HOMECOMING

by Randy Reynolds

The old lady, spare and stark,

White-haired, sad-faced in the park

Sees relatives all gathered round,
Dinner spread out on the ground,

Children graying, grandkids grown,
Great grandkids she's never known.

In her sad eyes linger traces
Of yearning for forgotten faces:
For the husband who passed away
On a dimly distant frozen day;
For infants under slate tombstones;
For happy times long-since gone.

We laugh and eat and all the while
Her toothless mouth can barely smile.
Homecoming. But she cannot forget
That she's not home--not quite home yet.

(Poetry Corner/Gainesville Times/1974)....... (Photo: Chesty Reynolds, circa 1970's)

PERSISTENCE

By Randy Reynolds

Sunday, November 6, 1977 - When the dam burst and sent a 120-mile-per-hour wall of water through Toccoa Falls Bible College I was 31 miles away sleeping through a rainstorm at my home in the tiny community of Lula, Georgia, and Rosalyn Carter was 564 miles away at the White House. We arrived at the devastated college simultaneously, soon after the bodies of 39 victims had been removed.

Bruce Hall, my boss from a former life, arrived with his CBS-TV crew shortly afterward. Bruce—the guy who’d fired me from my TV job in Jacksonville 6 years earlier—tried to elbow me aside so he could get a better shot of the First Lady when she gathered the news crews around her for a statement, but I refused to get out of his cameraman’s way. He cussed and whispered and pushed me, but I stood my ground, as he would have wanted me to do had I still been working for him. The last time I let a TV crew push me aside was in 1967 in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. On that occasion, the TV guys got a good shot of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I got a bunch of background noise and a good cussing-out from my boss back at the radio station.

By 1977, I had been a local radio Newsman in nearby Gainesville, Georgia, for more than six years.

(*We “Newsmen” didn’t call ourselves “Reporters.” We were much more important than that! A “Newsman” was reporter, editor, anchor and—often—talk-show host and sportscaster…a one man department who worked for the thrill of scooping the competition, for the satisfaction of informing the public, for the ego-gratification of becoming well-known. And for an income slightly higher than that of most disk-jockeys and much higher than that of all female employees who weren't in sales.)

(**President Jimmy Carter, a few days earlier, had signed a bill raising the minimum wage from $2.30 per hour to $3.35. The increase was set to take effect three years later—on January 1, 1981. I personally was glad the country had three years to get ready for it, because I wasn’t sure the economy could survive a minimum wage like that. Every low-level employee in America making almost as much as a “Newsman?” Go figure.)

Bruce was national, having risen from WJXT-TV Assignment Editor, to CBS-TV correspondent… and I was local (though I did on-the-air reports for ABC Radio that day and fed information to a CBS Radio editor in New York, as well as to A-P and The Atlanta Constitution.) Even had I not been filing reports with the networks, I wouldn’t have stood aside for Bruce’s crew. What Mrs. Carter had to say was interesting—maybe even important to some people—and my audience was going to hear it clearly. No more allowing myself to be shoved aside. I stood my ground.

Bruce had fired me from my TV job when I was 21, in early 1971. We were owned by Post-Newsweek—owners who supposedly had very deep pockets. But word came down from Washington headquarters that every department had to lay off a certain number of employees. Even though I was weekend Assignment Editor and Anchorman, supervising a staff of 12, I was the youngest in my department and marked for dismissal. When I asked Bruce for a reason that the ax was falling on me, he assured me that I was great on-air but—“well, times are bad…and, uh, your writing isn’t up to par…”

My writing isn’t up to par? I was the guy who cleaned up other reporters’ writing for the 4 weekend editions of the news that I anchored. I pointed out that I’d been getting published in national magazines since the age of 18. I was a stringer for the wire services. I’d covered hurricanes (Betsy & Camille) for radio and riots (in Jacksonville) for CBS-TV. My copy sizzled. I could churn out airworthy stuff faster than anyone. And they were letting me go for my writing ability?

I argued that I didn’t consider myself all that good on the air, but Bruce assured me that I was the best. And had a great future in it. But he didn’t like my writing.

I moved my wife, my daughter and my repressed anger to North Georgia for a radio job in my grandparents’ home town which, after Jacksonville, was like retreating into a cocoon. I toyed with the idea of being a novelist, sometimes producing hundreds of pages a week. On more than one occasion in the 70’s I spent my entire one-week vacation babysitting and writing.

Many books get turned down before finding a publisher—the first Harry Potter book was rejected by the first 12 publishers who read it; Bridges of Madison County was rejected by more than 60. Each time one of my books was turned down, I tossed it into a trunk and forgot about it.

..........................................
It might be interesting to revisit some of those manuscripts some day. If it turns out that some are publishable, the joke will be on me. I, who (after becoming a manager) preached goal-setting and persistence to people who worked for me, was only persistent with my writing, not my marketing. Perhaps I’m mature enough now to laugh at myself if I discover that I’ve written something that would have paid off years ago had I kept submitting it to publishers! Or maybe I’ll jump off the nearest ledge. Or treehouse.

On the other hand, if Bruce was right about my writing skills (or lack thereof,) this trunk full of manuscripts that I use as a footrest beneath my desk will make a heck of a bonfire for a weenie roast with the grandkids one of these nights….

(Bill got it wrong: I started in November, 1969 and became fulltime in January, 2000, when he passed me in the hall one day and said, "You're anchoring the weekend news from now on. Go see Bruce and find out what to do." I had no training and had never anchored anything, except a boat, but Bill--and the camera--liked me, hence the hallway promotion that resulted in my being on the air frequently from that time until the Nixon economy of 1971 caused a ton of cutbacks at all Post-Newsweek properties.)

GOAL-SETTING: BREAK IT DOWN INTO SMALL PIECES

By Randy Reynolds ...............................................................................
(PHOTO: Jimmy Carter proclaiming POULTRY BOWL DAY. I did play-by-play for the not-so-famous college football game. I’m the smiling guy on the far right who set up the meeting. The pic's in bad shape after many years stuck to the glass in its frame--in a storage box.)....................
....................

Two of our Channel 4/Eyewitness News reporters stood at Bruce Hall’s desk, smoking, waiting for the assignment editor to get off the phone. The news staff was scattered about the newsroom, some of us typing our stories--3 pages thick/2 sheets of carbon paper in between-- on electric typewriters with oversized keys; (we were state of the art !) Other reporters were in the editing room, splicing 16 mm newsfilm with razor blades and glue. Bruce put his hand over the receiver and said, “Jimmy Carter is coming by in a few minutes for an interview. Who can do it?”

“Who’s Jimmy Carter?” said small, dark Jack Bookout, who looked like Paul Anka.

Dandy Don Lewis, an aging ladies’ man, spoke with his cigarette dangling from his lips. “Isn’t he the guy running for governor against Carl Sanders?” ....................
.................................
Our star reporter, Brad Davis whose seriousness was compromised by his page-boy haircut, said, “I’m waiting for a call from the Mayor’s office. Let Randy have Carter.”

Our police reporter, Jack Gould, said, “I’ve got film of a wreck to edit. Let Randy do it.”

News Director/Star Anchorman Bill Grove, who was older than sin, said, “It’ll be good experience for Randy even if we don’t use it.”

Thus, I got my first interview with Jimmy Carter and my first exposure to the secret of his success.

Peanut farmer and former state senator Jimmy Carter came begging interviews from WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida, because our signal covered most of South Georgia and he desperately needed the free exposure.

My main question, which ended up on the cutting-room floor, was “How do you expect to win against a well-financed candidate like former governor Carl Sanders?”

He politely answered my question, barely moving his lips as he spoke. “I have a goal of shaking hands with 200,000 people and asking them for their vote.”

“And you think that will get you elected governor?”

“In combination with some other things, yes I do.”

He had broken this goal into small, do-able tasks by dividing 200,000 by the number of days in the campaign, and dividing the days by a certain number of hours; thus, he knew how many hands he had to shake each hour.

His goal could have been: win the governorship. But that was too all-encompassing. He thought goals should be specific, small things that could be quantified and marked off a list as he accomplished them. Sure, he wanted to win the governorship, but his GOAL was process: shake X number of hands per hour, X number of hours per day, X number of days. Do the process / win the prize.

The Channel 4/Eyewitness News department used more of this interview on our Christmas party “funny reel” than on the air.

Later that afternoon, as I edited the tape, Bill Blackburn, who had more wrinkles than a Chinese Shar Pei, commented, “Who’s that yokel!”

“A peanut farmer,” I said. “Thinks he’s gonna be the next governor.”

“Of Florida?”

“Georgia.”

“Georgia? Why are we covering the Georgia race?”

“Slow news day,” said Bruce.

“He’ll never get elected to anything,” said Harry Reagan, our producer.

I wanted to say Don’t be so sure, but it wasn’t my job to correct the old pros.

Carter reached his goal, winning the governorship in a stunning upset. And he was a very popular man during the days between his surprise victory and the inauguration. And for the first 10 seconds that he was governor...

Many of the voters who had supported him had just assumed that he was a racist like them. But a few seconds after he took the oath of office, Carter said, "Frankly, I say to you, my fellow Georgians, that the time for racial discrimination is over." (He ended up on the cover of Time Magazine for that quote--in some silly story about The New South.)

There was no new South. And the time for racial discrimination in Georgia was not over. (Nor was it over in Florida: our news department was lilly-white. And that was so normal at the time that I never even thought about it till today... this moment... as I write these lines 38 years later.)

With great fanfare, Carter hung a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the state capitol.

From that point on, the redneck-cracker portion of the state hated Carter passionately. And these previously loyal Democrats would become Republicans after Ronald Reagan opened his 1980 Presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered and buried in an earthen dam.

I was a radio news director in North Georgia during Carter's governorship (in the early ‘70s) and talked with him many times during his visits to our station and on his “listening tours,” during which he strolled around the town square talking to all-comers.

People got suspicious when he continued the listening tours into the final month of his governorship.

I remember sitting at the counter in an all-white café a block from the courthouse in Gainesville, Georgia, near the end of 1974, and hearing someone ask what the hell Carter was running for now. “The senate,” said a businessman, looking over the top of his newspaper.

“He couldn’t be elected dogcatcher in this state,” said someone else.

Somebody laughed. Someone else cursed Carter for his liberalism.

The soon-to-be ex-governor came to the radio station that day and announced that he was not going to run for the senate, after all. He had decided to run for president.

We thought he had lost his mind!

I remembered his appearance on the TV show WHAT’S MY LINE? -- the panel failed to guess that he was a governor. They didn’t know him even after he told them his name. (Nor did the rest of America. His recognition factor, nationwide, when he began his campaign for president, was less than 1%.)

“Do you have the money to run a presidential campaign?” I asked.

“Not yet. But I won’t need any at first. I’ll travel coach. I’ll spend the night in people’s houses instead of hotels. We’ll do it on a shoestring budget.”

“But how can you win?”

“The same way I won the governorship. I’m going to campaign the same way in Iowa. I intend to shake 200,000 hands. And after I win Iowa, I’ll be the frontrunner in New Hampshire…and it’ll be all over. Nobody will catch me after that.”

He had crunched the numbers and knew just how many hands he could shake per hour and how many hours he could spend visiting barber shops, beauty shops, farms, factories and malls to find those hands.

He didn’t have to worry about his big goal, winning the election, so long as he did all the little things that would add up to success.

The man unknown to more than 99% of Americans, the man who thought he could end racial discrimination in Georgia, the man who stumped the panel on WHAT’S MY LINE?, the man who couldn’t be elected dogcatcher, fulfilled his daily goals during that campaign and, thereby, made his big dream come true, becoming 39th President of the United States.

MAGIC

by Randy Reynolds
On a spring night in 1986 Louisiana State Police get a strange call. There’s a traffic jam, a big one, on a remote stretch of highway in a sparsely-populated area between Lake D’Arbonne and Arkansas. There are only 3,000 people in the nearby town of Farmerville, Louisiana—but there are more people than that partying at the lake with a radio station from West Monroe.

For two days and one night during the Magic 106 “Weekend On The Lake,” Lake D’Arbonne seems more like a Florida beach during spring break than a lake in the woods in North Louisiana. The State Police send reinforcements to handle traffic.

Magic 106 is the station people listen to even when it’s off the air. (Before we pull the plug to install a new antenna and transmitter, we promise a free camcorder to the first person who calls when we go back on the air. The moment we resume broadcasting, the phones start ringing... proof that people were listening to our static--waiting for us to come back on the air-- rather than listening to our competition!)

We have a 1961 Pink Cadillac named Gertrude. “When you see Gertrude in traffic, if you roll down your window and yell, 'My radio sticks to 106!' the deejay driving Gertrude will give you $50.” Drivers follow Gertrude everywhere. Every time we take her out, it’s like a parade! People drive down the street trying to get our attention, leaning out their windows yelling, "My radio sticks to 106!"

We send housewives, librarians, preacher’s wives and the like to rock concerts. We call it our “Wild Women’s Tour” and they eat it up.

We bring the rock group Cinderella to town just to have lunch with a girl who wins a Magic 106 contest. We get a gold record from 10,000 Maniacs for being the first station to play their hit “In My Tribe.” We’re the first station outside of Florida to play “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and other stations nationwide follow our lead.

Even after I become General Manager, I continue my old job of programming the music for Magic 106. Unlike other stations, we play no slow songs. We play only the fastest, funnest dance tunes, the hot hits. No oldies! No soft stuff! We grab the listener, pick her up, squeeze her, shake her, never let her go. (Figuratively, of course.) Roger, the owner, hates it. He calls me into his office and berates me for playing “Oh, Sheila" (by Ready For The World) and says he never wants to hear anything like that on his station again. The next morning his wife and daughter sing “Oh, Sheila” at the breakfast table and he comes to work and apologizes to me and never interferes with music selection again.

I convince him to subscribe to the ratings, which cost more than the salary of a fulltime employee. When he doesn’t see an immediate increase in advertising revenue, he calls me in for an ass-chewing. “We haven’t made one red cent from national advertising because of these ratings. I was stupid to take your advice and I promise you it won’t happen again.” At this moment—this very moment—our lovely red-haired secretary pops in and says, “Randy, Lay’s Potato Chips wants to buy some advertising. Do you want to call them back?” Roger never reins me in again.

When I’m spending $19,000 per month running his station, we're bringing in $40,000 in sales. When I spend $40,000 per month, we make $60,000. When I increase spending to $60,000 per month, our income rises to $165,000 in one month.

January is the toughest month for selling ads. But, in consecutive Januarys, we bill $19,000, $42,000 and $126,000. These increases aren’t due to Monroe being a thriving, growing market, because it isn't. We succeed because of our creative ideas and winning attitudes –which are the main ingredients in the “magic” of Magic 106.

One of our January campaigns is “A Winning Attitude Is Magic,” in which we talk about business owners’ winning attitudes and then run their ads. “Joe Sixpack started with a wheelbarrow and two shovels and now he owns shops in six states….” Followed by, “Shop at Joe Sixpack’s store today for….” whatever. That one idea results in a 150% increase in business in one month.

I hire a country disk-jockey, Chuck Redden, for the morning show. He thinks he’s supposed to be laid-back, sophisticated on an Adult-Contemporary station. I tell him to be himself—act a fool. He does. Which makes him a phenomenon. Chuck can talk like Governor Edwin Edwards, writes a song about Edwards (“The Edwin Shuffle”) and we sell hundreds of copies of it on cassette. “The Edwin Shuffle” gets noticed as far away as Dallas. The Dallas Morning News does a story about it.

Imagine a little station in a converted laundry building in West Monroe, Louisiana, getting press coverage from the Dallas Morning News! Damn! Geez! What’s going on?

Our news guy Clifton Riley writes news that flows like poetry.

Clifton does a perfect imitation of Ronald Reagan. So does Steve Cannon, my midday host. Together, they become the Reagan brothers, pretending that Ronald Reagan is twins. They do hilarious spoofs of the bumbling old President.

Our night man, Paul Piro, sounds like a fire-and-brimstone preacher. We name him the Piro-maniac and he sets the night-time ratings on fire.

Tom Ross (Tom Gombossy) is a Hungarian refugee with a Psychology degree from Louisiana Tech. I hire him as a deejay but he’s so good at making people like him that he drifts into sales and makes the transition from $6.00 an hour to (sometimes) hundreds of dollars an hour, from the slums to a big house in a fine subdivision in less than a year.

I first hire Tripper Lewis (Louis Lowentritt III) when he’s 17. The kid does superb production, runs a tight show and has incredible sales abilities. He does so many different things so well, I sometimes have trouble deciding which slot to use him in, but—one way or the other—I’m counting on him for the long-haul. The kid’s practically a genius. How could I go wrong with a genius? His one big drawback is insecurity—constantly asking if I’m going to fire him. Fire him? Hell, that’s the farthest thing from my mind. I’d never fire him in a million years. Except for the power of suggestion.... except he never lets up. Before I realize it, I'm thinking about it as much as he is so I have to fire him. Seven times in six years. However, I hire him eight times in those same six years and he’s still there when I get fired by new owners.

Although I’m GM and don’t have an air shift, I write and produce many of our commercials. (My record is 136 in one day.) (Steve did 35 that same day.)

We develop a “sharp angle” sales pitch in which our sales rep says, “Mr. Businessman, if I can get a commercial for you in the next five minutes that makes you laugh or gives you chill bumps, will you spend X amount of dollars with me next month?” To prove there’s no pre-recorded spot, we let the customer—not my sales rep—call and give me a few details. I write and produce the spot and call him back within five minutes. If he laughs or gets chill bumps, we get the sale. It never fails.

We’re good at selling our customers. We’re even better at selling OUR CUSTOMERS’ customers. Some examples, from one of our brochures at the time….

IDEAL APPLIANCE: “The remote we ran on 106 DOUBLED the largest day we ever had!” (Martin Thibodeaux)

ARCTIC SCOOP: “More than 1100 people came in and asked for our special IN ONE DAY, after 21 ads on Magic 106!” (Don Spatafore)

TRENTON HOUSE BRIDAL REGISTRY: “After 16 spots on Magic 106, over 700 people attended on Saturday, when normally about 40 come in!” (Martha Rogers)

SUBWAY SANDWICHES: “Our customer count increased by 125% when we did the remote with Magic 106. The following day doubled!” (Shane McOmber)

TWIN CITY HONDA: “Spending $2,000 per week on a Magic 106 promotion, we did over $415,000 of business in 4 weeks…doubly impressive since it occurred during and after the stock market crash.” (Lannie P. Henley)

No other station before or since has ever gotten results like this. Because no station was ever as exciting as Magic 106—the station people listened to even when it was off the air.

When I find out that Roger has secretly sold the station, after promising me throughout the past five years that he’d never do so, I tell him how disappointed I am. Then I get the biggest break of my life when Roger gets sued by some former employees, forcing him to postpone the sale until he settles the suit. He tells me if I’ll stay till the sale goes through, he’ll let me do everything my way. And he keeps that promise. He goes back to the tire business and I run the radio station.

I do everything I ever wanted to do in radio—with billboards, giveaways, hot music, fun-loving deejays, commercials that are so good they’re part of the entertainment, not an interruption of it, huge promotions (like the afore-mentioned Weekend On The Lake.)

We toss 10,000 wooden nickels from our float in the Monroe Mardi Gras parade. The nickels are numbered and one is worth a new car, which we give away a week later at Pecanland Mall. The giant mall is swamped with Magic 106 listeners. There’s standing room only—barely breathing room—around the Magic 106 stage where we announce the winner of the car. There are so many people in attendance that mall merchants close their doors and lock their grates to keep our crowd from standing in their stores. The whole event is broadcast on live TV.

In the first ratings period after Roger has given me complete control of the station, something incredible happens: the ratings company (Birch Radio) refuses to release the survey on the announced date because one station’s ratings are so high they can’t believe it. They review the data, double-check with respondents, re-calculate and, finally, announce that Magic 106 has scored the highest ratings ever tabulated in a 12-station market: 37.2% .

In those days, we—Chuck, Tom, Tripper, Steve, Clifton, The Piromaniac, Sherry and me—walked on water. We were magic.

DREAM CHARTS

by Randy Reynolds

On July 1, 1982, I start growing a beard as a symbol of the new, more determined, more ambitious, reinvented me. On that same day I sit at the flimsy table I use for a desk in the radio station in a converted laundry building in West Monroe, Louisiana, and write something on my calendar 92 times, once for each day from July 1, 1982 to September 30, 1982.

I write I. W. B. G. M. O. T. S. B. T. D: 9/30/82. ....

................... ........................................................................

The initials stand for I Will Be General Manager Of This Station By This Date: 9/30/82.

I don’t do anything to undermine Gary, the current General Manager. In fact, I work harder than ever to make him look good. He asks me what’s up with the beard and why am I wearing a suit to work every day and I say I just feel like it’s time for a change. He asks about the three months of strange entries on my calendar. I tell him it’s my new mantra. Knowing how weird deejays are, he doesn’t probe any further.

There’s a higher authority in this radio station: Roger, the owner. I hear him say more than once that deejays are like the tire-changers he employs at his tire dealership—by which I assume he’s saying we’re the bottom rung of the social scale—people without safety nets, the kind of people who need occasional salary advances to pay the doctor, people who quit at the most inconvenient times for him and move on down the road to get slightly higher-paying jobs.

Though I’ve had better jobs in the past, I’m down on my luck in 1982 when I write I. W. B. G. M. O. T. S. B. T. D: 9/30/82 on 92 consecutive blocks on my calendar.

My wife wins a free pizza. We go to pick it up and they won’t let us have it because we don’t have the 12 cents tax. We retreat to the parking lot and take the back seat out of the car, hoping there’ll be some stray coins there but, for once, there isn’t. She goes back in and begs for the pizza. They won’t let her have it without the twelve cents tax... so no pizza for the Reynolds kids this night.

I sit at the kitchen table with a .410 shotgun, loaded and cocked. When the enormous rat I’m waiting for scurries out from behind the washing machine I blast him. I used to be an anchorman on TV. I’ve interviewed presidents and Nobel Laureates and movie stars and astronauts. I’ve programmed radio stations. I’ve been in politics. I’ve had stories published. I’ve won writing awards and sales awards. Yet here I am living in such a dump that I’m having to shoot rats in my kitchen with a shotgun.

And after fifteen years of working my ass off, my net worth is less than 12 cents.

My wife Sherry gets a job managing apartments in Bastrop, Louisiana. Part of her compensation is a free apartment. I get a night-time deejay gig at the Bastrop radio station; my days are spent doing apartment maintenance. Voluntarily. For free. Forty apartments are vacated that summer. I re-paint them, all 40 of them, every inch of every wall and ceiling, four and five room apartments. I do it to prove to the company that hired my wife that they made a good decision. But one day while I’m in the bathtub washing paint out of my hair I hear voices in the living room…the owner of the property, evicting us from the premises because we’ve made a 35-cent long-distance personal phone call on the office line.

That day, while the kids are in school and Sherry’s out looking for a job, I single-handedly pack our four-rooms of furniture, (including the shotgun-damaged washer) into a U-Haul and move us across town to a rental house. I unpack the trailer, hook up the appliances, arrange the furniture and return the U-Haul. But Sherry has gotten another apartment job in nearby Monroe. They want her to start today. I rent another trailer, load it by myself before the kids get out of school and move everything again. We never even spend the night in the rented house. (This is the shortest of our 59 moves and the only day I had to move twice.)

Any deejay or tire-changer can probably tell similar hard-luck stories…but I am determined that I’m not going to end up like this. I get a job at Roger’s station in West Monroe. The facilities are a dump. It has no listeners—a mere 2.2% in the ratings. He’s barely making ends meet, selling $19,000 per month worth of advertising, which is what it takes to run the place. I think he’s doing everything wrong, but I bite my tongue and bide my time and try to be the best employee he’s ever had. Every day, I look at that promise on my calendar, and touch it with my fingers and whisper it to myself, a private mantra. I refuse to shave until this dream has come true and so I have my changing appearance looking back at me from the mirror to remind me of what I want. I wear the suit. I lose 40 pounds. I'm going to think like a manager, act like a manager, look like a manager...and AFTER that, I'll BE a manager. Or so I tell myself.

My wife reads about dream charts and starts keeping one. While I'm writing I. W. B. G. M. O. T. S. B. T. D: 9/30/82, she's cutting things out of catalogs and magazines and pasting them to a piece of poster board. She cuts out a new house, one that's way too upscale for us, of a certain kind of bricks that look like a mixture of new and old brick, skylight, fancy doors, swimming pool, oak trees in the yard--the works. She also finds a picture of a car--a gaudy, silver luxury car and glues that onto the dream chart, too.

"What the...?" I exlaim the first time I see her chart.

"You've got to be able to see it in your mind," she says. "I'm putting this in the bedroom, so the first thing every morning and the last thing every night, this is what we'll see. Once it gets real in our minds, it will happen." I know better than all this, but I've got to humor mama, so the poster with the childish cut-outs goes up in our bedroom. And a few days later, she adds a dark blue van for me. And a black muscle-car for our daughter who's about to get her driver's license.

Roger almost fires me one morning that summer because my Question-Of-The-Morning on the Randy Reynolds Show rankles him. My question is: “Should secretaries make coffee for their boss?” He calls me into his office after the show and pounds his rickety desk, which is held together by a piece of rusted tin nailed across the front. “Of course secretaries should make the coffee!" he shouts. "And I don’t want any more of this crazy women’s lib stuff on my station. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Two of Roger’s favorite sayings are, “Don’t worry about the mule going blind, just keep loading the wagon” and “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all the time.”

In the summer of 1982, I just keep loading the wagon. And by the time 9/30/82 rolls around, I’m the dog the sun is shining on: Gary has moved on down the line and Roger has appointed me General Manager.

I work the salespeople too hard and I have all these bat-shit crazy ideas about writing down goals and making dream charts and accounting for all their time during the day, so they quit. Roger has always been the main salesman for the station, but he goes out and tries to give away 100 free spots, no strings attached, and the client turns him down. He tells me to hire some new salesmen, pronto, it doesn’t matter who, just so we can get some warm bodies on the street. He's desperate. “Hell, tell your wife to come in on her lunch break and make some phone calls for us. I’ll pay her twenty percent commission if she sells anything. Just for now. Till we find some good salespeople.”

There’s a television show called The Jeffersons, a sitcom about the adventures of George and Louise Jefferson becoming successful and “Movin’ on up….to the East Side…” We feel like George and Weezy for a time there…after Sherry comes to work for me, because shy, sweet Sherry who makes pitiful dream charts and dreams big dreams can handle clients like no one else. Before Roger sells out and the new owners fire us, Sherry is selling $100,000 of ads per month. We buy our first new house on July 25, 1985. It has oak trees in the yard, fancy doors, skylights in the roof, the works; even the bricks are the same combination of colors as the house on her dream chart. Roger buys $4,000 worth of furniture for us. We go to a car dealership on that same day and Sherry sees the fancy silver car of her dream chart on the showroom floor. "That's it! That's my car!" she squeals. We buy it without a test drive. A week later, we buy that black muscle-car for daughter Kerri. And a few weeks after that, we go out and buy the dark blue van that was on the dream chart. We pay sticker price. Who has time to comparison shop or haggle? The radio station is all-consuming. We dedicate ourselves to it and it succeeds beyond everyone’s wildest imagination.

There are articles about us in national publications (Radio & Records; Sound Management.) The I.R.S. starts probing my $100 business lunches. I claim several per week on my tax returns, accompanied by the actual receipts, but they decide to disallow them, as well as certain other business expenses, and I’ve been paying I.R.S. taxes, penalties and additional back taxes ever since. (As of this writing, in 2008, the take-home pay from my current job is less than $4.00 per hour. The I.R.S. gets all the rest. My young grandsons keep saying, “Pop, I wouldn't have a job like that! When you gonna get a job that pays more? You never have any money!” I guess they don’t quite understand how the I.R.S. works. Neither, of course, do I.)

Roger sells the station for an enormous profit. New owners come in and figure they can save a lot of money by not paying commission on Sherry’s sales. So, on her birthday, 1988, they fire us both.

A few months later, we're again on intimate terms with our old friend Poverty. We live in an orange grove in Weirsdale, Florida, (our fifth-grade son calls it Weirds-dale) in a house that migrant orange-pickers use in season. Our only furnishings are a waterbed, bunkbed, dining set and TV. Naturally, Sherry gets out her scissors and paste and buys a poster board we can't afford and starts putting together another dream chart. We still have two cars, so the new chart doesn't contain cars...but it has a house on it that's practically a mansion--even bigger than the one recently repossessed from us by the bank. We have no credit. I'm in a dead-end job. We've just used our last $6,000 to pay for our daughter's wedding. And Sherry's doing a dream chart!

Flush with failure, I ridicule her for it.

Still struggling to climb the corporate ladder, however, I send my resume' and application to a station owner in Alexandria, Louisiana, not realizing the man is now deceased and his wife, who has Alzheimer's, is the new owner, and her affairs are in the hands of a lawyer who has hired a Washington consultant who is looking for ME.

The consultant somehow knows about the Randy Reynolds success story from West Monroe, and is searching for me all over America when, out of the blue, my letter to the dead man arrives on his desk. The lawyer, the consultant and I meet at the Atlanta airport in a private lounge for VIP's, and ink the deal (as they say in show business) and I'm back on top!

Within a year, Sherry and I have our bigger, better dream house, and our stint in the sharecropper's cottage in the orange grove in Florida is all but forgotten... until, twice more in our radio careers, the radio stations we devote ourselves to are sold and new owners come in each time and fire us and try to prove they can run things just as well without having to pay for a Randy and a Sherry.
................................
Like Roger always said, “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all the time.”

THE EYE IN THE SKY: I.B. FLYIN'

by Randy Reynolds

Most mornings, in the late 1990's and early 2000's, lawyers and public officials gather around someone's car outside the Rapides and Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, courthouses. With car doors open and radios blaring full blast, they listen to I.B. Flyin' on the Randy Reynolds Show. They'll be talking about it all day, a common greeting in the courthouse being, "Hey, did you hear what Ol' I.B. said about you this morning?"

The chief judge in Rapides Parish tells me of the day that a police juror comes running up the steps of the courthouse yelling, "Did you hear what I.B. said about us today? Did you hear him? What does he want us to do?" The judge replies, "Why don't you call him and ask him?"

The reason they can't call him and ask him is because he doesn't exist. I.B. is my own voice (pre-recorded) in the dialect of an old Cajun ("Aaaiiiiiyyyyeeeiiii"). I ask him questions and play my pre-recorded answers over the background sound of a helicopter. We call him our traffic reporter---"the eye in the sky"--but he does no traffic reports. What he talks about is what's going on behind the scenes at city hall, the courthouse, the school board...

When the mayor says, "Alcohol has never touched my lips", I.B. says, "That's because he drinks it through a straw." And when the water pumps malfunction at a city water tower, I.B. jokes about it, says the tower is filled with Miller Lite and the mayor must be going there to drink because there's straws all over the ground. The mayor and city council then bestow legitimacy upon I.B. by passing (and publishing in the newspaper) an official resolution denying I.B.'s "accusation" that the water tower is filled with Miller Lite. The council calls on all good citizens to boycott the Randy Reynolds Show. They also write to the FCC, complaining about I.B. Flyin'. He's a cartoon character, but they try to step on him as they would step on any 3-D flesh-and-blood citizen who gets in their way. So the fictional character becomes real...and more dangerous to the powers-that-be.

Newspaper coverage of the city council's fight with I.B. causes our audience shares to grow. Advertising revenues for the station increase dramatically. And the phone starts ringing off the hook with people calling in news tips for I.B. Flyin'. Some are jokes, like the "bit" that started it all--a water-tower filled with Miller Lite. Other tips concern real issues that don't get reported by the timid local news media --or "news meteors" as I.B. calls them.

When four hard-partying off-duty cops on a beer-run drive their pickup onto a sidewalk and get out to beat up a small time drug user and then charge him with carjacking, assault, attempted murder of a police officer and about 7 other things, I.B. has a field day! All the other "news meteors" buy the official story that an unarmed young man tried to carjack a vehicle with four cops in it. I.B.'s laughter (and commonsense) fuel so much public outrage that it's the police, not the accused carjacker, who get bound over for trial on assault charges. When the guilty verdict comes in, the whole courtroom explodes with applause, shouts and prayers. That young man would likely be in Angola State Penitentiary today if I.B. hadn't refused to bite on the official story.

In the I.B. voice, I announce 75 reasons why a 21 year old murder suspect held for three years without a grand jury hearing could not have committed the gruesome crime he is accused of. The young man (Joey Hilton) is released from jail on Christmas Eve after a deal between I.B. and the District Attorney. The deal is simply for I.B. to "lay off" the D.A., (that is, stop making jokes about him,) and the D.A. will release Joey Hilton. (I.B. may have been the first cartoon character ever to make a deal with a real D.A. ) On Christmas Eve, 1998, after three years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit, Hilton is released. He and his mom come to the station and I interview them live on the morning show. It's the most emotional show I've ever been involved in...the kind of stuff 60 Minutes and 20/20 are famous for. What Joey and his mom really want is to meet I.B. Flyin' and thank him in person, but I tell them he's up in the chopper and will have to call them later.

When a state senator's daughter uses his office to run a pyramid scheme, when city government cuts & sells the timber on state-owned property, when a mayor's wife brokers a secret deal for the city to buy some church property at ten times the going rate, when the police chief's sons commit crimes, when the city council buys a fire engine that's too big to fit inside the fire station, when the city dams up a National Scenic Waterway to increase property values in a favored subdivision, when a city crew hooks up sewage pipes to a drinking-water main, when a mayor gets caught having sex in his office and another mayor spies on his police department, and a cop's drug dog dies in a hot car while the "piece" officer is having some afternoon delight, and two police horses get electrocuted because their riders take a coffee break and leave the horses tied to a metal light pole in the rain, when the school board and city spend millions on unnecessary "studies"...

I.B. blows the whistle on them. It sounds like comedy, but it's all true. As I.B. demonstrates every morning, News IS Comedy in Central Louisiana.

I and the station are threatened with numerous lawsuits...but we don't respond to the subpoenaes....and nothing happens. Those who threaten lawsuits want to scare us, but don't want to get in deposition with I.B. They're afraid he knows too much about too many things that need to be kept secret.

As I.B. Flyin' exposes the profit schemes and boondoggles hatched by members of local government and the behind-the-scenes manipulators I.B. calls "the shadow government," we receive numerous threats. For two weeks, a volunteer with a shotgun stands guard outside my studio door during the show. Someone slashes three of my tires in the station parking lot. One night soon afterward, I am assaulted at a political rally. On my way to work, at 2:15 on a Monday morning, I look out my car window and see a local politician's son in the car beside me pointing a pistol at me. As we race at 70 mph across what I.B. calls "the Tallywhacker Bridge," I waver between firing first and waiting for him to fire. Luckily he speeds up and disappears down I-49.

The types of things that I.B. fought with ridicule and laughter are happening in your town, too. But they aren't a part of anybody's official record. The kinds of things I.B. exposed usually go unrevealed and unpunished because, in most places, there is no investigative reporting, no public ombudsman, to connect the dots. But, for a while, in Central Louisiana, there was...

SNAKES, SPACESHIPS AND NAKED DEEJAYS--JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE

by Randy Reynolds

5:45 a.m., my fingers hover near the mic button. I'm about to punch it and go live on the air to talk about the next song and to promote Shirley Q. Liquor, the nurse's aide who's going to tell us one of her funny stories--this one about the Holy Ghost Revival, Catfish-fry and Liquor Throwdown coming up at her church. I'm groovin' to the Al Green song that's about to end, when--suddenly--the worst thing that can be heard on a morning show fills my earphones....

.....silence!

I rip off the headset and lurch out of my chair yelling, "Godawlmighty! Not again!"

I burst through the soundproof door to the other studio, startling the naked man standing on a folding chair with his head above the frame of the drop-ceiling.

"Boo, you did it again!"

The groggy d-j who, except for his baldness, is a dead ringer for Samuel L. Jackson, bends down from the crawl space and says, "Whassup?"

"You cut the cable again!" I yell. "You gotta quit doing this, man!"

Boo, the greatest deejay I have ever worked with, waves an open switchblade. "Thought it was a snake."

"I told you there's not any snakes in that ceiling! When you cut long black things up there, we go off the air, and lose listeners, and don't get paid. You know what I'm sayin'?"

"I hid sumpin' up here. Lookin' for it. Saw a snake."

"You've got to quit hidin' drugs in the station, Boo!"

"Sumpin' important. And I turned around and it was a snake."

"Why don't you go to the roof, man? Get ready for your space ship?"

Boo becomes animated, nearly falls off the chair, but catches one end of the cut cable and steadies himself. "You seen it? You seen it, man? It's really there! Between two stars and gettin' bigger every night. It's comin', man!"

"Well, go wait for it then. And be careful climbing up the drain pipe."

"You comin', too, Randy? You a good man. You deserve to get out of this place."

"Yeah, I'll be there a little later."

"And I.B. And Plucker. And Mr. Winky. And Shirley Q. Liquor."

In Boo's state, it would do no good to remind him that I.B., Plucker and Mr. Winky are all just different versions of me--figments of my imagination presented on my show as separate individuals--and that Shirley Q. Liquor is an Internet comedian.

"You think there's enough room for all of us, Boo?"

"I'll make room, man. You good folks. You deserve to escape."

"Thanks, man. We'll be there. But first you've got to get your clothes on."

"I forgot where I left 'em."

"Well, I'll help you look after I call the engineer to come fix this cable. Now give me your knife before you fall and cut yourself."

"Nobody gets my blade, man." Boo closes the switchblade against his pubic area and steps off the chair. "Nobody gets my blade."

(Photo: Notice the drop-ceiling where Boo hid his drugs)

THE TALLYWHACKER BRIDGE

by Randy Reynolds

When I was fifteen, my dad decided it was time for me to get a job and start paying my own way. He ordered me to put in applications at the A & P, which needed bagboys, and the local radio station, which needed a janitor. I applied at the radio station first. The manager was on the air and really too busy to talk with me, but handed me a booklet, told me to read it, go to the New Orleans' Federal Building, take an FCC test and come back to see him. I thought it was a lot of trouble to go through for a janitorial job, but I memorized the book and took the test.

When I went back to tell the manager that I'd passed, he assigned me an air shift and told me I was a deejay now. That was 1965.

For the next 40 years, I was a deejay, then a deejay-turned-reporter, deejay-turned manager, and finally, at my last station, all of the above. My morning show was number one with women/number two with men in a 13 parish area of Central Louisiana when new owners called me late on a Sunday night in 2004 and said, "Don't come to work tomorrow. Our financial model does not include paying your salary. And tell your wife she's fired, too."

Thus ended my adventure in radio ...and my health insurance. Two months later my wife had a heart attack, followed by several other health problems and we began our adventure in homelessness. But that's a different story...

It's week seven of the 13-week ratings period and my imaginary co-hosts and I are in rare form. My jokes are funny, my listeners are funny; even the wooden duck-call known to listeners as Plucker-the-Duck and the plastic squeak-toy I call Mr. Winky are in rare form today.

...................................

(No, I don't have problems distinguishing reality from make-believe, but my listeners do, thanks to the magic of radio. I treat Plucker as a real individual and so do listeners. Though it's only a duck-call, I have conversations with it. Listeners love to suspend their disbelief and play along; they even call in to ask him questions, he responds in duck-talk, I interpret and deliver the punchline, ergo! people think Plucker is hilarious! As for Mr. Winky, he's just a plastic toy that makes a metronome-sound when shaken, so I frequently shake him and tell the audience what he's saying. Women call in and blast him for his male chauvinist opinions. They don't get mad at me. It's not my fault. I'm only the interpreter. They call and argue with Mr. Winky. And, often, it's hilarious.)

I punch the mic button and ask, "Where's the most unusual place you ever did it? That's the question of the day, and the phone lines are open!"

.................................................

I blow into the duck call and pretend to have a conversation with Plucker-the-Duck. "We already know you're in the mile-high club, Plucker. But let's give some listeners a chance to respond."

A school teacher calls in to say she "did it" on the desk in her classroom with a DARE officer.

.................................................

I say, "Hey, I read about you in the police chief's self-published novel!"

"I know," laughs the teacher. "He said he gave plaques to two DARE officers for doing it to teachers in their classrooms and I don't understand that. I think the teachers deserved the plaques. We're the ones who put our jobs on the line."

"You mean on the desk," I say.

.................................................

She giggles and I blow on the duck call again and say, "You don't sound like the kind of teacher the chief wrote about. You didn't really do it with a DARE officer on your classroom desk did you?"

"Oh, I DARED all right," she says.

I laugh again, shake Mr. Winky, blow into the duck call, play a laugh track from the computer and start the next song.

..............................

When we're safely off the air, I ask, "Hey, what's your name?"

"I don't give out that information," she teases.

................................................

"I'll need it for your plaque," I persist.

...................................

"You are so funny, Randy. I love your show. It just brightens my day."

...................................

"You're the one that's funny--thanks for calling," I say.

..........................................

It's time for I.B. Flyin', my imaginary Cajun traffic reporter. I've already recorded, in a heavy Cajun accent, I.B.'s part of the script; now I'll ask questions and the I.B.-voice will answer from the tape. If my timing is right, it'll sound exactly like two people having a conversation.

........................................

I punch a button and a helicopter sound-effect fills the airwaves.

.................................................

"Aaaiiiyyyiiieee!" shouts the recorded I.B. voice above the thwump-thwump-thwump of the rotor blades.

"Sounds like I.B. Flyin'. How's traffic?"

"Movin' slow on the Tallywhacker Bridge. Two lanes blocked with a accident."

"The Tally-what?"

"The Tallywhacker Bridge. I named it that because of what that state representative was doin' on the Pineville side of the bridge with that other man."

"I.B., we're not going to have another show about politicians and their tallywhackers. Let's talk about what's happening in the news. How 'bout that 41 year old Mississippi triple-murder case up there near the Tallahatchee Bridge? The government convicted an 80 year old man yesterday."

"Don't give the gummint all the credit. It was a school project by three little girls in Illinois that got the feds to reopen the case."

.............................

"Three little black girls found the evidence...40 years after the murders?"

"No, no, no!" yells I.B. above the sputter of the chopper's motor. "Three little white girls from Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. These little girls got obsessed with the case and made a ten minute film about it and rest is history. Just goes to show what you can do if you get obsessed about sumpin'."

"Obsessions are dangerous," I say, thinking of several obsessions I haven't heard from lately and wondering if they ever think of me anymore.

I'D CHOOSE HORSES

by Randy Reynolds

1960, Covington, Louisiana. A huge baby-faced man named Alex Jenkins stops by to get acquainted with his new pastor (my dad) and sees me riding a stick horse in the yard, playing cowboy with my younger brother. "Would you like to have a real horse?" he asks. My heart almost leaps out of my throat.

Would I like to have a real horse? I, who've read Black Beauty, National Velvet, My Friend Flicka, Fury, The Crooked Colt, everything written by Will James and Zane Grey; I who watch cowboy shows on TV just to see the horses--Trigger, Buttermilk, Silver, Scout, Diablo--would I like to have a real horse?

Brother Alex convinces my dad that his Tennessee Walker, Mac, is gentle enough for kids and so he brings the big sorrel over and we stake him out on a rope in the front yard like a dog. We have a horse! A real horse! Borrowed, but he's ours for a while. Yes, Randy, dreams do come true!

At dawn the next day, with my unsuspecting parents still sleeping, I stand on a five gallon paint bucket beside Mac, grab a handful of mane and struggle aboard, bareback. I reach down for my younger brother's hand, pull him up behind me and we head across the highway into the woods for an all day ride.

Brother Alex eventually reclaims Mac, but takes my daddy to a livestock auction and lends him $37.50 to buy a one-eyed bay that I name Ranger. (In our family, the dog, the cat, and all six children have names that start with R, so the horse gets an R-name, too.)

Through the years, I grow up (to some extent,) get married, have a family, pursue a career in a cutthroat business (radio,) and move 59 times. Whenever possible, I have a horse, even when it means I have to rent stable space and pasture or, on occasion, keep horses and ponies in my back yard in the suburbs.

Ranger, Beauty, Kawliga, Sugarfoot, Trigger and Prince carry me through my teen years. In my 20's and 30's, Abadon, another Trigger, Brandy, Dusty and Amber take most of my free time and extra money. In my forties, Baby and Luke are my last two horses. Both are beautiful--a quarter horse and an Arabian--but injuries I receive from them cause my doctor to ground me in 1991.

In 2007 I say to a well-to-do neighbor, "I wish I had every dollar I ever spent on horses." He replies, "I still do." Touche'!

But then I remember how the world looks from horseback, and suddenly I'm longing for the wind in my face again, the thunder of pounding hooves, the ripple of a thousand pounds of muscle beneath me, the speed, the danger, the total concentration required to anticipate the sudden jolts and turns, and I know that if time circles back again and I have a chance to choose the money or the horses, I'll choose the horses.

END OF THE TRAIL
by Randy Reynolds
(first published in Australian Horseman)

When he was a wild-eyed pony And I was just a kid
You could never imagine the foolish And dangerous things we did.

I tried to make him a jumper, Practicing higher and higher,
Till he panicked and ripped his chest And forelegs in the wire.

We pretended to be in the Derby.... With a blacktop road for a track.
Then we met a bus on the backstretch And the pavement met my back.

We were Roy Rogers and Trigger,
Only he didn't know any trick
'cept biting the hand that fed him....
And showing me he could kick. ...

Now you run to the house and hurry To fetch my bullets and gun
And you take him way down in the pasture Where you know what has to be done

While I recollect him as Trigger.
And pretend again that I'm Roy.............
And cry for the wild-eyed pony........
That I loved so much as a boy. ...............

OLD DEAD-EYE
by Randy Reynolds

He lived at the end of a rope.
We couldn't afford any fence,
With him costing thirty dollars
And fifty-some-odd cents.

It was never known before .............................Here, you're expecting corn,
'cause I never cared to tell .............................And although he was the worst
Of the times that I got thrown ......................You think I'll say I loved him
Or sometimes simply fell. ..............................As you always love your first.

Old Dead-eye had my number. ......................Well, I'd slap my knees in laughter
He wanted me to die. ......................................But both of them are in splints.
I could tell it by the evil .................................Be quiet! The auction's startin'!
Gleam in his one good eye. ..........................."Now here's a bargain, gents!"

PLOWING TILL TWILIGHT

(Photo: 1955 - Randy in cowboy hat, Papa Bonnell, Ricky, Ronda)

by Randy Reynolds

I'm eight years old, traipsing on a windless afternoon after my grandfather as he forces a manual plow through the hard-packed ground. I want to be like Papa. I want to do everything he does. "Papa, slow down," I whine. "Let me do it." He ignores me and I feel my sense of injustice rising.

Although he pushes the very earth before him and I have only myself and my pique to carry, his long, loping hardscrabble-farmer stride carries him so far ahead of me that I know he can't hear me anymore so I demonstrate my feelings by throwing myself to the ground. Rolling over and over, disturbing several of his newly-plowed rows, I get the cool red soil all over me, I lick my lips and taste it. Not bad.

I lie face upward, not sure if the cottony clouds in a bright blue sky are moving or if the earth is. Now I'm dizzy as well as angry, waiting for Papa to come back down the row and deal with me. If he'll only stop to listen, I can tell him that I want to plow, too; that I want to be like him. I think he'll be so honored that he'll turn the plow over to me and stand back to proudly watch me finish plowing his back yard and he'll go inside to brag on me to Mama Maude and, later in the week when my daddy returns to get me, Papa might tell him about it and Daddy might be proud of me, too. That feeling is what I live for, but it's hard to come by for a little boy who happens to be the oldest child in a large and growing family, and therefore the one who gets the least attention.

I fear that I won't be the man my papa is because I've heard him say that he started plowing when he was eight years old, the age I am this day, and nobody lets me do ANYTHING yet. Papa began with one mule and a plow stock as high as his shoulders. His daddy told him to keep plowing till twilight. Papa didn't know what 'twilight' was, exactly, having never heard the word before, so he plowed till it was good and dark, just to make sure he wouldn't get a beating for quitting too soon. That night his daddy took the plow reins and whipped him savagely for working the mule too hard and sent him to bed without supper. Deep in the night, his mama snuck over to the bed he shared with several younger brothers and gobbed lard onto the back of his shirt to loosen it from his bloodied flesh.

A half-century later, Papa Bonnell tells this story, and many others like it, without rancor, as if the whipping was no big deal. "Hell, I can't blame the old man for taking care of his mules better than his young'uns. He could always have more kids, but a good mule was hard to come by when cotton was five cents a pound."

I crawl over to the row that Papa's on and lie there watching him come toward me, pushing the plow, pulling it back, pushing again, pulling it back. He pretends he's going to plow right through me, and I roll to safety and sit up, licking more dirt from my lips, still liking it, feeling I'm a part of it somehow. Maybe that's what Papa feels. Maybe that's why he comes home from a hard day as a loom-fixer at the cotton mill and plows till twilight. All he says to me that day is, "Get up from there, you little skeester!" And he keeps going, herky-jerky, straight down the row, no time for foolishness.


(Bonnell Reynolds & his mother Chesty Collins Reynolds, 1980's)

(below: 1978, Five generations of Reynolds': Chesty, Bonnell, Gene, Randy, Kerri, Kristi)

PERMISSION TO MARRY A FAMOUS WRITER

by Randy Reynolds

.....Sherry's mother entered the living room and perched on the edge of a wing-backed chair. John took the one facing her. On the piano bench with their daughter, I felt surrounded.
.....Sherry hit them with it cold. "We want your permission to…"
.....Mary leaned forward. "Absolutely NOT! You're too young."
....."Mo-THER, you didn't let me finish."
.....I squirmed to the edge of the bench, poised for flight. "We can come back later."
.....Sherry pulled me back. "We want to get MARRIED!"
.....Her daddy, stalling: "How will y'all make a living?"
....."Randy's going to be a famous writer!"
.....John smiled. "Oh, so we're talking about the distant future."
....."No. We're talking about now. Right away!" she blurted.
.....John: "What have you kids done?"
....."She's pregnant!" said Mary.
.....Me, suddenly chicken-hearted, "Honest, ya'll, I never touched her."
.....Sherry held my hand and wrinkled her cute nose at me. "Yes, you did, you big liar!"
....."I'm going to throw up," said Mary.
....."If y'all are through with your innuendos, I'll explain. Randy's going to write books and we'll be rich."
....."The boy's going to be rich," said John, third person, like I wasn't even there.
.....Sherry scrooched against me, hot, "We could have waited till later, but our future's already secure, so we just thought, why not?"
....."Secure?" asked John.
....."Randy's been accepted by the Famous Writer's School. And all we need is two thousand dollars…"
.....Mary swooped in. "So you want my daughter and we pay you two thousand dollars?"
....."You people! " said Sherry. Softening for her father, "Daddy, you're a businessman. How's this for a plan--you give us the two g's for Randy's tuition? We'll live right here till he graduates. I can help him study in my bedroom all day. And night, too, of course."
.....I thought about how I would write this scene. Coils of hatred radiated out from the midpoints of Mary's cheeks, like an electric stove warming up.
.....Or, I could see the whelps of her allergy beneath a layer of makeup--her allergy to me.
....."You're right about Randy eating like a horse, Daddy. But now we know the reason why. And don't worry we'll pay you for what he eats. Just keep a list, okay?"
....."So why, exactly, does he eat like a horse?"
....."Because of his creativity! Randy says it takes a lot of calories to run a brain as big as his."
.....My eyes were glued to the floor. "Is this new carpet, or did ya'll just have it cleaned?"
....."Randy says that the part of the brain that controls his creative urges also controls his sex drive. That's why he has such a large one."
.....Mary's eyes traveled down my bony frame.
.....Sherry: "Mother! Honestly!"
.....John cleared his sinuses.
.....Sherry explained the options. "We may have to publish Randy's first book at our own expense, or yours, if you'll loan us the money. Or is it lend? Loan, lend, I never know the difference."
....."Lend," I said.
....."Oh, you're so good with words. You're good with everything," she said, kissing me on the cheek.
....."Y'all lend us ten thousand dollars for the first one and Randy will get discovered and we'll pay you back. It's simple, see? And when he writes his second book, we'll buy a house. I want a big one with a brick fence around it."
.....John narrowed one eye but not the other.
....."We haven't even said yes and the boy's already asking for twelve thousand dollars?"
....."Only because you've never been able to say no to your daughter," said Mary.
....."And I haven't even added in his food," he groaned.
.....Sherry's hand moved from my knee to my inner thigh, rubbing circles the way I liked.
....."Talk some sense to them, John!" beseeched Mary.
....."Okay, here it is, kids. Take it or leave it. You forget about Famous Writer's School and publishing a novel, and I'll chip in fifty dollars to help with the honeymoon."
...... "Seventy five!" countered Sherry.
......"Deal!" he said. "Welcome to the family, son!"

(John & Mary, two years after Permission)

A TREEHOUSE FULL OF MIRACLES

.........................................All My (Grand)Children
............................
Standing/orange shirt: Brandon...
His mama had to have steroids for him to survive long enough to be born prematurely. Now he's bigger than his classmates and can throw a baseball like a bullet. Has been on this earth nine years and so far has never taken NO for an answer--the greatest salesman I have ever seen. Loves to write.
..............................................
In the yellow hat: Sam...
Sam is a little guy with a big mouth, a joker who gets into a lot of fights. His older brothers beat him up (or try to,) as do bigger kids in the neighborhood, as did a gang of five boys at school...but Sam fights back. He NEVER gives up. A kid crushed his skull with a golf club last summer and he had to have emergency brain surgery. Woke up thinking he's a rapper. Calls himself Little Slim.

Standing/green shirt: Pierce...
Born with holes in his heart, too lethargic to drink. His mama coaxed him to health, one ounce of formula at a time, every few minutes, around the clock. Now he's the picture of health, leader of the gang, totally outgoing, not a shy bone in his body. Loves to explore, play war, build club-houses and target-shoot. Cries over dead animals and misses his pet snake which is loose somewhere in the house.

On her brother's knee, striped shirt: Madison...
Born in the front yard before the ambulance could get there, umbilical cord wrapped tightly, three times around her neck, she was lifeless for her first four minutes. Her daddy & the 911 operator brought her to life. Now she's as tough as her brothers, can climb anything, eats vegetables, crawfish, gumbo, boudin, anything anybody else is eating and is fiercely attached to her daddy.

The twins, pink and fuscia tops: Anna & Sarah...
A lefty & a righty, mirror images, a diva and a tomboy but they change roles every few months. They're cheerleaders. They have a great sense of style, sometimes changing clothes a dozen times during a day to mix'n'match, coordinate and accessorize. They love to take long walks, eat their daddy's special pancakes and shop with Mom. Each has a poodle (Maxi and Troy) and they have shared their home (at various times) with pet lizards, a parrot, canaries, cat, hamsters, guinea pigs, a big brother and their brother's missing snake.

On the far left: Mackenzie...
Very motivated and self-sufficient. Every school day, she wakes up by herself, dresses herself, fixes her own breakfast, cleans up after herself, wakes her parents to tell them goodbye, and goes to catch the bus. Has rock collection, insect collection, hilarious sense of humor. And very coordinated: taught herself (in a very few minutes) to ride a bike.

Far right, clinging to the post: Georgia...
Georgia is absolutely certain that she's a princess, and she's quick to tell you so. She's a dancer, too. In restaurants, she goes from table to table and dances her version of the Flamenco and Twist and Cha-Cha for strangers, who always applaud and laugh. She's also a daredevil. Will do anything any other kid will do, and always with a smile of pure joy because she loves to perform.

..............................................

Center, holding his sister: Jacob...
Jake loves to debate; he would argue with a stump. Great questioner--starting at age 3, he would ask about snakes, dinosaurs, Presidents, wars, etc., and remembered it all. Hated to read, and got poor grades, until he discovered the Harry Potter books and read them all. (God bless J.K. Rowling!) Decided to become a writer. Got his first story published at age 12. Decided to go to a private school--which the family couldn't afford--and won a scholarship. Decided to become a Congressional Page and got selected twice in the same day--by the Republican leader in the House and a Democratic Senator. He chose the Democrat.

YOUTH CAMP: LOUISIANA, 1966

by Randy Reynolds

She was easily the most radiant thing in that dusty quadrangle defined by the canteen, two bunkhouses and the tabernacle, she with her form sculpted from my fantasies and erected there in my path. She drew me on with her eyes, which even at some distance I could tell twinkled with joy, (or was it mockery?)

She looked at me over the shoulder of her friend, listening to the friend, talking to the friend, but looking at me, her lips upturned slightly, her dimples barely visible, possibly smiling at me (or, just as possibly,) trying to conceal laughter: laughter at the ease with which she manipulated my movement.

I knew her name. I knew her parents. I knew the boys she had dated. But I had never spoken directly to her before