Page 172 - People & Places In Time

Interior Dimensions
that you quite knew him. Gene was educated, worldly in a humble way and could never be described as less than a gentleman. I think of him much like Omar Sharif in the role of Aronstein in Funny Girl.
Gene had encouraged me to join him at auditions with the Fresno Community Theater for the play “Oklahoma” presented at the Fresno Memo- rial Auditorium. So, why not Holly had studied dance for a long time, I had been in one high school play off we went to audition.
John and Nancy Robinson had recently been hired as the director and choreographer for The Fresno Community theater. John was at least fifteen
to twenty years older than Nancy and was a good-looking man, of whom I wondered; was he in midst of a big change to a previous life? Nancy was a very attractive woman with a dancer’s slender shape and long blond hair in a pony tail down her back. They arrived from the east coast but I’ve long since forgotten from where.
Not knowing what to expect, we each were cast for the play. Holly and I in minor parts, but Gene was cast as Curly, one of the leading charac- ters.
John and Nancy had rolled into town driving their bright red Cadillac convertible with all white leather interior; quite the spectacle, with Nancy’s blond hair dancing in the wind as they drove around town. We certainly
didn’t expect them to become among our best friends, for a while, spending so much time together. Eventually we appeared in a number of plays, such as “Anything Goes” with me as actor and backstage hand and Holly as a principal dancer.
The start to married life was different than what anyone might plan or have expected. Sadly, I’ve no idea where our itinerant theater friends Gene, John and Nancy among others we met have gone; they disappeared as quickly as they entered our lives. Looking back, these were brief encounters with truly bigger than life characters, more like from a book or movie, not real people. I would truly love to find what has become of those engaging yet fleeting characters and friends.
By this time, I had moved on from Fresno State and the Kelso school and Holly had left the fund-raising program to work in the public relations department at the new Saint Agnus hospital.
As for my education, this was an opportunity that I had failed to grasp; I simply left this gift, paid for through the G.I. Bill, unopened. Nothing acquired in college would have any bearing on the rest of my life, not my degree in Psychology and Philosophy, it was worthless; not even the numerous units in English literature mattered. Though, I did have a degree and Holly as my wife. It was time to get going; but how, or where?
What I had to fall back on, is the very thing that has sustained me for my entire life that happens to be a God given talent; my artistic, creative abilities the very piece of my life I had walked away from five years before .
156
Me in Oklahoma
Holly in Anything Goes