The previous me

My life began, like yours and everybody else's when:

... the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

November 22, 1945

Weighing in at 9 pounds, 9 ounces and 20 inches long, I arrived in this world on a snowy Thanksgiving evening in 1945.

I cost $31.09, which included a $27.50 delivery charge, $1.25 for medicine, a dollar phone bill, 34 cents sales tax and a buck for my blue bead bracelet--about the amount my dad earned in a week as a full-time fireman.

1950-1959

I had a great uncle Charlie (1869-1959), who lived in a tiny town in Ohio, called Kinsman (where criminal attorney Clarence Darrow grew up. Darrow was famous for the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes "monkey" trial. My father's family settled there after emigrating from Glasgow, Scotland (my mother emigrated to America from Germany just before the start of WWII). Our house is still there, pretty much the same as it's always been, just like Kinsman, except that today, it's also a stop on a walking tour.

Uncle Charlie had been a cowboy, gold miner and a deputy sheriff. He also knew Pat Garrett who shot Billy the Kid.

In my early teens, Uncle Charlie told me stories about the old West and taught me how to spin a rope ... and once he gave me a raw, buttery-yellow nugget of gold.

1950s

My dad became a fireman in 1937 and served for 26 years. He was also an innovator. And among other income-enhancing businesses, he started a candy factory in our basement.

He bought a steel, two-level industrial tempering machine that melted down ten-pound bars of chocolate. My mom opened a valve at the bottom, and the melted chocolate poured out onto a marble slab. Then, she mixed in peanuts, cocoanut or Rice Krispies and laid out the candies on wax paper, spread over masonite trays that slid into rolling racks.

When she wasn’t doing that, she was packing the clusters into 8-ounce cellophane bags and stapling on the Brackin’s Homemade Candy labels. Then, Dad drove throughout the Cleveland area, delivering them to the network of Hough Bakeries.

Around the holidays, my folks also made solid chocolate Santa Clauses and Easter bunnies that Mom wrapped in wafer-thin colored foils.

You’d think that, growing up with a candy factory in the basement, I’d be sick of the stuff by now. But actually, my taste buds have merely matured from my parents' rich brown goodies to higher-cocoa dark chocolate.

Wonderfully addictive.

1953

I nearly cut my foot off when I was eight years old. I was playing with a friend and put my foot through a basement window, severing my Achilles Tendon.

Dr. Sam Sheppard re-assembled everything, and I don’t even walk with a limp today.

My folks were friends of the Sheppards. They and everyone else who knew them were shocked in 1954 when he was arrested and charged with murdering his pregnant wife, Marilyn.

His trial was a farce, followed step by step by the whole world and eventually inspiring The Fugitive television series. After he had served 10 years in prison, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his right to a fair trial had been compromised by the fire-storm of publicity, and he was released. Tried again, he was defended by the famous criminal attorney F. Lee Bailey and acquitted. But he never recovered from the ordeal, and he died of liver disease in 1970.

In 1997, Sheppard's body was exhumed, and tissue samples proved his innocence once and for all.

The most likely suspect for the murder was a window washer named Richard Eberling who was given life imprisonment for a 1984 murder and died in the Orient Correctional Institution in 1998.

1958-1972

The theatre was a big part of my life for years. My folks took me to a children’s theatre in 1958, and I raved about it so much on the way home that they registered me in the theatre's children's school to learn acting, makeup, set design, etc.

I continued in theatre through high school and became a drama major in college.

In 1971, I went to Hollywood to

Artwork for the large publicity poster on the front of the Redd Foxx Club.

become a nightclub comic—playing wherever they used freebees. One club was Knopow’s Comedy Room, on the Sunset Strip. Cheech & Chong were playing there too, just getting started. We got paid in beer and burgers, and that's where I met Murray Langston. He was doing vaudeville schtick with a partner. But they split up, and Murray and I became a duo.

At that time, Redd Foxx (famous for his role as Fred Sanford in the TV series Sanford and Son) owned a nightclub down on La Cienega. And Murray and I went over every week on amateur night to try out new material.

One night, I stopped by the club, and Redd offered us a paying gig. I went back and talked to Murray, who said we’d do it for nothing. But I was tired of working for free. I returned to the club and asked Redd for $100 a week. “How about $250?” he countered. And we shook on it. Murray and I started the following week, on the bill with the famous Horace Silver Quintet.

Those were pretty crazy days. After closing every night, we’d go to Cantor’s Deli (Eddie Cantor’s place). The young comics playing around town would hang out there, and the pros would do schtick for us and give us pointers. One of them told me I needed to get some video footage that an agent could take around. So I did The Dating Game, with Jim Lange. It wasn't unusual for aspiring performers to do the show. The likes of Tom Selleck, Steve Martin, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ron Howard all appeared there for the same reason.

I won The Dating Game, but I didn’t become a star. And after we closed at the Redd Foxx Club, Murray and I went our separate ways.

As for Murray, he got a gig on The Gong Show, where he put a bag over his head, became The Unknown Comic and continued on to a successful career on television and in Las Vegas.

1964

The folk music craze was hot in the early 60s. And a bunch of us used to hang out in a coffee house called La Cave de Cafe in downtown Cleveland.

We always got there early to grab a front table and stayed late to talk with performers—folks like Bud & Travis, Jose Feliciano, Bob Gibson and Ian & Sylvia. Even Peter, Paul and Mary showed up.

Every Wednesday night, there was a Hootenannie, an informal folk music jam session, where everybody brought their instrument.

In those days, I was part of a trio that played wherever we could get a gig. Once, we played an ROTC dinner at my university for the parents of the cadets. We didn't get paid, but the army corps cancelled a ton of my demerits.

1966

In the Navy, I served aboard a WWII minesweeper, the U.S.S. Avenge, MSO 423 (172 feet long, with an 80-man crew and a top speed of 14 knots, aka 16 mph).

Minesweepers were the only all-wooden,

ocean-going ships in the Navy. They were made of wood to enable us to sweep magnetic mines without becoming dust and debris. They’ve all been phased out now.

I was what they called a "deck ape," aka boatswain's mate. They told me I’d be a radioman when I left boot camp, but the ship already had one, so they hung me over the side with a paint brush.

1980

While I was working in the newsroom at WTOP, the CBS all-news radio station in Washington, D.C., I got an opportunity to serve as a volunteer animal keeper at the National Zoo.

I loved it, despite the fact that the position mostly entailed cleaning out cages.

I was also responsible for feeding the small mammals. That meant I had to walk under Ham’s cage, which hung over the stairs that led to the basement kitchen.

Ham was pretty famous. On January 31, 1961, he blasted into outer space for what was supposed to be a 16-minute ride but lasted longer and paved the way for America’s first manned spaceflight a few months later. Ham retired from NASA in 1963, the year I graduated from high school, and was moved to the National Zoo. Whenever I had to go down to the kitchen to prepare the food for the small mammals, Ham would wait until I was right under his metal floor and suddenly jump up and down with all his might, creating a deafening thunder, which he always seemed to enjoy.

Red Panda

I was also responsible for going into a large cage of bats and freshening their food and water, providing the red pandas with an endless supply of bamboo, and cleaning the outdoor cages of the baboons.

To get from one of the huge baboon enclosures to the next, I had to pass through a narrow lane between the bars of the cages and the fence protecting the visitors. One baboon, named Joe, used to reach through the bars and try to grab a fistful of my hair as I tried to dodge past. Sometimes I didn't dodge fast enough.

1980 would also be the year I died.