Before I tell my story, I want to let everyone know that my Facebook has been hacked. With no warning, my page of 3 years and everything associated with me, was erased from Facebook, Tuesday, May 5, 2015.   All the wonderful pictures, conversations, interviews, contact with fans, friends and family, gone. I never ever got anything negative on Facebook.  I never posted anything off-color.

Gone - In the blink of an eye

When I try to log back into Facebook, a page comes up explaining real names must be used and demands a photo of ID showing real name and birth date, no nicknames. It gives examples of a driver license, passport, tax form, etc., that I am to put it in a folder for Facebook to access. In your dreams!

I have been advised by a police officer friend, an editor, publisher, state’s attorney, social teacher, etc., not to send anything. I am not sure what to do next. No one I have talked to about this has ever heard of anything like this.

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Perhaps that is what the ending of life is like. When you reach a certain age and think back on all that transpired, it seems like it all happened, ‘In the Blink of an Eye’.

When I die, I think I would like a recording of Peggy Lee singing, "Is That All There Is?" playing.

I used to joke about my childhood cowboy idol Roy Rogers’ comment when he got older.  Roy and his wife, Dale Evans, were in their 80’s and had an infomercial type program on TV showing clips of themselves in their prime.  Roy would always sum up his career by saying, "It seems like only yesterday".  Roy died in 1998 at 87; Dale died in 2001 at 89.

No joke anymore.  Now I understand what Roy was talking about, in spades!  Now I say, it seems like only yesterday.  LOL!

Roy Rogers, man he was a showman and knew how to work the fans. I didn’t know it at the time, but I learned from him.

Mom Waving to me upstairs. 1957. Learned to drive in my dad's
50 Panel Bakery Truck. Got my lic. in that 54 Buick.

I was about five when my mother took me and my brother, Sonny, to see Roy in person.  It was his Roy Rogers Rodeo Tour (pronounced Ro-dayo) at the Amphitheatre in Chicago, only 100 miles from our home in Peru, Illinois, so off we went to see, ‘The King of the Cowboys’.

When we got inside the Amphitheatre, there was a ba-zillion screaming kids hanging on the rail just above and all the way around the huge arena.  My brother and I quickly joined them. Roy, with that million dollar smile, rode in on his beautiful palomino horse Trigger, who was nodding in rhythm to his gait and sporting all the silver trappings possible.  Roy rode all the way around that arena reaching up, shaking hands and speaking to every damn kid, including me. I will never ever forget that.

I wonder what ever happened to the Roy Rogers’ pennants that hung on the bedroom wall my older brother and I shared; and the other Roy Rogers’ memorabilia.  It was still there when I left home as a young adult, a very long time ago in the early 60’s. 

Much, much later, as I became a drag race entertainer, I would remember Roy and how he treated and loved his fans.

Roy is gone, along with my parents, older brother, the house and most the people I loved and cared for back then.

My 57 Ford, a Real Sleeper

As I defined in my first story for Nostalgia Drag World, nostalgia is a memory of a happy time and place; the ‘55 Chevy and ‘57 Ford you had in the 50’s and 60’s, or your Z28, Mustang or Roadrunner in the 60’s and 70’s.  But it’s more than just the cars that give us that warm indescribable feeling, making your heart soar like an eagle.  It is all the wonderful memories it represents.

Nostalgia is a powerful force and can create many moods. Two extreme nostalgic moods I feel are happy and then sometimes a sadness creeps in, knowing that the happy time, place, person, experience or wonderful thing, will not ever be there for me again.   

Think of how many things you have experienced. How many of those experiences did we think, later in life, would be nostalgic?   And what in our present time will be nostalgia yet to come?

No one loves the past more than me, but we all need to be sure to get the most enjoyment from the present, because it can all be over, ‘In The Blink of an Eye’.

But alas, as in Madonna's song, "This Used to be My Playground", the lyrics warn, "Do not dwell too much on the past." Madonna comes back with, "That is way too much to ask!"

As a reward for putting up with my melancholy, here is a preview of a fiction novel I plan to write called: 

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