Its my lie and I'm sticking to it

Thursday May 14th, 2020 at 4:30 a.m.

It's my lie and my story and I'm sticking to my version of the truth no matter what,

Once you become a certain age and I don't exactly know what that age is, you begin to shift your perspectives a little bit and see things a bit differently than you did as a younger person. Or at least I did. I'm not trying to speak for everybody, however, I know I used to be a lot more binary as a younger man and by that I mean I was a lot more 0-1, yes-no, black or white, right or wrong kind of a guy. I can just hear my best friend Jackie looking at me and saying "Humph" as I write something like that, but it's true! I swear to Rudy it is.

For instance, about 5 years ago I began a shift towards a more non-controversial style of writing that for the most part has eliminated all discussions concerning Politics from my blog. That's just one thing, however, it is a decision that I made consciously and on purpose. I had a lot of reasons for doing so, however, the primary one was that I just grew tired of arguing opinions with my friends and their friends over what amounted really to nothing. Opinions are not facts no matter how strongly held they are. I respect your opinion and your right to have one, no matter how wrong you may be. Let us just leave it at that.

I love my friends and have no qualms with how they view their politics. To me having a contrary view is not worth damaging a friendship over. Just look at my relationship with Jean Hoover, my Facebook friend in Florida. If I let politics get in the way, I would not have discovered that she is a wonderful writer and that she feels the exact same way about Possums that I do. It's just not worth it.

You may be also aware that for many years I was in the restaurant game in various roles. I started in the business back in 1974 at a little drive-in restaurant in Indianapolis IN on Madison Avenue called Steak `n Shake. Back when I started working there in March of that year, there were 12-14 tables inside the restaurant with 8 counter stools and over 100 car stalls (we only regularly used about 30 or so of them) on the outside, until Friday or Saturday night, then look out!! I was a carhop (we called them Curb Boys), and working there was nothing like the movies nor like what you see portrayed in the Sonic commercials. I've talked about this before, however, I was an outside waiter more or less. From there I progressed into leadership roles as an employee, into cook roles where I was "locally famous" for playing the grill like a set of drums and then went onto to management at varying levels.

I worked for that company in two main states, Indiana and Florida, and at one point was the Manager of Training programs for the Indiana division. I helped to recruit management and dabbled a little into HR issues until I left the company in 1997 to move to Tennessee and work for my Friend Debbie Richman.

During the time I spent in restaurants, I made a ton of great friends and the friendships survive to this day. Just about 2/3rds of my Facebook friends list are comprised of people that I for or worked with or knew from my time at Steak `n Shake, in various states during a couple of different eras. That's the tough thing for me, it's not remembering who someone is, but it is sometimes tough to visualize where they fit into which era during my tenure. I am old as crap. That can be a tiny bit frustrating because I can't always remember if you guys even knew each other. Scott who?

I am most proud of those friendships where I knew you as a 16-18-year-old teenager and through the magic of Facebook, I've sort of watched you grow up, have children, and turn into old people like me. It is hysterical to me to see somebody I used to know back then, who had long golden hair that now is bald and has two or three grown-up kids. The coolest thing is seeing the relationship with your spouse grow as well and knowing you met your wife or husband while you were working for no money in a restaurant that I ran. It's great to look back at the two dozen or so couples that I know that are still together. Some of you didn't make it together for whatever reason, but all of you made terrific and wonderful parents. That part is even better. I can't really even believe that most of us still talk. Some of you have disappeared and I don't know what happened, and a few have passed away but I remember each of you fondly, hair and all.

I also met a lot of local and national celebrities (as most of us did, some more than I ever did).  Locally I met people like Marvelous Marvin Hagler (the boxer), Mike Ahern, Bob Gregory, Cowboy Bob, and Janie both of Channel 4 Indianapolis Fame, Dave "The King" Wilson, Sammy Terry (he used to sit on the counter at Franklin Rd), Don Davis (I don't wanna make any money folks, I just love to sell guns) he used to come in and sit at the counter in the Steak `n Shake in Carmel Indiana when I was working.

I've met three mayors of Indianapolis, Richard Lugar, Bill Hudnut, and Stephen Goldsmith. I helped out (where I was a "gopher" on one of Mayor Hudnut's commercials where he did "The Hudnut Hook" (about 50 seconds into this commercial you can see the back of my head in the distance on top of the hill, where I was talking to somebody else while they were filming). It was some environmental activist thing or another.  I was a very young man who spent his time girl watching. You cannot even tell it is me and, except I know it's me you couldn't eve prove it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETIYLXCyWZk )

I met Mel Simon and his brother once while both were still alive before the Circle center Mall opened, I served both of them Lox and Bagels during some breakfast or something at the downtown Indy SnS. I wasn't supposed to be the server and I didn't even work there, I just wanted to get in on the action and have you ever seen the women that work for rich guys? My God! I'm a pig, I know. Or I was.

I very briefly met a few basketball players over the years. I used to sell drinks and Popcorn at the old fairgrounds coliseum where the Indiana Pacers played home games in the '70s. I met Mel Daniels, Bob Netolicky, the coach Slick Leonard, Doctor J (I brought him a towel, I brought him a towel !!) Darnell Hillman, Roger Brown, Don Buse and once a long time after that I had the fun of shaking Reggie Miller's hand when I returned an item to the pacers that his wife had dropped after an interview ( a compact or something). Those were heady times Bro! Heady Times. I once saw Peyton Manning from about 15 feet away, although one of my friends went to some event or something and her children got to take a picture with him,. That was very cool. We used to go out of our way to see if we could sneak into places to glimpse the celebrities. Now if you did that you probably would get shot.

I used to go over to Dick the Bruiser's house every once in a while with his son's girlfriend Karen. Sadly his son shot the girl "accidentally" and she (she was the sister of my ex-wife's husband). She lived in a nursing home for a few years and died not long after. Richard Afflis I think was his real name and he was one hell of a nice guy. Nothing at all like his wrestling character he portrayed in his TV appearances. He was the local champ and he owned the regional company that produced shows. I sed to travel around sort of like a groupie helping to set up the rings and such. I'll talk about that someday, I'm sure.

National celebrities I've met or been accidentally in the presence of without knowing it includes people like Charlie Pride who was in the elevator with us in Nashville at the Opryland Hotel. I bumped into Dick Clark one time and he said sorry to me. I did the bumping, he did the sorrying. That was at a food commercial photoshoot I was on the fringe involved in with a guy named Steve Koch. He was the food expert and Chef for Steak `n Shake for a time. I wrangled an invite by volunteering to carry the heavy stuff. Who can say no to free labor?

I met Magic Johnson and James Worthy in the lounge at Delta airlines in the Atlanta airport at about 3 in the morning one time. I saw them, shook my head hello,  mouthed "Magic" and "James" at them acknowledging their presence, and then I went and sat at the quasi bar and had coffee, waiting on my flight to take me home where my son was about to born. After a few minutes, Magic said "Hey young man", I turned and said basically "Who me? ". He waved me over and asked me to settle a bet between him and James Worthy. He essentially said he wanted to know if I knew who they were? I said "Sure, yes of course", I mean who wouldn't?  So I guess James Worthy cynically said that If I knew who they were, that I would have been over there bugging them. Magic basically said "(sic) but he said our names! ".

He wanted to know that If I knew who they were why then why wasn't I acting like everybody else and why didn't I bug them for something, like maybe an autograph? I said, "Well, It's 3 am or so, you guys looked beat and it looked like the last thing you needed was to have the crap bugged outta you by some dude in the airport for no good reason. So I decided just to mouth hello and sit down and leave you be, leave you in peace." He liked my answer, laughed his ass off, made $20 or so on the bet, made James pay him right there, and they bought me my drinks and a sandwich. They said they were not used to people treating them like humans instead of clamoring for their attention all the time. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It was a good sandwich too.

I met and talked to Vince Neil (From Motley Crue) several times as he came through the drive-thru at Frankin Rd. He like his Chili Mac Extra Extra drained of the orange suet grease it always had on it because it gave his stomach fits he said. I guess he drove everywhere due to an aversion to flying. He showed us his stage suits once that was hanging in the back of the car he was driving and man they must have had a million sequins on them. The first time we met him (there were other employees involved I can't remember who and he came through about a dozen times), he initially thought we didn't know who he was and he came inside to thank us for getting his food correct. I just would never let the staff go all fan girlie and made them act right.

He is a pretty tall dude, had a ton of hair, and as a clamor was started in the front door area he belted out a couple of lyrics. He can sing dude! He said at one point "Whatayathinkof those pipes?",  He used to make it a point to come to my store, he even gave me a picture of him with Joe Montana one time, when he autographed the picture and I said wow, an autographed Vince Neil photo! I said jokingly "Sure would have been cool to have Joe's signature too", I was just kidding around, he says to wait for a second, goes out the door, comes right back in with Joe Freaking Montana, and says to Joe "Hey man can you sign this picture for this guy?" I was totally blown away. He was a pretty nice guy and so was Joe. They were gone 15 seconds later, and damn it,  I lost that picture sometime later but a cool story nonetheless huh?

There is more and I'll write about them some other time.
This is enough lies for one day, don't you think?

Later Alligators,

BigMike