Stuff that I have Noticed #20: Before I knew I’d written a “Celebrity Book”

When I finished Three Stages, the first book of my autobiographic project six years ago, I was absolutely clueless about how to market the thing. Well maybe not absolutely; I did know that word-of-mouth was the world’s best marketing technique but that’s all I knew.

And it didn’t occur to me that it was a celebrity book or a Hollywood memoir even though in all the chapters after college there were lots of “celebrity” stories. It was just my life and along the way it turns out that I met and worked with and even become friends with quite a few people who are very well known. That aspect of my story didn’t come to mind when I was writing the book.

I posted a somewhat different version of this piece (without this opening) on a blog page well before I got a web site dedicated to the books. In fact after I met my mentor and posted a revised version of this piece in July of 2013 the title was “Hollywood Memoirs; Who Me?”.

When I connected with Don McCauley (the aforementioned mentor) and began to learn about online marketing one of the first things he told me was that among the biggest search terms is “celebrity stories” and I had dozens of them in the book. So that became one of my six “key words” in all my subsequent posts. (In case you’re not familiar with the usage; a key word is a term or phrase used by search engines to locate things on the internet.) The tricky part is using them in titles and copy without them seeming awkward in the writing.

So here’s my update of this original blog. (At that point I had completed only one book.)

From the beginning of this blog I planned to post periodic updates to my readers. Lots of things occasionally float up from the depths and into memory that I realize should have been included in the book but were not recalled before Three Stages was published. No Hollywood stories while I was still in Bristol, though.

Telephones

When I was a kid phones didn’t have dials.

I never saw a dial phone until we moved to LA in 1948. In fact, in Bristol we didn’t have a private line; we had a party line. Only rich people had a telephone line all to themselves. That cost a lot. Next was a two-party line then, the least expensive was a four-party line. I think ours was two-party.

To make a call you’d pick up the phone and a lady (always a lady) would say, “Number please”. Sometimes, instead, someone would be talking. So you’d hang up, wait a few minutes and try again. If you were lucky you had considerate folks sharing your line and, if there was an emergency you could ask them to let you make a call. Today this seems terrible but at the time no one gave it a thought. That’s just the way it was. You were lucky to have a phone at all. Phones were not widespread in the 1930s. Usually there would be a phone in a location like a store, and everyone who needed to make or receive a call, used that one. Or a neighbor had one and you could be reached through them if they were nice folks. Pay phones cost a nickel for local calls and they weren’t ubiquitous in Bristol. My Mom was a Long Distance Operator in Bristol and in LA, the chief operator for a big bank.

My Mom at her Switchboard

Kings’ grocery store number was 33; not thirty-three but three three. That’s the only number I remember from Bristol. In our town before the war, when there were less than 12,000 citizens, I may be wrong but don’t think there were any numbers larger than nine nine nine. (Maybe Herman Cain is from Bristol?)

The High School Band

After I “learned” the clarinet in the sixth grade, I got into the junior high band and when I entered seventh grade I actually got into the high school band. They must have been desperate for clarinetist players. My folks had to spend a few bucks for the maroon uniform, complete with white bandolier belt and peaked cap but they were proud of Benny.

Have a look at the Band Video.

The heavy wool of the uniform was great during football season but not so much for the 4th of July parade in 1947 when it was ninety degrees and raining. When Mom peeled it off me not only was my formerly white shirt red, so was my formerly white body.

My favorite thing about the band was the marching and the formations we made at half-time at the football games.

Glade Spring, VA – Mom’s home town

One time when I was nine or ten and spent a week or so in the country near the town, Jimmy and Jerry, my two country cousins, took me on a snipe hunt.

Shortly after sunset the instigators of the event, always country kids, invite the colleague, always a city (in my case, town) kid, to go with them out into the fields or woods to help snare the rare and elusive birds known as snipe. The word, like sheep, is both singular and plural. They explain to the initiate that snipe are small white, flightless birds – quite tame but shy – who come out in the early evening to dine on bugs and worms.

The technique for snaring these tasty fowl is simple. The newby is given either a gunny sack or a large paper bag. He is stationed at the edge of a field or woods and told that the experienced snipe hunters will go into the forest, locate the birds and drive them toward the catcher who will then herd them into the sack. He is assured that these are very dumb birds and easy to corral and will walk right into the bag.

Thus perched in eager anticipation the catcher waits and waits and waits. Of course neither snipe (which do not exist) nor his so-called friends ever show up and he is left … wait for it … holding the bag.

It took me, I was told, less time than the usual sucker to figure it out.

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