SPOTLIGHTS on yout'...

I've been over thinking this spotlight thing to the point where I can't write about them! How to organize them, whether or not to do them in order and, if I do them in order, in what order do I do them, and, what happens if I get one of them OUT OF ORDER!!! Gee...

doesn't sound like me,

does it?

SHUSH!

(bless your hearts)

So, I'm just going to do them as I think of them.

Starting just a bit with some youthful spotlights.


My first memory (and definitely a spotlight) is of a train. We traveled to Seattle (from L.A.) when I was about 2 and a half. What I DO remember is the dark color of the wood in the sleeper part (we had a little room) and the sink. I may have been aided in my memory of the sink by the fact that I threw up in it. I'm not much of a motion person;

hence my need to be the driver, not the passenger.

I remember my grandmother's large yard and my brother telling me the airplanes were going to get me. Since it was World War II, this was a way too often occurrence.

The little shit...

Those are my earliest spotlight moments, and my first 20 years were filled with some, but not nearly as many as the next 45.

Some of the earlier ones.


Watching the firefalls at Yosemite. ("I'll be calling youuu ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo oooo") The stopped this years ago because it was, I'm sure, both costly and dangerous, and the new park ranger thought it wasn't "natural". Dumping hot coals over a steep cliff in a National Park isn't necessarily a good thing.

A beautiful, very old tradition...

gone.

I was sick one Christmas. Came out and put my face to the back of the couch and wouldn't look at anything. THE DOCTOR was called and CAME OUT TO THE HOUSE!!!!. Cost $10 .

By the time he got there, of course, I was fine...

Always the attention getter...

I sang on the Milton Berle show when I was 11. I was part of a "choir" in a church scene... Christmas stuff. This was a huge spotlight moment. I had to go to "school" in the studio. They had those coin operated sandwich/apple machines (OMG!) and Dean Martin came by our dressing room and talked to us for a while.

He was the only one there who paid attention to us little kids..

He was a very nice man.

Later, in my teens, I sang at the Hollywood Bowl with Meredith Wilson (the Music Man). He was another pleasant man, but his music was beyond incredible.

What a joy.

I sang there because I was part of an 'all city choir' (the forerunner to the "Young Americans" (yes, I know you're all too young)). We also sang at USC where we WERE the audience. All the choirs had learned some of the same songs so we could sing them together at some point. One of my absolute favorite moments of all time was after lunch, as people filtered back into the auditorium. Someone started singing, and soon we were all singing one of the songs. At various points either a bunch of guys would wander in and the bass section would be louder, or the sopranos, or...

I was lucky enough to be one of the first ones in, so I got to be there for this swelling, ever changing sound.

I will never forget it...

it was magic.

I went to AROMA RAMA. One of the first (and fortunately last) 'smell o vision' experiments. The movie was a travelogue, and various smells would waft up from under the seats as we went to different places..

it all smelled like wet grass..

John Denver played bass for me.

Yes, little me.

But I'll tell you about that NEXT time...

have to keep you primed.