Saturday July 14th, 2012 – Reno, NV
It was like a time warp coming back to Reno this week, but I’m glad I did. My life was a mess when I lived here in 1997, and I wasn’t able to enjoy much of anything. I was only here seven or eight months before getting fired from the radio station I worked at, and I was distracted beyond belief with the stress of trying to keep myself out of prison for a bank robbery I didn’t commit.
What a hectic time that was in retrospect. I wanted to get as far away as I could from all of the insanity that was going on and distance myself from my former best friend who robbed the bank in Milwaukee. He made the conscious choice to do that, and I didn’t. I wanted to sever those ties and manufacture a new life in a new location before it got ugly - which it eventually did anyway.
The job offer came in Reno, and even though it was a long shot on a wing and a prayer, I rolled the dice and moved in a hurry. I packed all my worldly trinkets into a red Geo Metro and headed west with my fingers crossed. I didn’t know anybody or what my future held, but I went anyway.
All of that seems like a lifetime ago now, but at the time I remember it being very miserable as it all unfolded. I didn’t know what to expect, and my lawyer kept telling me it wasn’t uncommon for people to go to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. That was more than a little unsettling.
One of a precious few I could talk to about any of this at the time was a guy named Bill Schulz. He’s also from Milwaukee, and worked at one of the other radio stations in the same building as me. I could confide in him about my predicament, and he was a true friend throughout the ordeal.
All these years later, Bill is still working for the same company and neither of us would’ve bet on that at 1000-1 odds. He’s the operations manager now, and we had lunch today and caught up after not seeing each other for way too long. It was wonderful to reconnect, but also a bit eerie.
Bill obviously brought up the bank robbery fiasco almost immediately, as it was a huge part of our friendship connection from the start. I knew he meant no harm, but it felt very uncomfortable going back to that unpleasant time in my head. It was such a downer that I’d just like to move on.
I realized as we were talking that I won’t be able do that. I might not think about it that often as the years go by, but that story will haunt me for the rest of my life. My absolute best friend in the world forced my hand to testify against him in federal court for a bank robbery he did but tried to pin on me. It was the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and I still have nightmares about it.
I really have to turn that story into a book sooner than later. It’s been laying there for years, but part of me is afraid to go back there because it’s so ugly of a memory. It’s a fabulous story, but it sure wasn’t fun to live through. Coming back to Reno dusted off those memories in a big hurry.
It wasn’t a bad trip though. The shows went very well and I got to see Bill and Rick D’Elia and another comedian friend Brian Diamond drove in from Sacramento to hang out. Rick said he will have me back any time I like, and I’ll take him up on it. It was great to refresh all these contacts.
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