Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Fessing Up

Bald Faced Liar-revisited. FWIW.

1. TRUE -My husband lived in New Hope, PA and Liza Minnelli was there in the summer of 1964 playing at the Bucks Country Playhouse in Time Out For Ginger. They hung out after the show for the length of its run. Liza would stand up and belt out a song at the least provocation. She continues to do so.

2. TRUE- My brother and two friends borrowed an older brother's car at age seventeen and set out for Woodstock. They were stopped as they cruised through the town and the car searched. A very small amount of grass was found in the glove compartment. They spent the night in jail. The judge buried the paperwork, which turned out to be trouble later on when my brother got a government job and they did a background check and something stuck out. Nobody knew about the judge's desk drawer.

3. FALSE -Although we attended the same institution, I never dated Michael Ford. He was there a few years later. Well, make it a decade.

4. TRUE-In a misguided attempt to elope at age 18, which took us across eight states via a Greyhound bus, a boyfriend and I finally found ourselves in Virginia and entered his house while his parents were away on a cruise. The neighbor across the street saw the garage door opened and called the cops, believing the boy to be at college in Massachusetts. They arrived with guns pulled. And as Todd pointed out, the ardor faded after this.

I should have dated Michael Ford. He probably didn't do things like this since he became a minister.

5. TRUE-I had a series of books as a child where the animals were dressed like humans. The one with a goat dressed like a grandmother scared me the most. This began to haunt me and has ever since. If I see a dog with a coat on, I have to look away. I can barely tolerate Donald and Mickey. Does anyone else remember this series? No, wait a minute. I don't want to know.

6. TRUE-Megan moved to Brooklyn in 1994. On visiting her, we looked out the window and saw a guy wearing gloves in the summer entering the apartment across from hers (the building was U-shaped). The cops came, wrote our story on his palm, and as we all looked out the window at the window in question, the guy exited from the same window. They chased him down in the alley, cutting him off at the end. He was released later though. He had stolen too little to be worth prosecuting.

7. TRUE-Yep, my great grandfather, an orphan, worked his way through college and law school, won elected office and couldn't resist paving his own street in the Kensington area of Philly first.
So politicians were always dumb or corrupt or something, I guess.

17 comments:

Todd Mason said...

How you manage to hit so many states between ?what? and Virginia? And how did you manage to nab Nick Velvet, Jr., on your first visit to Crooklyn?

Ed Gorman said...

My all-time favorite Patti post. Great stuff! Today two or three items could be used as the basis of a reality tv show, esp. the would- be elopement. A combo of Cops and one of the numerous Bridal shows. You could be hanging out with the nitwit Kardarshian girls!

pattinase (abbott) said...

New Hampshire, Mass. Ct, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia on a greyhound bus. I may have a state or two it didn't pass through and I bet we were the only two people on earth to elope by bus.
Once I saw him on his home ground, I decided I had chosen badly.
We were all exciting once but it fades over time.

Richard S. Wheeler said...

I think I won.

Todd Mason said...

Wow...that bus trip (echoes of THE GRANDUATE conclusion?) might cool any ardor, even w/o the bust and the hassles that might entail...and you probably did hit Delaware, at least...

Hanging with Kardashians might make one nostalgic for the 15-hour bus ride...

Chris said...

I'm with you on #5. Not so much the fear part, but it makes me really uncomfortable. I can handle a little jacket or something, but some people take it too far.

And don't get me started on monkeys dressed as people. That REALLY freaks me out. Monkeys freak me out, period.

the walking man said...

Comparatively speaking Patti my lies and realities are boring. 8 states to get busted, busted at Woodstock, Liza Minnelli.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Richard certainly won. We must have met in another life.
Monkeys are indeed the worst. Especially ones wearing hats and short jackets.
But you notice, Mark, how all of these things happened in the last century.

Anonymous said...

I knew the Liza story was true!

But yes, the bus elopement was the highlight. Julia Roberts eat your heart out!

Jeff M.

YA Sleuth said...

LOVE this :-)

George said...

You sure faked me out, Patti!

Richard Robinson said...

I remember those awful calendars with monkeys in business situations, sitting at desks, wearing fedoras, all that. I always thought they were extremely creepy. Of course the A.B. Frost illustrations for Uncle Remus had the animals wearing clothes, it was the accepted way to illustrate such stories at the time, and even those bothered me.

As to the rest, hiding the pot in the glove compartment? Couldn't they at least have put it inside the spare tire?

Richard S. Wheeler said...

Reality trumps fiction. Novelists are unable to think up the things that happen daily in real life. Your assertions had the ring of reality, not invention. Thanks for entertaining us so delightfully.

pattinase (abbott) said...

My brother contends to this day, it belonged to the friend's brother and they didn't even know it was in there until the cop pulled it out.

Evan Lewis said...

Amazing truths!

Eric Beetner said...

That is FANTASTIC that so many are true. I was hoping for that. Quite a life.

the walking man said...

Most of the good & funny stuff we know happened in the last century Patti.