Mistop #5: Raz (and some guy for whom must have had a man-crush)

(What's a Mistop? Click here!)

I had originally written this post as part of the previous Road Trip articles. However, Part 2 was too long and I really didn't have enough material to fill a Part 3, so I had to cut something. This is fine because I found I really went off on a tangent with this AND it messed up the chronology. It makes more sense as a separate article.

About a week before the Southwest Theatre Conference in Ft. Worth, TX, I was in Dr. W's office. He was on the committee for the conference. I had to give him my application for the auditions, which also included a photograph. I used my high school yearbook photo from my junior year because it was the only black and white one that I had. (I still kind of looked the same after four years.) In the office, I saw a resume and headshot from another actor in Texas who would be at the conference. He wasn't supposed to send that to Dr. W, but I guess he sent it to everyone on the committee. I remember being impressed by the headshot. The guy looked like a real professional actor, even though all of his experience was in college. I imagined him to be about 6' 2" tall. I wondered if I would see him at the auditions.

In my actor's audition group, I saw this one guy get up on stage. He was wearing the standard dancer's outfit, which consisted of beige tights and a tank top. The first thing he did was pull a hankerchief out, toss it up and let it float down before catching it while he presented a Shakespeare monologue. A few minutes after my audition, the recruiters posted the numbers of the actors they wanted to see. I was on three lists. I went to one recruiter to set up my appointment. While waiting to talk to the recruiter, I heard the guy in front of me tell the recruiter his name. It was the name of the actor on the resume and headshot I had seen a week before. I also recognized him as the guy with the hankerchief. And I saw that he was only about 5'6" tall! I actually wanted to get to know him better, so I arranged to meet with the recruiter at the same time he did.

There were three of us at that appointment. The third person was a woman I'll call Raz. She had medium-length blonde hair. She was very attractive and had a bubbly personality. Raz remembered my audition and complimented my singing voice. She had a great headshot. It appeared to have captured her in the middle of a laugh. She had a big smile on her face and looked like she was having fun. She said she had taken the headshot herself. (This was back in the day when you needed actual photography equipment to take a good selfie.)

The recruiters told us about what they were doing and asked us some questions. I don't remember who they were, where they were from or what it was they were going to do, but I felt flattered to be in the company of these two other actors before them. They asked the other actor if he had any comedic monologues in his repertoire. He said he could do something from "Oh, Dad, Poor Dad..." He performed the monologue, and while it contained dark humor, it certainly wasn't what I would call "funny." Seeing as this was the same guy who did Shakespeare during his audition, he appeared to be one of those guys who wanted to be seen as a "Great Actor" despite his height. It's the theatrical version of the Napoleon complex.

I never did hear back from the recruiters with a job offer. I ran into Raz a couple more times throughout the day. She really seemed to like me, even though she was clearly out of my league. I wish I had thought at the time to get her phone number, but I don't know what we would have done. I certainly wasn't planning to hook up for a one-night stand. I don't remember her last name or anything else about her. I just remember what she looked like because that headshot was so memorable. But knowing that all I needed was to ask for her phone number, this would qualify her as a Mistop.

The funny thing is that I didn't think very much about Raz until I started writing about the road trip. It really stinks that I don't remember her last name. It would have been cool to try to find her on Facebook and see what she looks like now. The dumb thing is that I remember that other guy's full name. I still couldn't find him.

My final college road trip, Part 2

Our group from college was in Ft. Worth, TX for the Southwest Theatre Conference auditions in January of 1985. We were all hoping to find theatre-related work for the summer. (Wow! That was more than 30 years ago!)

I seem to recall that our entire group at breakfast at Denny's, which was within walking distance of the Motel 6. After that, we got in our cars and drove to the hotel where the auditions were being held. We got out went to the registration desk to get our audition numbers and see which groups we would be in. My number had me in the first group. Everyone else was scattered out among the four groups of actors that were auditioning.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we only got to show our stuff for 1 1/2 minutes. I had prepared a monologue and song. I brought sheet music for the song, but in case I didn't trust the person playing the piano, I had brought my boombox on which I had a recording of the accompaniment.

I was last in my group. I got to see everyone else audition and determined that the piano player was actually very good at what he was doing. I wouldn't need the boombox. I did my monologue and started the song. It was interesting to hear the piano player punctuate certain parts of the song. The way he played actually helped me to perform the song better. I was worried that I was going to hit the 1 1/2 minute mark before the end of the song. However, I had a couple of factors in my favor. One was that I was last. It wasn't going to matter if I went two or three seconds over. The other factor was that I knew the woman keeping time because she was one of the participants in my trip to New York City the year before. We had actually become rather friendly, so she wasn't going to make me look bad by cutting me off short before I hit the final note. I got a generous round of applause when I finished. I felt really good about my audition.

After the actor auditions, they had the technical auditions. We got up on stage one by one and told the recruiters what we were able to do. I had my spiel written down on a piece of paper and read from it. In it, I listed the things I had experience with including "set construction and set destruction." Everybody laughed at that. I'd forgotten I had put that joke in there. I'm glad they thought it was funny.

I found that I had been called back by a few recruiters. I had to make an appointment for the first one. (I'll go more into detail about what transpired there in tomorrow's post.) After that meeting, I went to see another recruiter. It was for the Granbury Opera House. The venue was in a small town about 30 miles southwest of Ft. Worth. They basically produced revivals of classic Broadway musicals. The recruiter didn't set appointments. I just went into the hotel room and there were people there talking to the actors and technicians they had called back. They told me that usually they make job offers to actors there at the conference, but the person in charge of that got sick and couldn't come that day. They were telling everyone to come to their open audition a week later in Granbury. She seemed to indicate that they would actually hire me as an actor and that I had the qualities they were looking for, but I had to go through the one person who had final say. I told them I couldn't make that drive again, miss school AND rehearsals for "HMS Pinafore." And they would have hired me for tech. They had the authority to do that, but I really wanted experience as an actor. I was already doing plenty of tech at ENMU.

Chud happened to be talking to the Granbury people the same time I was in there. He was showing his portfolio for a technical position. (He didn't audition as an actor.) He would get hired by them and spend the next summer there. It made me kind of wish I had pursued the techincal jobs there. We would have at least had a good time together. But Chud told me it was rather disheartening to see actors who had been there for years and just couldn't leave.

I told Bid that I got called back by Granbury. He laughed and said, "You really don't want to go there. They're not very professional." He had previously spent a summer there. Chud told me that the Granbury people had a few things to say about Bid. According to them, they wanted him to play the part of Joe in their production of "Show Boat." He would have been the one to sing "Ol' Man River" (and he would have done a spectacular version of it). But problems arose when Bid didn't want to play the part as a "Yassah!" black man, even though that's how the part had been played for decades.

I know I got called back by a couple of other recruiters, but they didn't seem to have anything interesting. I had one final appointment set. The recruiters were from some college campus in Texas and were looking at me to do tech. Like the first appointment, there were two other people interviewing at the same time. What they offered was $50 a week to work for them. I didn't think that was so bad. It meant $400 over the course of two months, which would be more than what I would make at the radio station. However, they didn't offer housing. The school's dorms shut down over the summer. They also didn't offer any assistance in finding housing. The only thing they offered was to pay for enrollment at the school for one class that I was required to take. I didn't act too thrilled about the opportunity during the interview.

A few weeks later, they were the only ones who called me back and offered me a job. They did not offer more money nor any assistance with housing. I told them I wasn't interested. I had been hoping to hear back from the first recruiters I met with, but I guess they didn't think I was good enough for them.

After the auditions were done and over with, Bid, Chud and I went out to get something to eat. We went to this pizza restaurant that was sort of the predecessor of Chuck E. Cheese. We ordered a large pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms. At this time, I was just barely starting to like mushrooms on my pizza. However, the mushrooms on this pizza didn't look very good, so I had to pick them off. Bid gave me a hard time about that.

We went back to the Motel 6. Bid asked for the keys to the car because he wanted to go driving around. He was over 21, so I assume he was going to go hit up a bar or something. This was the same guy who just got a speeding ticket the day before, so I was rather reluctant to give him the keys to my parents' car. But he was able to sweet-talk me into handing them over.

He came back a few hours later. Chud and I were fast asleep and didn't hear him come in. He went and fell asleep on the floor. I remember getting up and asking him if he wanted to switch places, but he said he was fine. I kind of felt bad. We never did find out what he did that night.

The next morning, Bid, Chud and I hit the road. Nothing eventful happened. We had a recording of the second act of "HMS Pinafore" and rehearsed our parts all the way home. Bid played Dick Deadeye and Chuck played Admiral Porter in the production. I was in the chorus. We didn't go straight back to Portales like the people in the other car. We had to drive to Artesia first to give my parents the car back. We arrived and Bid was shocked at the size of the house. He got to meet my mother, who had seen Bid in the ENMU productions before. Then we drove back to Portales, just in time for rehearsals. They were rehearsing the second act that night, so we were fully prepared.

The only bad thing was that my parents got mad at me because I had ruined the starter by igniting the car in cold weather without plugging in the block heater. I tried to explain that there was no way to plug it in without other students messing with the extension cord, but they didn't want to hear it. They never let me borrow that car again.

My final college road trip, Part 1

Looking back, I didn't really get to do a lot of road trips with other people during college. There was the one I did with Chud my freshman year. That was a major trip that took us across the state line. With the adventures we had, it was a real road trip.

But I had other minor trips as well, but which required at least an hour's worth of driving. I was a passenger for my Thanksgiving ride home my Freshman semester. I also drove Chud down to my hometown of Artesia, NM for the weekend during the summer of 1983. Right before Christmas of 1983, I drove a female Theatre student (who later became seriously involved with Bid) to her parents' house in Roswell, NM. I took Kird down to Artesia for a week in the summer of 1984. For Thanksgiving of 1985, my brother Loyd and a couple of his classmates from West Texas State University came through Portales to pick me up and drive me to Artesia. (It was only on their first leg that they crossed a state line, so it was a major one for them.)

I didn't get to do another major college road trip until January of 1985. This was when Bid, Chud and myself, along with several other students, went to Ft. Worth, TX to audition at the Southwest Theatre Conference. All the regional theatre groups from throughout Texas, New Mexico and surrounding areas would gather at a hotel to find talent for their summer productions. It was basically a cattle call. Actors had to prepare 1 1/2 minutes' worth of material (usually a monologue and a song) to perform for the recruiters. The recruiters would then post the actors they wanted to see on the bulletin board. Actors would then meet with the recruiters. They were also there to hire technical people. Some of the recruiters represented local colleges who needed to pay people to be part of their productions because so many students leave for the summer.

I was able to borrow my parents' Buick Riviera to drive to Ft. Worth. One of the problems with the car was that you had to wait a few seconds before turning the ignition once you got in. Also, you were supposed to plug in the block heater so that you wouldn't ruin the starter by running the car when it was cold. I had no possible way of plugging the car in anywhere that didn't require a 300-foot extension cord. I had to hope that it wasn't going to get too cold, but it started snowing when I was driving back to Portales from Artesia. The snow stayed on the ground all week. However, I could always start the car, so I didn't think that was a problem.

There were seven of us who went to the auditions. Bid, Chud and I were in the Buick with the girl who got the shaft worse than I did. Everyone else was in the other vehicle. They led the way, but they pulled that usual stunt of blasting off and leaving us way behind. I drove the first leg, but Bid got fed up with me driving the limit. He took over to try to catch up. After a short period of time, we got pulled over by an unmarked police car. The officer actually had Bid get out of our car and sit with him in the squad car. After about 10 minutes, Bid got back into the Buick. When he sat down, he started laughing.

"Did you get a ticket?"

"Yeah, he gave me a ticket."

"So why are you laughing?"

"Oh, you have to laugh when you get a ticket."

We finally got to Ft. Worth and the Motel 6 where we were staying. Bid, Chud and I were in one room. After we got inside the room, Bid left. During the mid-1980s, Motel 6 was known for charging you to watch their TV. You had to pay to get a key that would make the TV work. After Bid left the room. Chud and I tried to turn on the TV. It actually came on without the key. (People who frequently stayed at Motel 6's back then always knew to do this first.) Just then, Bid walked back into the room. He had purchased a key for the TV. He saw we had it on. "I just wasted 75 cents."

We didn't do anything special that night. We were all worn out from the all-day trip and would have a full day ahead of us. I'll go into detail about that tomorrow.

College Roommate #7: Skad

After Vird left my room to move with with another roommate who was a frat brother, I had the room to myself for a couple of weeks. Then, the RA brought in Skad. I was hoping I'd have a private room for the remainder of the semester, but that just didn't work out.

Skad was a freshman. He was Hispanic and overweight. He came from Tularosa, NM, a small town about 15 miles north of Alamogordo. We did not have anything in common. After he first moved in, we didn't say a word to each other for a few weeks. I didn't dislike him, but we literally had nothing to talk about.

He was on the work-study program. He worked in the cafeteria. He had to get up really early in the morning to do the breakfast shift. I was surprised to come eat and find out that he was one of the guys working the line. He had actually served me many times before, but I rarely paid attention to the cafeteria workers.

One thing I found odd about Skad was that he went home EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND! I couldn't stand driving 2 1/2 hours to get home twice a semester. I don't know how he could put up with a 4 1/2 hour drive, but I guess he went there with some of his friends. That would have made the drive a lot more bearable. The week of Thanksgiving, he didn't even bother to come back to school for the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday classes. It was nice to have that whole week all to myself.

My friend Kird returned to ENMU to try to catch up with his ex-girlfriend. While he was trying to track her down, he stayed in the room with me and Skad. Skad never said anything about Kird spending the night there, not even when an administrator called our room at 11pm to try to get a hold of Kird. After Kird had left, Skad told me a bunch of stuff that was going on with Kird. I told him about all the stuff that I knew about with Kird. It was the first actual conversation we had since he moved in.

Skad moved in with another roommate the next semester and I had to room all to myself. I would see him from time to time, especially during breakfast. One thing that I noticed that had changed about him was that he no longer went home every single weekend. I guess he found more interesting things to do at school rather than return home all the time.

I never saw Skad again after I graduated. I didn't even think of him very often. As usual, I looked him up in preparation for this blog. According to his mother's obituary, he had gotten married and probably had a few kids.

The obituary also indicated that he was still living in Tularosa. I guess he never really got over being homesick.

It's an "N" thing

If there's one thing that likely sets Eastern New Mexico University apart from a lot of other colleges, it's the number of older students who attend and become part of the youth culture on campus. This was especially true in the Theatre Department, in which a lot of our productions looked a lot more professional with the presence of older actors.

My junior year saw the arrival of Hud. He was around 35 years old, but was a freshman. He was a Vietnam war veteran. He was in Dr. R's Beginning Acting class. Everybody thought he was pretty cool. Our Technical Director Mr. H (who was also a Vietnam veteran) became good friends with him as well, and they would sometimes hang out at the local VFW. A couple of weeks after I met him, I remember he complimented on how I sounded at the radio station.

Somehow, he managed to get into the work-study program at the Theatre Department. When I was designing the lighting for "Charley's Aunt," I got into a little fight with Mr. H about some details. He told me he wasn't going to help me anymore and forbid Hud (who was the only one in the shop at the time) from being of any assistance me. Hud wouldn't even hand me as much as a tool. I really didn't like Hud much after that.

A few weeks into the semester, some of the other students started hanging out with Hud and they would smoke pot. During these sessions, Hud told everyone things about himself. He said that he was worth $14 million and that there were people out to get him. He also told them that if he didn't feel comfortable with the surroundings, he might just up and disappear without ever coming back. Because marijuana can appear to act as a sort of truth serum, no one ever questioned him.

I never went to these gatherings because I didn't smoke pot. Everyone was telling these incredible stories about Hud. I never openly questioned them, but I knew something wasn't right. (I mean, if I was worth that much money and there were people out to get me, I just wouldn't decide out of the blue that NOW is the right time to get a college degree. AND go on work-study so I can pay my way through college.) Just a few weeks later, Hud disappeared, just like he warned everyone he would. This was really bad, because it left his Beginning Acting partner in the lurch. I don't even remember what she did for her presentation.

However, he had left his jacket in the Theatre. Mr. H went out to the VFW and told the other vets there that if any of them ever heard from Hud, he would like to send him his jacket back. The other vets started laughing. They told Mr. H that Hud was an undercover narcotics agent, so it was very unlikely they were going to hear from him again. Mr H was stunned.

Mr. H only told a handful of people the truth about Hud. He likely told his wife, Dr. R and Dr. W. I know he told Chud, because Chud told me. But he asked me not to spread it around. I guess Mr. H didn't want the students to have a bad impression of Vietnam vets, because goodness knows they certainly got a bad impression from him.

I guess the thing that got to me about it was that the Theatre Department was specifically targeted to gather information on local drug dealers. I don't know why, but I guess law enforcement figured we were the ones who were doing the most pot, so we would be a good source for weeding out the suppliers.

At the time, I don't think that anyone would have believed Hud was a narc if we'd told them. I'm certain that everyone at those sessions would swear that he was actually smoking the weed and not simulating. This is a concept that wouldn't become very clear for a lot of people for at least five years. In the 1991 film "Rush," Jason Patric explains to Jennifer Jason Leigh that she is going to have to actually smoke the weed because everybody knows what simulation looks like. "Simulation is what you tell the jury."

However, that didn't keep people from finding out that there had been a narc among us. I guess it became apparent when the marijuana supply suddenly got cut off. One of the other students went on rants about how mad he was that there had been a narc hanging around. He actually thought Lid was the narc. I guess Lid had been at those gatherings and since he was a freshman, he was automatically the one person no one could fully trust. (He probably also didn't really smoke pot and just did some kind of simulation so that he would fit in.)

I also don't think people at the time were clear on what narcotics officers do. People who smoke weed can get paranoid that they're going to get arrested, but they don't understand that the narcs aren't after them. They just want to find out who they're getting the stuff from and go after them. (I know I wasn't aware of that, but once I realized that no one who smoked with Hud got arrested, I figured out who the real targets were.)

Up until now, I have not told anyone what I know about Hud. I keep hoping that the few students that I keep in touch with will say something about him and how they wish they knew how to get a hold of him. I would love to tell them the truth and how ridiculous they are for holding onto that fantasy for 30 years.

But I don't think I'm ever going to get to do that.

College Frenemy: Lid

Lid was not really a "frenemy" in the classic sense of the word. What happened was that he started out as a friend, turned into an enemy and then had something really terrible happen to him that made me feel sorry for him, so he became a friend again.

I first met Lid during Eastern New Mexico University's High School Drama Festival during my sophomore year in college. He was from Clovis High School and was in their presentation of the play "Juvee." I thought he was an interesting person, and I got to know him and some of the other people from Clovis, including this girl who I thought had a crush on me, but nothing happened when she started attending ENMU. (I won't be writing an article about her.)

He was a freshman at Eastern when I started my junior year. One interesting thing about him was that he had worked at K108FM before I did. At the time, the radio stations in Clovis had a tendency to hire high school students because they couldn't pay enough to keep their air staffs filled with grown men and women. If you've ever driven through a rural area and listened to local radio stations that sound like the DJs don't know what they're doing, this is the reason. I'm not certain, but I think Lid left the station and created the opening for the slot that I first applied for. That person left a few months later and I got the job.

He told me about how he once went into Program Director Crad's office and found an application and an aircheck from someone that hadn't been listened to. He said he played the tape and it sounded really good. So good, that even though they weren't doing any hiring at the time, he felt like his job was going to be threatened if this person was added to the air staff. So, he took the tape over to the bulk eraser and barely "popped" the button. It wasn't enough to completely erase the tape, but it was enough to make it sound really terrible, leaving a bad impression on Crad.

A new radio station was just starting up in Texico, NM, close to the Texas border. Lid and I drove out there to apply for jobs. I didn't really want to leave K108FM and would only do so if they were offering more money. They weren't. I knew a couple of other people from the Theatre Department who managed to land jobs there, but it turned out that there was a problem with cash flow and they often went long periods of time between paychecks. I was glad I didn't change jobs (even though there were cash flow problems at my station).

Lid did not work at that station, but he did manage to get a job at KWKA-AM, which was a country music station and the sister station to KTQM-FM, K108FM's top competitor. He claimed that KWKA was the number one station in the region and he wanted to work for number one. The reason it was number one was because a lot of people back then still had cars that only had AM radios in them and they were all "cowboys." It also had a clear channel signal that went across three states at night. He seemed to be under the impression that people from as far away as Wyoming could hear him. This was true, but I don't think anybody was actually tuned in.

It didn't bother me that he worked at that station, but I got tired of him saying that more people in the area were listening to him. This was even after the frenzy we created after K108FM turned into "The Zoo." Looking back, I think he was a little jealous that he didn't stick around and become part of the excitement surrounding the station. This was the point at which he started becoming my enemy.

I will go into detail about this in the future, but I had fallen out of favor with Crad. I had been working 12 hours on the weekend, but it got reduced to six. I was only working the midnight to six shift on Sunday morning. Lid would talk to the other DJs he went to high school with. Apparently, there was this "radio circuit" that I wasn't a part of. He told me that, according to everyone else on this circuit, Crad supposedly said that pretty soon, my weekly hours were going to go to zero. (I was surprised that people I didn't even know were talking about me. I think everyone was jealous of the attention we were receiving.) Lid kind of laughed about the possibility that I may no longer be working at the station. The really bad thing was that I actually let that get to me. I was so paranoid that I was going to get fired that I planned to record the conversation that Crad would have with me. I went to the station that night, and his car was outside. However, he wasn't there. Our station had a mobile DJ side business and he was out getting some extra money. I didn't get fired. I was mad at Lid for getting me upset like that.

A few months later, Lid called me at the station during my midnight shift. He was working at KWKA at the same time and taunted me about the latest Arbitron ratings that had come out. He called to give me a hard time because they showed that we were in the bottom half of the ratings, despite all the hype about us. He just laughed about that. It turned out that there was an error in that the ratings were done when the station was still K108FM, but the report reflected the station's new call letters. When I mentioned that to him later, he really didn't care. I stopped talking to him after that.

The week before the Fall 1985 semester started, he was involved in a car accident outside of Albuquerque. Supposedly, he drove off the road and crashed. He was taken to the hospital there. Dr. W told us he happened to be in Albuquerque at the time and went to visit him there. He was in terrible shape. He had hit his head up against the windshield and had several broken bones, but he was going to survive. He was going to require reconstructive surgery on his face.

It also messed up his brain somewhat. Dr. W said that right before he went into the room, Lid was having an argument with a member of the medical team. The member was trying to tell him that he was in Albuquerque, but Lid was insisting that he was in Portales. When Dr. W walked in, Lid said, "See? There's Dr. W. I told you I was in Portales." We later found that the after-effects of the accident would cause him to go into a persistent state of denial from time to time. If he got it in his head that Wednesday came the day before Tuesday, you would not be able to convince him otherwise. This included the accident itself. At the theatre, he would say something like, "I still don't know what happened." One of us would say, "Well, you probably fell asleep at the wheel." (In retrospect, this was something we really shouldn't have engaged with him, but it happened.) He would reply, "No, I did not fall asleep at the wheel. I had been awake for the last 24 hours and didn't have a problem." "Wait, you hadn't slept for 24 hours? Oh, no. You fell asleep at the wheel!" "I DID NOT FALL ASLEEP! I WOULD HAVE REMEMBERED THAT!" This state of denial issue would go on with other topics not related to the accident.

The first time I saw Lid after the accident was in the Theatre lobby. When I first came in, I saw him sitting in a wheelchair. I saw him from the side and he looked very much the same as he did before the accident. However, when I went around to the front, I was surprised at the transformation. I know that I had a shocked look when I went up and shook his hand. The damage to his head was much worse than I had imagined. His face looked like it had been hit by a frying pan and his eyes were slightly bugged out. However, his spirits were very high. He knew he would be up out of the wheelchair in fairly short order.

We hung around every once in awhile after he got back up on his feet, but it wasn't like when he first started attending Eastern. When I was slapping my senior recital together, he participated in performing a series of sketches I wrote about pizza. He was perhaps the furthest from the top of my list of people to ask, but he was the only one who was able to commit. (This was toward the end of the school year, so everyone else was actually busy.)

The summer after I graduated from college, he was working tech for the Caprock Amphitheatre's production of "Billy the Kid" for the season. He came by my apartment a couple of times and visited. The next time I saw him was in 1988, when I was about to move to Denver. I stopped by the Theatre on the way down to see Dr. R and anyone else who happened to be there. Lid was working in the Theatre office. That would be the last time I would actually see him.

About a year later, when I had come to Artesia to visit, I was listening to the college NPR station. I heard him doing a newscast. Several years later, Kird told me he visited the ENMU Theatre Department. He said he ran into some guy named Lid who remembered him and mentioned me. Kird said he didn't recall Lid when he went to school there. I told Kird that was because Lid literally had his face rearranged. I had to remind him that Lid was on the stage crew when he was in "Charley's Aunt." He still didn't remember him. At the time, it appeared that Lid was so messed up from the crash that he wasn't able to leave the Portales/Clovis area.

But I was wrong about that. I recently found an obituary for his older brother, who had died in February 2005. His brother was the same age as me and was in my ENMU graduating class of 1986. I barely knew him. At the time, the obituary said Lid lived in San Diego. It made me wonder if we had been living in San Diego at the same time and just never ran into each other. It was possible. A younger brother of his died in August 2012. I probably met him the one time I went to Lid's house and his younger siblings were there. The obituary didn't list where Lid lived, but a Google search seems to indicate he is still in San Diego.

But I'm not going to make any effort to reach out and contact him. That accident was almost 30 years ago, and I still sting from the radio comments he made, even though that was even further back. I don't need him to be a frenemy again.

Ring Zone #2: Denz

(What's a Ring Zone? Click here!)

I first became aware of Denz' existence right before junior year started in the fall of 1984. I went to see Dr. W in his office for the Theatre Department. He told me that one of the Theatre students who graduated in 1976 was coming back as a graduate student and was looking to get involved in Theatre again. He was gearing up to direct our production of "Charley's Aunt" and had put a copy of the play at the library. I had to go there to read it. I couldn't check it out. When I opened the copy, I saw a note from Denz to Dr. W saying how much she like the play and that she was looking forward to the auditions.

When the evening of the audition was upon us, there was a woman that I hadn't seen before. She had blonde hair and deep, dark brown eyes. She wore glasses and was noticeably older than the rest of us. I figured out it was Denz. After the first part of the audition, Chud and I started talking to her. I really don't remember what all we discussed during that first conversation, but I think we found out she was married and had two kids. She got cast in the play.

Because I designed the lighting for the produciton, I spent a lot of time at the rehearsals. I got to know her better. When I needed a program for my Audio Production class and decided to focus on Theatre Department productions, she was one of the cast members I interviewed. Kird, who was also in the production, got somewhat mad at me for choosing her to interview instead of him. He said, "The only reason you interviewed her is because you like her and you get turned on anytime she even talks to you!" The second part of his statement was fiction, but there was some truth in the first part. Even though I interviewed her from the angle that she was a prior student back on the boards at ENMU, I was actually attracted to her, but I never admitted that to Kird. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use her interview in my show because I could only pack so much into a three minute production.

During the rehearsals, she once came up to me and said, "Do you know what really gets me mad? The fact that I have to pay someone money to try to get my hair to do what yours does apparently for free!" After the production was over, we would occasionally see each other and talk from time to time, but we didn't really start becoming friends until the next summer. We were in "Carnival" together and we were among a group of four who had lunch almost every day in the campus coffee shop.

During the summer, one of the cast members held a party at her apartment on a Saturday night. Denz wanted to go and asked me to be her designated driver to and from the party. (I seem to recall that her husband had taken the kids out of town for the weekend.) We had done a lot of joking around with flirtatious-type behavior during the lunches, but I didn't know if she might ever feel like taking the flirting to another level. I really didn't know what to expect that night.

She and her family lived in the West Campus housing for students who were married and/or had children. This was where my family lived during the summers when my parents were working on their Master's degrees. I came by and picked her up and we drove to the party.

Things didn't get out of hand at the party. She had a couple of beers, but didn't get totally wasted. I remember we were both very quiet on the drive home. I drove up to her apartment and dropped her off. There wasn't even as much as a good night kiss. I had gotten all anxious over nothing, but I'm glad nothing happened.

I came over to visit her one day during the three week period between the end of the summer session and the beginning of the fall semester of my senior year. She was at home with the kids and her husband was at work. I got to come inside. This was the first time I had been inside a West Campus apartment since before I started first grade. I was surprised at how cramped the apartment looked. When I was five years old, I thought the place was very large and spacious. I have no idea how my parents were able to concentrate on their studies with me and Loyd running round and wreaking havoc all of the time.

Denz was getting lunch ready for the kids while they were watching the Disney Channel. (This was back in the days when it was still a subscription service and didn't have any commercials.) We were watching "The Sword in the Stone." We're watching the section in which Arthur and Merlin are squirrels. After they turned back into humans, Denz' son (who was about seven at the time) asked why the girl squirrel was so sad. This was the first time I ever had to say to a kid, "You'll understand better when you're a little older."

During Thanksgiving Day that year, my family had arrived in Portales early in the morning to spend at Grandma Ogolon's. Loyd had a friend with him. We went driving around town for a little bit. I thought Denz might like to meet my brother, so we went over to her apartment. Her husband answered the door. He wasn't wearing a shirt and I could hear the kids yelling in the background. I asked if Denz was there, but he said she was busy with something at the time, so we left. That was the first and only time I met her husband. I'm certain he was wondering why these three young guys showed up at his front door asking to see his wife.

During Christmas break, I ran into Denz at the mall movie theatre in Roswell. I had just seen the film version of "A Chorus Line." (Very disappointing, considering I had seen the original on Broadway.) We talked for a little bit. I think her husband may have been there with her, but I didn't really pay attention to who she was with.

After graduating from college, I would drop in from time to time to see her in ENMU's Business building where she was assisting a professor while she was working on her Master's. I would also call her and talk from time to time, but I lost contact with her after I moved to Denver. I wasn't even aware that she had moved back to Roswell.

She became a school librarian in Roswell after getting her Master's and recently retired. Her husband passed away more than a year ago. We are now friends on Facebook. I'll occasionally comment on some of her posts, but it's not the same friendship that it was before.

But it's still nice that we continue to have some sort of connection.

A most embarassing incident

The day before classes started at Eastern New Mexico University for the fall 1984 semester, I planned to do a little driving early in the morning. I went outside Lincoln Hall and discovered I couldn't find my car. I usually parked it on the street on the west side of the building, but it wasn't there. I looked in the parking lot. I didn't park it there, either. All of a sudden, I realized my car must have been stolen.

I went to the University Police to file a report. They drove me around campus to see if I could find it. I saw another car that looked like my 1972 Pontiac LeMans Sport, but it clearly wasn't my car. (Mine was actually in better condition.) We didn't see it anywhere, so a report was filed and sent to the Portales Police Department. I still had the keys, but admitted that it was really easy to break into with a coat hanger wire, as I had to resort to that many times in the past.

During the next six hours, I told everyone I saw that my car had been stolen. I told people in the theatre, in the cafeteria and anyone I knew that I ran into around campus. I was angry because I felt like I was being specifically targeted. (And this was before all the bad stuff happened with Dird.) Now, I really didn't need my car that much. I almost always walked where I needed to go around campus and the areas of town that were nearby, like the Pizza Mill and Sub Factory. But I had a job on the weekends and I absolutely needed to drive to get there.

Later that afternoon, I got a call at my dorm room. It was a police officer who told me they had found my car. It was outside a Mexican fast food restaurant across the street from De Baca Hall. I ran all the way down there. My car was there. It looked okay. I met the officer. I pulled out my car key to open the door. The officer asked me a question: "Did you eat here last night?" I realized I had. Because I was so used to walking everywhere around ENMU, I plain forgot that I had driven to the restaurant to get something to eat. I felt like a moron.

Of course, this got around college. I felt like it was high school all over again, in which one stupid mistake labeled me as a loser for the rest of my time there. I really couldn't live it down. I was glad to have my car back, but it actually would have been better if someone had taken it and completely trashed it. I had to realize that this was my mistake and I had to own it, but it was really hard to because of the big deal I had made about it earlier. If I hadn't told very many people, it wouldn't have affected me so much.

A few years later when I lived in Denver, I left work at the end of my shift. I went out to the parking lot and couldn't find my car. Remembering what happened in college, I had to think really hard to recall whether or not I had driven to work. I actually lived within walking distance, so I didn't always drive. I realized that I did drive and that someone had stolen my car. That freaked me out, but it was not embarrassing because it really happened that time. I'll be going into more details about those times my car was stolen much later on.

I will say that when your car gets stolen, all you can think about is how violated you feel. It's just not the same as when your car stops working. You know that someone did something to you, and maybe you weren't a specific target, but it takes awhile to feel any better.