On February 4th,  RJ called a band meeting. Because of the hateful way he'd acted towards me and Rich  in Houston, I was really obsessing over the possible reason(s) he wanted to meet. My worst case scenario was that he might try to blame our recent weak nights on Rich or myself - or perhaps even both of us. I'd seen RJ in action before and it would've been completely in character. But once the meeting got underway, I quickly realized that I had simply been having paranoid thoughts. The meeting was about our need to get back into a solid rehearsal schedule. Ricky played along as if he thought it was a good idea too, not letting on how completely disinterested he was, or how he had no intentions of wasting any more of his creative energies on Savvy. Ricky's secret had become a terrible burden for me. I felt as if I were carrying a grand piano around on my shoulders.

In addition to the anguish I felt over keeping Ricky's secret, my  lifestyle was taking a serious toll on me physically and mentally as well. I didn't have the money, time, or insurance to deal with any big issues. As long as we had duct tape and 9 volt batteries, everything would work out somehow. But duct tape wasn't going to help me with my latest problem. 

After years of suffering from acid reflux, my esophagus had become scarred to the point that I was choking during almost every meal. It had become a very serious problem. Every time I ate anything, at home, or at a restaurant, I would get food lodged in my esophagus and food wouldn't go down. It wasn't the kind of choking where someone stands up coughing and gagging and grabbing their throats hoping someone will do the Heimlich Maneuver  on them. I'd seen my dad suffer with this same problem when I was a kid. In the middle of a meal, he would get very quiet, stop eating or drinking anything for a few minutes, then his eyes would start to water and he would excuse himself. The only thing he could do was to go to the bathroom and try to force himself to throw up, dislodging the food that had dammed up before going into the stomach. A few minutes later he would return as good as new, except his eyes were red and he looked like he'd been crying. It worked exactly the same way for me. 

I had a rough week with heart attack-like pain, but it was all associated with the acid problem, and eventually went away. All the recent worrying due to Ricky's situation was causing the acid in my stomach to erupt like Old Faithful, the famous geyser in Yellowstone National Park. The first thing the doctor asked me was if I'd been overly worried about anything lately... experiencing stress. The question somehow seemed understated and I just stared back at him without having to speak. He had no idea how well he'd nailed that one.

We took two days off and then did a week at Savvy's. It was good to be back with our friends, families, and fans. The club was hopping and my spirits were quickly lifted when I saw the parade of beautiful girls coming through the front doors of the club again. It was like the opening number of a Miss America pageant playing out just for us.  Vanessa and Brenda were coming out regularly and I was caught in the crossfire of having to decide which one to ask out. I didn't want to ask the wrong one and get shot down, because it would have made it bad form to then ask the other. So I just remained friends with both. I tried joking with Kim (the girl who cut my hair)  about going out sometime, just to get a feel for if she seemed interested. She had a great talent for evading the issue without actually outright refusing. Kim cut my hair most of the time back then. Her entire family just seemed to be blessed with good genes as far as aesthetics were concerned. Their dad had been a country and western recording artist years ago, much like my Uncle Okie. He went by the name of Roy Kelly. [In March 2004, Kim's sister Gina had jut finished cutting my hair when her dad came in and told me about a new recording project he's working on. So look out, people! Roy Kelly may be riding again!]   

We celebrated my birthday a day early, on February the 5th. RJ threw a big party at his house and I bought a keg. I took Rhonda with me. We had a great time, but because I've never really been a beer drinker, after a while I conked out in Richard's room. Rhonda got a ride home and I slept it off. That was Saturday night. On Sunday, I woke up feeling ragged, but pulled myself together and went to my parent's house for a really great dinner. The big topic of the day was the sudden, and surprising death of singer Karen Carpenter. Anorexia wasn't common knowledge at the time, and nobody could believe it when they saw the recent photographs and video on the TV news reports of her looking like a skeleton. 

I came up with an idea for a story called "Otho and the Magic Shop" and wrote a few pages, but never got back around to doing anything with it. I hadn't completely recovered from my birthday yet when we had to make another trip to Bryan to play Graham Central Station. It was Monday February 7th, and we'd sacrificed our night off again to go to Bryan. We were already doing another marathon - only this time it was going to be a 12 day run without a day off. Bryan was getting to be a drag because of the long drive. It was a long way to go for a one night gig. We returned to play Tuesday and Wednesday at Savvy's. It was always a little harder to keep the voices sounding fresh without that night off, but because Rick was on the road with us and knew how easy it was to get run down, he would sometimes let us play shorter sets at Savvy's.  On an occasion or two, he would even let us call it a night early to keep us from getting completely ragged out during those long stretches without a night off.

Those two nights at Savvy's were followed by a three night run at Inner Visions in Waco. Waco was only half as far from home as Bryan, so the hour and a half to Waco seemed like a cakewalk. The only problem with Inner Visions was the heat. It got really warm in that club, even in February. It seemed that the club owners were trying to pinch pennies by not using the air conditioning. I finally made up my mind to call Vanessa's friend Brenda to see if she wanted to go to Waco on Saturday night. To my surprise, she accepted. Brenda's last name was Boccerie, which I turned into "Bowl of Cherries." We went to TGI Fridays and then to the gig in Waco. She was a beautiful girl, and a lot of fun to hang with, but sorry Chuck. No love connection. I think I was a little too non-conventional for her. I was also in a non-committal mode for the first time in years, and having a great time not getting bogged down in a relationship. Knowing that could change at any time, I was relishing my freedom while I had it.  

After Waco, we had Sunday night off to get rested up for a big event at the Dallas Agora on Monday. "The St. Valentines Day Massacre"  was the Agora's idea of a Valentine's Day concert featuring Point Blank and Savvy. For some reason, Point Blank refused to let us use their graphic EQ, or even their lights, which normally wouldn't be a problem. It was really out of character for Rusty Burns to be a part of something like that. We knew that Point Blank was the main attraction and we had no thoughts otherwise. Rusty had been a great friend for a long time, and we'd even had talks before about how ridiculous it was when headliners screwed the opening acts.  But by that time, Point Blank was having problems of their own, and were running out of steam in much the same way that we were. It was absurd for us to imagine Point Blank being concerned about us upstaging them in any way. We'd been putting those guys on pedestals for years. They'd been the real deal. Everyone knew that Rusty Burns was THE hottest guitar player around. But no matter how much we loved, respected, or revered Point Blank, they still weren't going to let us use their lights or effects for our opening set. So we were forced to kick ass without them. We were disturbed over the principle of the thing more than anything else. We'd been through a lot worse and knew it probably had nothing to do with the guys in the band, but rather their management. We never asked and it never came up. But we did have a LOT of extremely loyal Savvy fans on hand who knew what was going on, and they seemed to cheer all the louder to help compensate. Politics and B.S.  aside, it was a great show and we would always have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for all they guys in Point Blank, in particular - Rusty Burns. Hud wasn't as forgiving about things, though. He told me after our opening set that he was so pissed about the ordeal that he was thinking of quitting. A few beers later and he was mellow again. 

[Years later, it is easy to imagine that on some level there may have been some head games going on between certain members of Point Blank and Ricky. After all, efforts had been made to try and recruit him for the Point Blank lineup at one time or another. The rift could have been based on things that only one or two people were aware of. And as far as Hud threatening to quit, I knew that secretly Hud would probably have loved to go ahead and quit Savvy and start right in to work on Ricky's career. It was just a matter of time before that would come to pass anyway.]

Libya's Muammar Qaddafi was in the news. He had long been sponsoring terrorist factions around the globe, but when the US found a plane in Brazil loaded with arms for Columbian terrorists which had been sent by Qaddafi, the US had to get involved. In response, Qaddafi made terrorist threats against the US. It was getting very nasty, particularly considering that everyone was in the nuke business. I was always terrified to hear about the horrible things going on in the world. I readily admit that my line of work allowed me to escape from most of the bad stuff for a long time.

The phone calls coming in at home for Ricky had gotten out of control. The ringing never stopped, and to make matters worse, Ricky rarely answered it anyway. It was as if he had a filter in his head that allowed him to tune out the ringing. This was before caller ID and he didn't want to get stuck on the phone with the wrong people. I usually handled the calls until I just couldn't stand it anymore, and then I'd let the answering machine get them. [I still have several cassette tapes of incoming messages from those days.] 

We worked up "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" at rehearsal. Rhonda and I went to Toys R Us, where I saw something I had to have; a VIC-20 Computer from Commodore. I bought Sea Monkeys instead. Ricky and I played some electric football and he creamed me 7 to 14. 

On Wednesday night, Lilly showed up at the club. She pulled me aside and was in tears, frantically begging me to take her back! She wasn't herself at all. I'd never seen her this way. Last I'd heard she was married! When I wouldn't get into it with her she cornered Marty and did the same thing to him. Poor girl was having a bad night for sure. There was only one practical explanation. Danny had been a bad influence on her. Just a guess. Leon Ellis sat in and sang a blues song. My brother Ray sat in and played sax. On Friday the 18th of February 1983, I went back to Toys R Us and bought the VIC-20 computer, and some game cartridges. I'd had an Atari for a year or so and knew my way around them somewhat. But the Commodore used an entirely different set of codes. I became enthralled in learning how to program in the VIC-20 Basic language. I took my computers to my parent's house and played Omega Race with dad. He'd never seen anything like it before! We had a great time.

By March of 1983, I was finally numb to the whole "Ricky" thing. The phone calls from New York had been driving me crazy. I didn't know who was calling, but I did know that something seemed to be heating up. It got to the point that I was worrying myself sick, so I basically woke up one day and decided that I wasn't going to dread it anymore. In fact, I was finally prepared to embrace whatever changes were coming. It became easier for me to imagine myself cutting the hair and getting a normal job, or even going to college. I was starting to put a mental spin on the situation that made me look at it from a completely new perspective. Instead of thinking of Ricky's departure as the "END" - I started conditioning myself to think of it as the "BEGINNING" of a new journey. I managed to convince myself, at least for a while anyway, that my life wasn't really even going to start until I was free from Ricky, Savvy, and the entire music business altogether. This new attitude helped me tremendously - for about three days.

Meanwhile, I was really getting into the computer thing. Rhonda was in and out of the picture, mostly because she worked a lot and wasn't able to come to the club as much as she wanted. It was true that some people actually had to sleep every night. But it was also true that guys in bands are creatures of habit and so the thing with Rhonda wouldn't work as an exclusive arrangement. There was just too much going on all the time and too much traveling to make any kind of real commitment. I could feel it sliding in that direction though. As cliché as it might sound, Savvy was my mistress.

We started March by playing three nights at Savvy's, followed by two nights at the Agora with the Penguins. Then we played at the Arnold & Morgan Free Concert. After two days off we returned to Savvy's to open a show for the Guess Who. I was really disappointed that Burton Cummings wasn't with them, but the guy taking his place sounded a lot like him. Those burned out, reincarnated has-been bands were always interesting to open for. We had a lot of them come through Savvy's in those days. But it was always exciting just to be able to say that I'd met - and played with - or opened for them. Ricky messed his hand up playing football and had a rough time playing on the night we opened for Guess Who. Being the professional he is, he managed to get through it. Once things settled down for a minute, Ricky and I finally ordered cable TV service.

I had a really bad dream in which Ricky told me that his deadline for leaving Savvy was going to be July 24th. In the dream, I asked why he would leave right before vacation and he just responded by saying, "That's the deadline." The following night I dreamed that I got fired from the band. Then, on the third consecutive night I had a vivid dream about a car coming out of the sky and dive-bombing into a house on Lincoln Avenue, the street I'd grown up on, and where my parent's still lived. 

One of my favorite photos of my mom. She always looked
different in every photo taken of her. I call this her "Florence
Nightingale" look. But she also has a bit of a Diane Sawyer
look to her in this one too...

Mom's birthday was on March 22nd. I bought her a cake, flowers, and a catered chicken dinner for the family. Rhonda went along with me and we had a very nice time visiting with the folks again. Later that night, my hairstylist, Kim, and her sister Gina were stranded at the club after closing. I gave them a ride home. The next day we had a rehearsal and worked up "Photograph" and "Jeopardy". Cable TV rocked! But I'd found something that even surpassed cable. My computer was hooked up to a new type of device called a MODEM, that allowed me to connect by telephone line to a system that let me read the newspaper, get weather reports, find out what was on at the movies, and even chat with other people - ON THE COMPUTER! It was only 1983 and I was living like George F'ng Jetson! The computer would have to sit idle for a few days though, and I would miss it dearly, because we had another extensive Cardi's tour coming up.  

CHAPTER 44:   WAITING FOR THE SHOE TO DROP

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