My brush with fame.

The details are rather hazy after so many years. Perhaps I should be surprised that so many of them still remain fresh in my mind.

It was probably 1970. I was hitch-hiking on Sunset Boulevard near UCLA, heading west, either to visit friends, or to get to the San Diego Freeway and from there, home. A gold Cadillac stopped and offered me a ride. That in itself was rather exceptional. Cadillacs were not the sort of cars you expected to stop. When I got in the driver, a rather large, predominantly bald, man in his sixties, introduced himself:

Hi, my name's Brown. I used to be governor.

I turned and looked at him, and realized that he was telling the truth. That's the part that I remember. I suppose that since then I've been recreating the next part, trying to figure out what my response was, or at least should have been. It may have been:

My name's Jay. I didn't.

but I tend to think that such a response is only wishful thinking. Chances are good that I simply looked at him and said, something like "yes, you were". For about the ten minutes that I was in the car we spoke about various things. I don't remember about what.

Go to: A bit premature in this particular case, or
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