Row-Z
When my old friend Rosie passed away a few years ago, I wanted her to live on (as they say) through my writing, so an entire chapter of my book, “Don’t Look Now” is devoted to her (and a lot of her antics).
Here’s an excerpt. Enjoy!
And if you like what you’ve read, you can purchase the entire book (softcover) at Create Space: Don’t Look Now… or via Amazon: Don’t Look Now…
Kindle version is coming soon. 
Excerpt from “Don’t Look Now…”
Chapter 16: Row-Z
© Gael MacGregor/MacMusic Magic
…Mama had to work three jobs for many years after Dad died, in order to pay off hospital bills from his lengthy illness and many stays. One job was at a college in Orange County as a PBX operator, and she would get advance notice of events happening there, so could get us tickets for stuff before they sold out. Usually, though, since none of us had much money, we’d go to the free or almost-free events.
One of them was the screening of a film at the college, with an appearance by an L.A. T.V. host of late-night horror, sci-fi and other such B-movies. This was pre-Elvira, and Seymour was our guy. He was funny, silly and inventive. He would appear in the corner of the T.V. screen and comment on the action, such as “It’s the Mushroom Tabernacle Choir,” as all the women on a boat screamed in “Attack of the Mushroom People”. Dopey stuff like that. We couldn’t wait to see him.
So there we were, waiting in line, in the cold and foggy evening air (“It was a dark and stormy night…”). Time passed, and still no Seymour, and still no entrance to the campus theatre. Apparently, some wreck on the freeway had delayed his arrival. The natives were getting restless, and Rosie began entertaining everyone to keep their minds off how long we’d all been waiting in the damp night. They were so busy laughing at her jokes and antics, when Seymour did arrive, they almost didn’t notice him until he flipped his cape around and started jumping up and down as he moved through the crush of people.
He came over to Rosie and said, “Thanks, kid, but I’ll take it from here,” and swooshed off into the crowd.
Rosie was tickled, and even more so when, after the show was over, one of the stage folks came over to us and said Seymour wanted to see us. We weren’t hard to pick out, even in a big crowd. We went backstage, and Seymour had big posters he signed for all of us, and he thanked Rosie for being, as he put it, “the warm-up act in front of my slime-green walls.”
…As I was finishing these reminiscings, we received word that Rosie had passed away. We went to the funeral, and it didn’t feel like a celebration of her until her brother Martin said a few words, and then her spirit came alive to everyone there.
And then, at the end of his speech, he looked up and pointed to the heavens, said goodbye, and then, with a smile and some tears…
“Go Dodgers!”
Amen.
