 |
of Bob Moats |
|
The story continues...
Updated on January 24, 2005
 During the cold days of winter, Pat, myself and Pat's stepbrother Ernie, pack up our humble home and slipped away south to go to Hazel Park and set up at Pat's Mom's house. We packed everything we owned into her small garage and I went looking for work. After a while my brother had talked to a friend of his who was a manager at a place called Forest City, kind of like today's Home Depot. I worked there and just vegetated until I started kicking around an idea of writing my own play, so sat down an sketched out an outline for the thing. It was loosely based on my first marriage and I decided to make a comedy out of it. I worked on and off on it, mostly off but decided to try starting a theatre group of my own. I went around looking for a restaurant to do a dinner theatre and found one in Ferndale. The owners liked the idea and I selected the two person play "Same Time, Next Year". Deciding to save on costs I acted the male lead and found a girl to fill the female part by advertising in the entertainment section of the Detroit News. I got a number of people responding to the ad and selected one. Her name was Fran and she did very well in the part. We performed the show for about two weekends and it went well.
Poster for the play I was still working at Forest City and found at a local craft store a process of making simulated stained glass and started to make signs for local businesses. I would make then before taking them in and usually found the owners liked them enough to buy them. The picture below is one of the signs I made for Chaplin's Comedy Club in Fraser, on Groesbeck. This sign led the owner to having me make a much bigger sign for the club.
I was making a bit extra money this way but decided to try another play, so I sat down and typed out my play on a cheap Remmington manual typwriter. It basically was a toy but worked. I copied the pages after editing and rewriting the thing and went out in search of a place to perform it. On the border of Detroit was a very nice restaurant called Joanne's and the owner was more than happy to try out the play. They had a side room separate from the rest of the building and we built the stage and I advertised for the actors of the eight person play. The picture at the top of this page shows the wonderful people who performed in my play. The show ran for 16 performances, eight weeks and we had full houses most nights. We even got a good review in a local paper. I was very happy and delighted with the cast of people who made my life come to life. To read the entire play and view some more pictures of the production, CLICK HERE! But good things come to an end, Pat had another breakdown and I contacted the Oakland County Mental Health people who finally took her in to the hospital and gave me better explainations of her condition. My job at Forest City ended and I took a part time job as custodian at my old school district in Fraser, but it wasn't full time. Pat recovered and one weekend we went to camp out in Metamora State camp ground and somehow I ran into a friend from my magic shop days, Don Hudson. He had just done a magic show in the camp ground and was just driving out when we ran into each other. I invited him and his family to stop back to join us and they did. Unfortunately while we sat around the campfire late that night roasting marshmallows, Justin tried to eat one straight out of the fire and burned his mouth. He was screaming while we pulled down our tent and headed home to sooth his burn. After that we went to visit Don and his wife Vicky at their home in Wadhams, just west of Port Huron. Don had a really big garage and the upstairs of it was about the size of a small apartment. Somehow after visiting them a few times it came up to move there with them. I started to come up nights to work on remodeling the garage apartment into something liveable.
|
