Soaked In Saugatuck

Sunday August 19th, 2007 - Saugatuck, MI/Lake Villa, IL

If I lived in the south I believe they’d call this a ‘gully washer’. It’s been nonstop raining for the last couple of days and there is no end in sight. Flash floods are happening near me and there are trees down and sewers backing up and it’s a big mess. There is even a bit of backup in the basement apartment where I’m staying and some of my stuff got soaked. It’s a good thing I got rid of a lot of stuff because I don’t have to worry about flooding but the stuff that did get wet was some one of a kind autographed pictures and letters I had and I feel horrible about losing them. It happened once before when I lived in Utah and I lost all of my celebrity autographs I wrote for over the years. I had people like George Burns and Bob Hope and Charles Schultz and a few other big celebrities that had died. I’ll never have a chance to replace any of those and it really hurt when it happened. This hurt a little too.

I lost stuff that had sentimental value but it got soaked and saving it would just make me think about the damage so I looked at it one last time and tossed it out. Some of it was all the stuff I saved from my road trips over the years. I saved fliers and postcards of places I visited and had a nice collection of stuff from all over America. I have the memories but it still feels sad to have to chuck some of the doo dads and souvenirs I saved. I worked hard to accumulate them but that’s life. I’d rather have a clear memory than a damaged flyer.

I was supposed to go to my friend Dennis Ross’s wedding in New York but that wasn’t going to happen with the weather like it is. I feel bad about it because I was invited and do like to show up if I said I would but with the bad weather I couldn’t have driven there and not had delays. Traffic was brutal everywhere and I ended up taking a last minute gig over in Saugatuck, MI just because I need the money. That was a hard enough drive as it was.

Saugatuck is a resort town right on Lake Michigan. There are lots of boats and even lots more money up here and they have comedy shows in the summer. I have done shows here in the past but not for a few years. It just didn’t work out with my schedule and that’s fine with me. It’s not really a comedy starved area but any money on a Sunday night is gravy.

I sat down to wait for the show to start and in walked one of my ex students who was a complete hemorrhoid about wanting a refund because he dropped out and didn’t finish the graduation part of his class. My name wasn’t on the flyer because I was a last minute fill in and he looked quite shocked to see me. I was pretty surprised to see him too. Of ALL the people to run across in a tiny town on a Sunday night for a fill in show it was him. I’m not even going to attempt to figure out the odds but it has to be astronomical. I had a very hot show. I could tell because when I came off stage he was gone. That’s how I know. If I did not he’d be there to rub it in. Still, the odds of him even being there at all were enormous.

He really was a prickly thorn in our side for weeks. I tried every way I could think of to make it right but he just had his mind made up he wasn’t going to be satisfied. I wanted to really let him have it but I chose not to and kept as professional as I could. I never thought I’d see him again so this was actually a very funny joke from the universe. When I saw him walk in I laughed out loud. I had to. If nothing else it sure does help to keep me humble.