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of Bob Moats |
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The story continues...
This page updated on January 24, 2005I spent a couple of months in the house before I gave it up. All my tenants had moved out and I had a few female friends over occasionally. During this time I was introducted to a young lady who was a friend of Ray Zink's and she would come by to where I was doing magic shows when she wasn't with Ray, who had a big crush on her I found out later. She was getting very friendly and had enlisted in the Air Force so she was leaving town shortly. I started seeing her briefly and I even bought her Volkswagen, then one night I was at the Wishing Well lounge and Ray got on me about stealing his girl, which I didn't realize that I had until then. I don't remember what happened after but I do know I stopped seeing the girl, who's name eludes me now and Ray just stayed away. After I gave the house back to the Veteran's Admin, I moved into a small apartment on Groesbeck Hwy in Mt. Clemens, MI and settled in. I went through this period of expending my energies into making model rockets from kits. I had about thirty made after a while and when I got bored with that I explored the night life. The law still allowed 18 to 20 year olds to go to the bars and I was meeting my share of the young ladies. At one time I was dating three and they all almost popped up at my apartment at the same time but I wiggled out of it. I finally graduated from Barber college I started my search for work. Somehow I found an opening at Johnnie's Hair Center in Utica Michigan and the owner liked me because I did magic, but after a while of working there I found out he wasn't sending in my monthly apprentice forms saying I was working so I could get my master's license. He had more apprentice barbers working in the shop than allowed by law and I was getting screwed, so I packed my equipment and found a job at Selfridge Air National Guard base in Mt. Clemens. I was now cutting G.I. haircuts, well I also did the hair styles for the women on base and the "Lifer Brats" aka the children of the base personnel. It was a paycheck. All during my living in Mt. clemens I was still doing magic shows at local bars and night clubs. I had started doing a mock "Gong Show" at a nice restaurant and lounge in Clinton Twp. call "The Carousel" and every week I would host and perform magic between the "talent". I also was making friends with various bands performing at the bars I frequented. One such band was called "Tobias" and I became friends with the front Singer, Bob Tucker. I also became good friends with their light and sound man, George Carlson and his girlfriend, Sue.  Picture of the band Tobias, left to right, Jimmy and Joe Morocco, Bob Tucker, Bill Mishik and Bill Perry. The drummer can't be seen, I think his name was Steve.
One of the bars I went to was the Exit Lounge, which was formerly called Cupid's Den when it was a teen club then the owners got a liquor license and it became a bar. I did a number of magic shows there and had many good nights partying. One night while playing the pinball machines they had there I met a guy named Dave Decker and we started hanging out. Another night I met a young, thin, attractive woman named Pat and we had a nice evening dancing. At the end of the night I asked her if she wanted to go to the Carousel with me to see my show and she said yes. The next night she drove out to my place and we went to the show then afterwards we went back to my place and she stayed rather late. We started seeing each other more and we would do things with Dave until he met a girl named Vickie. I was still chumming with Tobias and Bob Tucker and he would come up to the Carousel and we'd do skits during the show. Bob was married to an attractive girl named Kathy and they had two girls, Cara and Mandy. Pat and I would go to visit Bob and Kathy on his nights off and We even kicked around an idea of doing puppet shows, to the point of building a stage and working on stories. Many nights we would also work on comedy material, my magic and his singing, to put a two man show together, but we never really got to complete it. We were also still seeing Dave Decker and Vickie and then they decided to get married and I was his best man. We didn't see too much of them after that. We also still chummed with George Carlson and Sue and then they decided to get married and once again I was a best man. All these wedding were getting to me I guess and after two years of seeing pat I asked her to marry me. I guess I didn't learn the first time. We got married in her mother's basement and I had my brother as best man so I wouldn't offend any of my buddies by having to chose who is the best man. Pat and I took our honeymoon to the northern area of Michigan where we went camping and during the night my volkswagen had an electrical short which caused the starter motor to engage and propel the car forward right into a tree where the thing kept running until the battery wore down. Luckily before we retired for the night I had turned the car away from the tent or it might have run us over. The tires had dug in the ground a bit and the thing wouldn't start. One of the neighboring campers gave me a jump, but the car wouldn't start again when shut off. So we got another jump and threw everything into the car and headed home, the whole 300 miles without stopping. We made it back to Mt. Clemens a bit weary but alive. Just before Pat and I were married, I met an officer at the base babershop who's father owned a bar in Mt. clemens called "The Stonehenge" and I started going there. It was a really nice little atmospheric place in the basement under a Coney Island and I got to know the owner, Andy Skender, better. After a while he asked if I wanted to do shows there just before the time I got married. After Pat and I got back from our honeymoon I went in to the Stonehenge and built a small stage and started working Friday and Saturday nights doing shows. It went very well and I had many people coming back to see me have fun with new volunteers from the audience. The apartment I had before our wedding was a bit too small for two people so we found a townhouse about four blocks over and moved in. During the times I was performing at the Stonehenge I had met a group of people who would come in late to relax. They worked down the street at a theatre call the "Jewel", it was an x-rated movie theatre. The people, Mike Brennan (projectionist), Deke (manager) and his wife Ginny (ticket taker), were fun, friendly people.
 Mike Brennan maning the Simplex theatre movie projector Deke was always the life of the party and told unlimited jokes all night. After a while Deke asked me if I was interested in working a couple of nights at the theatre as assistant manager to make some extra money and give him some time off. I said sure and I worked about three nights a week there. After a while of watching x-rated movies, it lost it's novelty and became boring, so Mike and I would watch TV in the projection booth each night. You know if this country would just not make a big deal out of adult films, we would get bored of it too, but since it's taboo, that makes people want to patronize it more. Oh well. I continued doing magic at the Stonehenge and working at the Jewel for about two years, then one day Mike invited me to go camping with him to a place he liked to go to. It was in the northwest area of Michigan in a small town called Frankfort. I fell in love with the place, the hills and right on Lake Michigan and it even had a huge carferry line that would come in and out of the bay all day. I was so hopped up over the place, when I got back to Mt. Clemens I talked to Pat about moving there. We thought about it for a while before making the jump. During this thought period I heard again from Ray Zink and appologized about the incident with the un-named girl and told him about Frankfort. We got together and decided to make a trip up for camping and fishing, which would give me a little more exposure to the area to see if I really liked it. Ray and I hopped into my barely running Volkswagon and ended up at the Platte River Campground and spent the weekend fishing and sightseeing. The weekend was good and I liked the area all the more, so Sunday we headed back and about halfway thru the 250 mile trip we were alarmed by a huge explosion coming from the back seat. As Ray recently told me, he thought it was the small mace can I carried while working at the movie theatre and held his breath as he watched small white bits of something floating around his head. I pulled over quickly and we found out that a can of Fix-A-Flat was on the floor next to the heat vent in the VW and had heated up to explosive proportions till it gave way. The white snow was bits of sealer goop from the can. Luckily the can was covered with papers and trash on the backseat floor or the goop would have been all over the car. We got back safely to Mt. Clemens and Ray headed home. I talked to Pat more about the move so we went up a week or so later to show her the place and she liked it too, so while there we found a house to rent. Then we went back to Mt. Clemens and tied up loose ends and moved. We rented the biggest moving truck they had and stuffed our belongings in and Mike followed us in my volkswagon and we headed north.
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