo was a short stocky guy with a Moe Howard haircut that went all the way around his head. He also had a tattoo. It was a straight line that went down the middle of his forehead and all the way down his nose. He also smiled a lot. The biggest, happiest smile you ever saw. You would talk to him and he would just smile and nod his head at you like you were the smartest person in the world. Sometimes Smokey would say things about Boo Boo's mother and things about animals that I won't repeat here and Boo Boo would just grin and nod. Smokey thought that was funny.

As far as jobs went, there wasn't much to it. We were circus bears. The main problem with that, of course, was that we weren't circus bears. We didn't even have real costumes. They gave us this packing material stuff that sort of looked like brown fur and we just stuffed it in our clothes just far enough for it to stick out. It stuck out of collar around our necks (you could see our faces plain as day). We stuffed our pants legs into our boots and then stuffed the "bear fur" into our boots. We taped it around our wrists and even had it coming out of the top of our pants. That stuff sure was itchy. And to draw the crowds, we had to ride motorcycles. They were really little scooters like what Eb Dawson rode on Green Acres. And we had just about as much control over them as he did. We could barely keep them up. We wrecked a lot and drug (Southern for dragged) our feet a lot.

Well, needless to say, this job didn't last very long. The parents started complaining that their kids weren't even fooled. The bosses walked us outside the circus grounds and started yelling at us and making gestures with their hands and we understood we were fired. Well, Boo Boo didn't understand- he just smiled and nodded his head. We gestured back that we wanted our stuff and after a while they understood and brought our belongings out to us in paper sacks. There we were; jobless, homeless, dressed like bears, and had everything we owned in IGA grocery sacks.

Well, we did what any red-blooded American (or foreigner) would do; we struck out for town to look for a job. After a few days, Smokey lost Boo Boo somewhere and I never saw him again. That gave me hard feelings toward Smokey, so I didn't stick around very long myself. I eventually wound up in Las Vegas where I had another strange job, probably the strangest. I was a Boxing Ring Girl. You know, those girls in bikinis that walk around the ring in between the round with the big signs saying which round is next. The promoters were desperate and figured everyone was drunk and wouldn't notice. I guess nobody could be that drunk. That was the shortest job I ever had. I didn't even get paid. They said if I left right then, they wouldn't throw me to the crowd; and that sounded like a good idea at the time.