Trumbull Island

I used to hang out at this pool in Boston and the lifeguard there was a guy named Phil. I’d go over with a friend or two every now and then, and even though we weren’t really supposed to be there, Phil liked us so he told us jokes and stories about his life, quizzing us on movie trivia, and lending me VHS tapes. One of my favorite stories is about when he moved to California in 1969 and met the Jackson family. In memory of Michael and the one-year anniversary of his death on June 25, 2009, we talked with Phil, who took us back to the scene of Motown’s California takeover, a major moment in pop music history. But first…

Phil?

La-la-la. You know, I lived with Timothy Leary, too, and the Grateful Dead and Baba Ram Dass who was Richard Alpert, and [Allen] Ginsberg, and Owsley [Stanley] who made that acid, when I was, in ’68 I lived on this 25-mile estate owned by William Mellon Hitchcock in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., just like a middle class kid who would take LSD, this middle class, this millionaire kid brought the proponents of LSD, mainly Timothy Leary who had graduated West Point and then became a psychologist at Harvard, and then he discovered LSD from Switzerland and he coined the phrase, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” and got a LOT of kids to do just that. LSD, the only drug that you see things.

So you were living at Millbrook for awhile.

Yeah I was living at Millbrook for three months with those people, 1968. I was brought up for a weekend by a kid from Yale named Jake who was friends with my brother. I lived with these Hindus about 50 yards from Timothy Leary’s house, he was living with his secretary named Rosemary. I remember he drank a lot of vodka, I think more than he did LSD. And on the 10 trips I’ve taken in my life I only had one bad trip, right near there. One bad trip, the rest were all great. I went up these stairs that take 10 seconds to walk up. Stairs outside leading up to a [inaudible]-house, you know, and instead of taking me 10 seconds it took me an hour and half because I thought I was on a cliff and if I fell, I just grabbed each rung, and people watched me … it was the only bad trip I ever had. Oh, I remember things, like pebbles would try to spell things out, tree branches would reach down for ya, walls would breathe. It’s the only drug I’ve ever taken, I’ve never taken heroin, I’ve never taken [inaudible], it’s the only drug that you see things that aren’t there. I haven’t done that in like, 25-30 years. Anyways, what would you like to talk about, sir?

You mentioned that you were dating Berry Gordy’s assistant.

That’s right, Suzanne de Passe, very nice girl, for a short time, and she’s the one that told me that he was bringing a family from Gary, Indiana, and I should move out of my five-bedroom house, I was paying $800 a month, living by myself, is that crazy or what?

How could you afford that back then? That was a lot of money, and why did you have such a big house?

At first I lived with my brother in his apartment for a couple of weeks, and then this guy, Mack Scott, I met in a restaurant, who was Berry Gordy’s assistant, even above Suzanne, he kind of found out I had this house, and I had some, I was 22, and from 16-22 I got $800 a month from my family’s estate, so I had money, and when I got to Los Angeles, I don’t know how I was paying $800 a month, because I only got $800 a month, I started playing poker and I was winning. I don’t know, but all I know is I was renting this house for $800 a month, I was only there for three or four months, ’til Suzanne kicked me out. She didn’t kick me out, but she gave me a reason to leave, and I left, and they took it over. I didn’t tell the owner of the house, who was a character actor about 50-years-old. He wasn’t too happy when he went up there to see me, and he sees 11 black people. I think he, what I heard was, Suzanne told me he called the cops and he made a deal, you know, money was exchanged, and, you know, money straightens things out in a hurry. So they never got evicted, they just maybe signed a lease with him and that was that.

I read that before they got the family all together in that house, it was just The Jackson 5 at first with the dad [Joe] in California and then…

Oh, I never knew that, I thought that Suzanne said that my house … I had no idea. What you’re saying is The 5, the performers, came out with the dad before the rest of the family.

Right.

I didn’t know that.

Because then they started making some money recording some hits, and they could afford…

They moved to Encino I think, after 1601 Queens Rd., but I don’t really know.

Yeah, there was an estate called Hayvenhurst that they moved into after 1601 Queens.¹

I know nothing about that, I only know 1601 Queens Rd. And Berry Gordy, I only met twice, in a studio once and at a party, and I got to meet Broderick Crawford because of him. He asked Dick Scott to fly his son in a helicopter to get a rental car to go to military school, and I went along for the ride. And we rented a Cadillac on this mountaintop, a Hertz, and who was there? Broderick Crawford, who I really like, and I got to say hello to him. You should see him in Diane Lane’s first movie starring the greatest actor ever, Lawrence Olivier, it’s called “A Little Romance,” if you ever run across that movie, Diane Lane’s 13, it is one excellent movie. Broderick Crawford‘s in it.

So why was the helicopter necessary to get this guy to military school?

We had to take a helicopter to this mountaintop to rent a Cadillac at a Hertz dealership. From Los Angeles we took a helicopter about, I don’t know, 20 minutes, half an hour, rented a car, and then in the car took Berry Gordy’s son to this military academy, he was about 12- or 13-years-old. About 1973. I’m just saying I got to meet Broderick Crawford just cause I did a, I happened to go along for the ride for something that was being done for Mr. Gordy.

Was Suzanne with you when you did that?

No, just me, [Gordy's assistant] Richard Mack Scott, and the son. [Scott] was taking him to military school and asked if I wanted to go along on a ride in a helicopter and a rented car to drop the kid off at military school. Richard Mack Scott is the guy that I met at a restaurant, he was also the manager of New Kids on the Block here in Boston, with a kid named Maurice Starr, who was a guitarist who became a kinda rich man, he moved to Atlanta, but those two, Maurice Starr and Richard Mack Scott were the managers of NKOTB from Boston when they started out.

Michael was living with Diana Ross when the Jacksons moved into 1601 Queens Rd.

That I did not know.

Did she ever stop by the house or anything?

No, I was at the house say, 15 times, I never saw Diana Ross there. The only time I ever saw Diana Ross was at Mary Wilson’s house and when I went to the movies with her and Suzanne and Tony Jones, we went to see “John and Mary,” then we went dancing, Century City. And that was about two weeks before her first marriage to a guy named Robert Silverburg [actually Robert Ellis Silberstein]. And his motorcycle was up at Mary Wilson’s when I was there … and Mary Wilson was very nice, I offered to pay for her bathroom door. Suzanne’s house was right across the street from Mary Wilson’s and Suzanne didn’t have a pool so we used Mary Wilson’s whenever we wanted to and her roommate got stuck in the bathtub. And the door was a mirrored door and she AHH … so I broke the door down, you know, and I offered to pay Mary Wilson but she wouldn’t take it. And her roommate Gina, I’m 22-years-old, she had, you know she’s in the bathtub naked, she had perfect, round breasts and I’d never known anybody … they were silicone, I had never seen anything like that before.

Why was she stuck in the bathtub?

Not the bathtub, the bathroom door, she couldn’t get it open. and from the outside, I pressed it, tried to open it, and I ended up like, smashing it, ’cause it was a mirrored door.

You gotta do what you gotta do.

Well, they asked me to!

Do you remember the oldest daughter, Rebbie Jackson? She must have been 20 back then.

I don’t remember, I remember some little girls, maybe Janet … I remember Jackie, I remember Jermaine, I remember, who was the other big one, Joe? What was his name? I don’t know. but I don’t remember any adult girls living at 1601 Queens Road.² I remember, you know, a lot, it seems to me I counted them once and there were 11, two parents and nine kids, does that ring true with what you know or, living at sixteen-oh-randy was, no, was randy one? I remember one of the girls was Janet and the other one was maybe La Toya. But, I do kinda remember, you know, nine people living in that house and me laughing at myself saying, “You dope, you’re living there by yourself and this is housing 11 people.”

i think there were, yeah, nine kids and two parents, so that adds up. What do you remember about Jermaine? And were the older boys in the family cool with you?

Those were the two I was friendliest with, Michael and Jermaine, those were the ones … what do I remember? They were both good-looking kids … hard to remember but I thought Jermaine was a very good-looking kid. I remember Michael Jackson called me “Greenberry,” and for about the first three times I was there he’d go, “Yahfahout, yahfahout,” and it took me three visits to finally figure out he was saying, “You’re far out,” cuz he just said, “Yahfahout, yahfahout.”

Why do you think he thought you were far out? Was it because you had a motorcycle?

I don’t know why he thought that. Yeah, I did have a motorcycle and I drove it around there, and I’m pretty sure Jermaine was the closest to him in age³, I remember them being like, I don’t know, they looked the same height, is that true, is he the closest one in age of Michael Jackson? Marlon!

Let’s see…Jackie’s 59…Marlon’s 53…

Wait a minute, Jackie’s 59, I’m 63, so when I was 22, he had to be 18.

So what did you do with all your time back then, did you just hang out and play poker?

In Los Angeles, what did I do? I learned how to play cards and made enough money to live there. I learned how to play poker. Yeah, yeah, 53-card draw poker, one joker, that’s about what I did and besides that, you know I had one month where I won $16,000 and I went to Mexico for three weeks and drove 5,300 miles in 21 days, and because of going to Mexico I ended up in Key West ’cause when I was, the night before I left for Mexico I went to a movie called “Dog Day Afternoon,” I got to go to the movie for free in Westwood because the people I gambled with in Gardena, one was the manager. And in that movie theater, I went with a, this girl I know from Venice and her two brothers, and at the popcorn stand I met a girl named Caprice, what was her name? Caprice Huffman, from Hillyard, Ohio, the most innocent-looking girl I’d ever seen in my life, with this crazy brown … she was looking for her “professor friend” S.C.

She couldn’t find him. So I, I’m going to Mexico and I said, I gave her my apartment, a stranger. You might think it’s crazy but I didn’t have much to rob and if you need … I did that, and I came back three weeks later, and she left a note and the key: “Yeah, I found my friend, thanks a lot, I’m going to Fort Lauderdale to hook up with my boyfriend, do you wanna take a ride with me?” So I took a ride with her to Fort Lauderdale, I met her boyfriend, Steve Lewis…

From California all the way to Florida?

Correct, we went from … and we spent a night in New Orleans. We drove in her little red car from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale, that’s where her boyfriend lived. And I went …

That’s a long way to go with a girl who has a boyfriend, Phil.

Well, I just came back from a trip in Mexico, did I say we were lovers? We were once, but that’s beside the point. So, but then, I’m there for a couple of weeks in Fort Lauderdale, what a town that is, and um, then I go to Key West for three days to see it, and I liked it so much I sold everything in Los Angeles and moved to Key West and didn’t work for almost two years on that 16 grand I had won in a month, best month I ever had in california. That’s how i left for Key West, I’m just a straw in the wind! What are you gonna do?

How’d you find that poker game?

Which poker game, the one in California? It’s legal, there’s a city called Gardena with seven poker clubs, each one has 45 tables, 10 minutes from the LA airport. It’s totally legal, it’s not like finding a poker game with some gangsters, blah-blah-blah. Poker was legal back in the ’70s, it was the only game that was legal. In other words, you didn’t have casinos in California, you had them in Nevada, but in California only you had poker clubs. Poker is a french word, it means “bluff.” I think that’s where the game was invented.

So did you teach Michael any of his dance moves?

No, but he showed me a dance step, and so did Diana Ross. yeah, he showed me a dance step where you … a shuffle, you throw … I’m doing it … you throw your left foot out and you pull it back quick, and you shuffle your right. He showed me the straightforward shuffle and Diana Ross taught me a dance that was popular for a few months in ’72 called The Four Corners. She said, she had …”ay-yi-yi” … I’ll show you some time.

She must have been beautiful back then.

Diana Ross, she was a little, I think she was very pretty … I dunno but it was definitely ’72 or ’73.

Did she seem like a diva back then?

Did she seem like a diva? Oh, was she snooty? No, no, she was very polite and calm and friendly. No, she didn’t seem like a diva, but, you know, she was with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s cousin, and me, so I don’t know, but we got in the movie free, all four of us just because they recognized her in Beverly Hills, that happened.

Did you get her some popcorn?

I don’t remember. But I remember it was a pretty good movie. “John and Mary.” Speaking of popcorn, you know, I met Stephen King in a movie theatre, and he ate one kernel of popcorn at a time and it was just remarkable, what a guy. He told me he wrote “Misery” in longhand at The Brown Hotel at Rudyard Kipling’s desk, the desk that Rudyard Kipling died at. But I asked Mr. King, I told Mr. King he was one of my three favorite writers, Rudyard Kipling, William Goldman, and he. And when I said, “Your wife writes as well as you do,” he sighed like they had just had a fight, “ahhhuuhhh,” he sighed sadly. And when I told him Walter Brennan was the only man who had won four Academy Awards for acting, he said, “I love Walter Brennan in the ‘Treasure of Sierra Madre,’” and I said, “No, Mr. King, that was Walter Houston,” he went, “oh.” Pretty good.

You referenced another movie in your email to me. After you and Suzanne dated, she got married to somebody named…

Yeah, yeah, Paul Le Mat, that’s right. The guy from “American Graffiti” and he starred in a movie called “Melvin and somebody,” “Melvin and Howard,” about Howard Hughes, how, a true story how Howard Hughes crashed and this gas station kid helped him out, Hughes gave him a lot of money, I think that’s what that movie was about. Paul Le Mat, Canadian actor, very good.

Did you see “The Aviator,” about Howard Hughes?

Oh, that was great with Leonardo DiCaprio. Great movie. Scorcese, I think, finally got an Academy Award for that.⁴

Hey, you ever see “Taxi Driver”? You know that Scorcese’s in that movie — you know what part he has? In “Taxi Driver”? He’s in the back seat of Robert De Niro’s cab saying, “Look up at the window, my wife’s having sex with a black guy, I’ve got a .45 here, I could blow them both.” … He’s an unhappy husband watching his wife have an affair. And you know, Robert De Niro makes reference to “Taxi Driver” in the movie “Bullwinkle and Rocky” [actually, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle"], where he plays the general, he does a takeoff from the “Taxi Driver” shows: “Nobody’s here, who are you talkin…” He had a sign in his bedroom that made me laugh, Robert De Niro in the movie “Taxi Driver,” the sign said “Tomorrow I’ve got to get organizized.”

I read that a lot of the kids in the neighborhood, on Queens Rd., would come by and play with the Jacksons as they started to become popular.

The times I was there, there were neighborhood kids there, maybe three out of the 10 times, you know, I was usually there in the afternoon or something or, I don’t know, but yeah there were other kids around, there were other neighborhood kids around. And they did board games…

Was there a basketball hoop or anything?

I remember being inside playing, you know, board games, or marbles, or, and rehearsing, they rehearsed in the garage, that was attached to 1601, it had this little walkway, like a little bridge from the garage, to, you know, just like, about 10 or 12 feet.

Did you ever witness them rehearsing?

No, I saw them go off to rehearse, but I never witnessed them rehearsing, nope.

Because, you know, they got kicked out of a lot of places before that one because they had been making too much noise.

You mean residences in California?

Yeah.

They had a few places before Queens Rd., then? Oh. I remember Suzanne saying they’re bringing a group from Gary, Indiana, and they need a place to live. But maybe I, it was so long ago, all I know is, it was a way for me get out of paying for this big house, you know, I was glad that it happened because I realized, “what am i doing?”

So tell me the story of when you took Michael riding.

For a motorcycle ride? It was about 3:30 in the afternoon and … who else saw it? There were a couple of his brothers around, but his parents weren’t there and I happened to come up on the motorcycle, so we went for about, maybe, about a 12-minute ride through the Hollywood Hills. Queens Road is right in the middle of the Hollywood Hills and, I know at least two of his brothers were there when I did, I think they asked for rides but I had to go or, I got worried, you know, actually, that maybe this wasn’t a good idea, you know, taking the kid riding around without his parents’ permission, the kid that they’re trying to make a star out of, but we did go for about a 12-minute motorcycle ride. 650 Yamaha.

That sounds like a real nice experience.

He was a very nice, gentle kid, he wasn’t uppity, he didn’t think he was a star, he was a very nice person at 11, somehow he got off the beaten path.

In all the interviews from that era, he seemed like such a real down-to-earth, respecftul, polite, nice kid.

Yeah, gentle, shy, reticent. Somehow, he never got out there in the real world and walked around, I don’t know, maybe he was protected, I don’t know what it is, but … I have no idea. And was he a homosexual pedophile? Who the heck knows? I think he was more … I have no idea. It seemed like he really liked children, he was more interested in snuggling than an orgasm, but who knows. I have no idea. I knew him for a brief period when he was 11 years old.

Did you ever meet his mother?

Sure, Katherine and Joe, I met her a bunch of times at the house, absolutely.

did they ever have you over for dinner or anything?

Nah, more just hanging out, playing with the kids, I never sat down to dinner. I was given some food, you know, maybe watching TV, sitting around or something, hanging out a little bit, but I never sat down for a formal dinner. But they lived right in the house, they were there every time I went over there.

Were the kids real fun, goofin’ around with each other and stuff? Did they seem like they had big personalities?

I don’t know, maybe we were outside riding bikes, I don’t remember like, eight or… all the kids being, you know, I just remember when I was there, maybe three or four kids and … I never saw them argue with each other, you know? And if I remember correctly, the girls were very very young, like almost … could hardly talk, is that possible? I couldn’t remember any adult girls.

Janet and La Toya were still very young. Rebbie was the older one, actually, the oldest.

See, I never saw her, I remember just boys, basically, and the girls, they were really too young to get involved.

She actually had a song.⁵ She actually had a brief musical career.

Berry Gordy was in love with this white singer he was trying to groom named, Christine what-was-her-name … I can’t remember her name but, ay-yi-yi. I remember being in a recording studio with him and him having one of his assistants go, “go get me some aspirin.” And the assistant had to run out and find a drugstore.

What did Suzanne do for Berry Gordy, mostly?

She tutored his children, she did kinda everything, she was a, the manager of The Cheetah Club in Harlem [we're not sure if he's talking about the one in midtown], she was into booking groups, and the kinda thing that Motown did, way before she even hooked up with Berry Gordy, that’s probably why he hired her. She tutored one of his daughters in English, but mostly she worked for the company trying to find acts, setting up acts, she was an executive. And she wrote, she ended up writing, producing “Lonesome Dove,” she has a company now, De Passe Enterprises [actually, Entertainment], she’s made some films and she was on a TV show, too. Somebody said they saw her in a TV show with blonde hair, yikes! She had a part in a TV show, so, she did very well. She became president of Motown after I knew her, and …

Really?

Yeah, Suzanne De Passe became president of Motown Records, and then she formed her own production company and one of the things she produced was that Tommy Lee Jones hit, “Lonesome Dove.”

Hey. I’m going to ask you four questions, if you get ‘em all right, I’m gonna send you $10. They’re all Robert Duvall questions. Here they are:

Name Robert Duvall’s first movie.
Name the movie that Robert Duvall’s most-often quote is, what is the quote?
Name the movie that he shoots and kills Michael Douglass.
Name the movie he says to Diane Lane, “I need a poke,” p-o-k-e.

Let’s see, Robert Duvall. I’m thinking about his first movie…

I’ll give you a hint. Kind of, ha ha ha, why can’t Casper the Friendly Ghost have any offspring?

Um, “Twilight Zone”?

No. Why can’t Casper the Friendly Ghost have any offspring? Because he has a hollow weiner. Now, on Halloween, what do ghosts say? They say, “boo.”

BOO!

Think of a part where Duvall played “Boo.” Boo Radley.

You’re way ahead of me on this movie stuff, Phil.

I’ll tell you, his first movie ever was “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He played the mockingbird. He played the retarded kid. In the movie he kills Michael Douglass in it, he’s a cop and his captain is congratulating him after he kills Michael Douglass what a good cop he is, and Robert Duvall says to his superior officer, who’s been calling him a no-good cop ’cause he’s retiring, he put him down the whole time, he says,”Fuck you, Captain Harris. Fuck you very much.” And the reporter goes, “Did you hear what he said?” Hahaha. The movie is called “Falling Down.”

With Michael Douglass, yeah, “Falling Down,” I remember that. My ex-girlfriend used to say “Fuck you very much” to me.

The movie that he is most often quoted from, what movie?

“The Apostle”?

Not “The Apostle.” You got the right letter, his most-often quote is “I love the smell of napalm in the morning — it’s the smell of victory. ”

Oh, “Apocalypse Now.”

Right. And in what movie does he say to Diane Lane, “I need a poke.” And what does he mean?

I think that ne heeds … I think that he wants to have sex with her.

That’s exactly right, that’s exactly what a poke is. And the movie is “Lonesome Dove” and Di — the great Diane Lane, who I want you to see in her first movie, “Little Romance,” she’s a hooker.

I’m going to get deep into Robert Duvall’s filmography, which is very extensive, just so I can keep up with you next time.

You know that Diane Lane, “Cotton Club-”

He was also in “True Grit.” Hey, did you see him in George Lucas’ first film, “THX 1138″? That was a far-out movie.

You know what I’m looking forward to? Learning how to use a computer. All I can do is email but when I learn how to do Word, I’m gonna … Words are so abstract, words are nothing. They don’t describe the wind in your face or the sun, but they’re the best we’ve got. And computers are amazing. And GPS is amazing, that blows my mind. I heard, here’s the three jokes I’ve heard lately. What do you get when a girl has both PMS and GPS?⁶

[conversation deteriorates (further) for two minutes]

Got a couple more questions for you. Did the Jackson family have a car?

Did they have a car? I never saw them, no, they must have had a car. Berry Gordy had lots of cars, and chauffeurs. They must have had a car. But I don’t remember. The times I saw Katherine and Joseph were in the house, I never remembered seeing them drive. No, I have no idea.

Did you ever actually see them perform, like, any gigs around LA?

Never ever, I never seen them, no no no. In the living room, he showed me this one little shuffle and he danced just for a couple of seconds, but I have never seen them perform except on television.

So, it was 1970. Did you see any concerts back then?

What did I see? I remember seeing “Hair,” and that was it. And the guy named Butler in the Smothers Brothers produced it. This guy Butler lived right above Suzanne De Passe’s house. Suzanne lived across from Mary Wilson but right above her was this guy John Butler, the big head of “Hair.” I went to see, that was good. Oh, I saw Janis Joplin! At a 3-day concert. And then I met her in person for about 10 seconds we talked. Right on Santa Monica Blvd. She pulled up in the parking lot with a black Porsche, big round dots on it, each one, each dot maybe a foot around, and she got out of the car and I walked her into this clothing store we both went to and she said, “I’m here making a recording,” and that was it. But I had seen her about a year before out in Cali there was a three-day concert, and she was there. I can’t remember who else was there but it lasted three days so there must have been a lot of groups, but I did meet Janis Joplin. And I got in an elevator once, at Century City, was going up and, me and this other guy, I said, “You’re my favorite character actor, Warren Oates.” He looks back at me and he says “No, Phil Holloman(?),” I got the wrong actor. And Warren Oates was pathetic, he played the father in “Badlands” where they kill him and run off. And his last movie, “Stripes,” he makes a movie called “Stripes” with Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, pretty funny movie, and he’s coming out of Czechoslovakia on this motor vehicle, and he’s bouncing around on top, hanging out while they’re driving out of the enemy territory and he goes, “I’m getting too old for this shit!” And it was pathetic, he died two weeks later, that was his last movie, he was right.

Well Janis Joplin died later in 1970, October 4.

She died when?

October 4, 1970.

I got to Los Angeles — I left New Haven, Connecticut, six days after I was 22, April Fool’s Day, and I got to California about maybe eight or nine days later. So she died…? Then that all happened so quick, I’m amazed, I never thought she died in 1970, because I didn’t get to California ’til 1969, and I saw her in a three-day concert and then I met her in person.

How did she seem when you met her?

Janis Joplin? She wasn’t stoned or anything, she seemed very fine, she seemed like a regular person, not particularly pretty, she was wearing blue jeans and a vest, a striped vest, and she seemed very reasonable. I just said “Hello, hey, Janis Joplin.” She said “Hi, I’m recording here in Los Angeles,” and we walked into the clothing store right up the street. And I met Amy Irving, too, on a bicycle. She married Steven Spielberg. She was on a bicycle in a bikini in the middle of Santa Monica, you know, like two miles from the beach, very inappropriate and riding a bicycle,  I’m walking across the street, she says “Hi, my name’s Amy Irving, I’m gonna be an actress!” She rides off. And I saw her a couple years later I think in her first movie, “Dog Day Afternoon.” Great movie. Changed my whole life. I met that girl and I moved to Florida. When I moved to Key West, I didn’t work for a year and a half, then my first job was a garbageman, $2.25 an hour. And the funny thing was I got that job because when I wasn’t working, just for exercise, I’d jump on the truck when it went by my house and — I’ll show you pictures, what an apartment I had, $150 a month — and I’d do the garbageman’s job for an hour or so and let him sit in the truck. And then I became a garbageman.

Did you actually go to college?

Three. Syracuse University, New Haven College and Southern Connecticut State. Four majors. Speech and Drama, English, Psychology, and Phys Ed. Wanna hear a good definition of psychology? It’s not a good definition, it’s a bad definition, but it’s funny because psychology is real, we treat each person differently. Parents, boyfriend, girlfriend, and we use it mostly to intimidate. But here’s a funny definition from a guy who lived to be 37. Born in 1900, Asheville, North Carolina, went to Harvard at 17, taught at NYU at 21, died at age 37 ’cause he took a drink from a guy’s whiskey bottle and got tuberculosis. Thomas Wolfe, they made a movie about him called “Youngblood Hawke,” James Franciscus plays him but, here’s the quote, from a book called “Of Time and the River” about living in Boston and going to Harvard. “Psychology; the bastard of superstition and quackery, the black magic of little minds, the effort of a blind man crawling around a darkened room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.” Hahaha. I think that’s pretty funny!

I think that’s a good quote to end on. Thanks, Phil.

Thanks to MJSite.com and IAmNotAStalker.com for the photos.

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