On the five occasions that my grandmother kidnapped me, we were always hiding from mom.
"Your mother might get the authorities after us," she would caution me as she rocked me to sleep in the dark.
Sometimes, it took my mother up to a year to find us, and once she hired a private detective to look for us.
1972 While on a visit to New York City, my mom, Dee, my stepfather Dale, my first wife, Patrice, and I had dinner at Peter's Backyard in Greenwich Village.
They had a 7-foot open charcoal pit. I had filet mignon.
It was $5.50, expensive for a guy who'd been having Mexican dinners with a beer in Texas for $1.25.
We also saw an off-Broadway show called The Mad Show and visited the newly opened World Trade Center's buildings.
(Long before they were destroyed.)
It's BurgLARY minus the Burg or
CodicilLARY without the Codicil.
It's also SaLARY without the Sa.
TuteLARY minus the Tute.
Most important: It is VocabuLARY without the Vocabu!
My 1982 battle with cancer ruined my marriage to Linda.
Although they cured me of cancer, she made me feel like damaged goods and insisted I give up my theater career after 30 shows.
She had to drive me on a 90-mile round trip from Bradenton to Tampa General Hospital every day for fifty-two radiation treatments.
She never forgave me for that. She even mentioned it in our divorce.
1984, Talking about writing on computers at the Florida Suncoast Writers Conference in St. Petersburg made me realize it was something I could do.
Consequently, I talked to more than two dozen writing groups all over Florida in the next seven years.
1979 Robert Altman was shooting a film at the Don Cesar Resort Hotel in St. Pete Beach, Florida. To my surprise, he hired me to be the Assistant to the Director. Worked Jan 8 to Feb 19 1979,
I met Dick Cavett, Paul Dooley, Glenda Jackson, and Carol Burnett.
But the job ended when I spent two weeks in the hospital with a skull fracture.
Navy guy Dale Crews met my mom, and they became managers of the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Lakeland, FL.
Hoping to create a family to include me, my mother, Dee, married Dale at one minute past midnight on New Year's Eve 1957.
In Lakeland, Florida in 1956 was the first time I was allowed to live with my mother since birth. My grandmother had kept me away from mom for (as it turned out) twenty years.
In 1957, Nonnie and I lived with Dee and Dale Crews in Lakeland, Florida.
I had a few fond memories of that time, learning to love Latin music when I visited my mom at her dance studio, getting to play with the typewriter, and watching Sheena of the Jungle on TV.
2013: Ross Manor was a pleasant hotel, and our window gave us a view of the river.
WIFI was in a small lounge on the ground floor, so I took my laptop down there to work on a new novel about corrupt televangelists called Deadly Savior.
As it turned out the book never sold.
I couldn't go to college, so I learned everything on my own: folk guitar, bass guitar, djembe, bongos, broadcasting, journalism, acting, novel-writing, instruction, and loving. (That last one took a long time.)
I'm 77, active, and alive.
No one knows why.
In the late Eighties, I wrote 780 articles for two dozen business magazines, which were extremely hot at the time. I wrote regularly for three of them.
Also, I wrote monthly columns for Tampa Bay Magazine, several computer magazines, and three popular paperback mystery novels.
Our meeting was karma before either of us thought much about it. She lived in Los Angeles teaching English. I lived in Sarasota, and I taught people how to draft novels on America Online.
She took my Writing the Novel course and aced it. She took my advanced WTN course and aced it.
We emailed every day for a year and discovered over time that we were both in dead-end marriages.
Finally, we met and ended up married six months later.
Coming up on 25 years in December.
I love you, Lori Dagmar Crews.
On Jan 1968, the day after The Green Bay Packers beat the Oakland Raiders, 33-14 in Super Bowl 2, I quit working in the Pocono Manor Inn bar and started on the social staff.
I ran bingo, taught snowmobile driving, and was the staff photographer.
We'd shoot pictures of the guests, develop, and print them overnight, and offer the framed black and white prints for sale the next morning.
That camera is a Koni-Omega Rapid.
Extreme Close-Up is about a movie being made at the Don Cesar Resort Hotel in St. Peterburg Beach and my sleuth Veronica Slate helps her detective boyfriend solve an actor's murder.
The book is based on my job in 1979 working for Robert Altman in pre-production of his film Health at the same hotel.
There were no murders in Health, but the film came out in 1980 and the film died.
If you would like to read part of Extreme Close-Up at no charge, click below.
I am on eleven medications which take care of my type 2 diabetes, my congestive heart failure, and various other things. Although I was overweight for much of my life, (275 at one time) I currently weigh just 200 pounds (5'10").
Because I have slightly bad knees from all the heaviness before, I really wanted to stay out of a wheelchair.
The VA gave me an expensive walker which I use every time we go out. We walk a few blocks most days and the "walker" allows me to walk without falling and gives me a seat to rest in when necessary.
The US Navy did two wonderful things for me back in 1969: taught me to write for publication and the Honorable Discharge gave me medical care in my old age. Thanks, Navy!
I played a homeless man who witnessed a crime on the CBS show Cold Case.
Glad to see the camera stayed on me and a detective interviewing me for the entire 30-seconds that co-star Danny Pino walked by, talking on a cell phone.
Thirty seconds of screen time!
Later, I worked as a freelance writer, but I was still working in radio and my mystery novels featured a female radio talk show host.
My last radio job was as program director for WBRD Radio in Bradenton, FL in 1998.
