Page 47 - MN

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What really happened was that I jumped up and ran out of the room and down the beach crying. The pressure was too much and I was too shy. Not the greatest start to a show business career.
I should tell you about my sister, Nancy. And I should also say that a book about her would be amazing. I only wish I knew more about her life, because I've heard all kinds of tales. We just never lived in the same places after we left home. Here's what I know:
Nan was my little sister and we played together when we were kids. My most vivid memory was at a swimming pool, where she tried some dive off the low board and hit her head on the side of the pool. I thought she was dead and my parents rushed to her but she got up. It was very scary but she was all right.
Her best friend in high school was Camille Osario, who later married a friend of mine, Tom Tilley. Their daughter was a teacher in California who went to jail on a weird charge of romancing a student, and Camille and Tom have spent the rest of their lives fighting not just for their daughter, but for the rights of the accused. Life is weird.
Nancy went to college at the University of Washington and became a sorority girl. At the UW, every year the fraternities would select queens and then there'd be a queen of queens and my sister, who I didn't realize people thought was beautiful, became the queen of queens at this university of 17,000 people. Then she dropped out, went down to Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, and became a flower child. Ours is not a normal family.
I think she went down there with Billie Roberts, a folksinger I'd met in Seattle. He came into town in a hippie VW van with the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen and dazzled us all with his blues guitar and harmonica. Upon seeing that girl, I immediately bought a harmonica (or "harp" as Billie would say) and he taught me how to play blues by breathing in and bending notes. I then spent years on the road, driving through all the states in the northwest practicing blues harp while I drove, one hand for the wheel, one hand for the harp. Billie was a fine guitar player and singer, but his main claim to fame was writing the song, "Hey Joe", which Jimi Hendrix made famous.
I know very little of Nancy's life in California. I do know she was a waitress at the bar where Carole Doda became hugely famous as a go-go dancer with large breast implants. Nan told me years later that when Carole left, they wanted Nancy to get breast implants and replace her. She declined.
She had all kinds of friends. She slightly knew Alden Kelly, an ex-Hell's Angel who made the Grateful Dead album cover with a skeleton and roses.
But she did get heavily involved in drugs and liquor and Billy tried to get her out of that life. I knew none of this, as I was up in the Northwest singing in bars. Our parents were so proud.