Mom’s Gnashing Dreams

 

As dad inspired me to love – and live – stories, mom taught me to conjure – and chase – dreams.

She had her own radio show at age 16, and only a few years later when World War II broke out became the nation’s first female network news broadcaster. They called her “rip-and-read Doris” for her amazing knack of tearing news from the wire machine and streaking to the microphone – without having read anything but the headlines – to spit out the news hot and fast as if she had written it herself.

Mom was good at spitting out babies, too – seven of them before she cursed the local Catholic bishop to his face for a religion that kept her pregnant and poor. From then on she started using contraceptives, figuring that when she died, St. Peter would count seven good reasons for her to enter Heaven and only one against. She was a good mother but a tortured soul who wandered the hallways at night, gnashing her teeth over the dreams she had put on hold to raise a family.

“Follow your dreams, Terry, and make them BIG,” she urged me constantly over the years of growing up. “And whatever you do, don’t ruin your life by having a bunch of kids!”

While mom was finishing off her uterus years, I was having success following her advice and my dreams. By 25, I had twice been named “PR Person of The Year” and had covered the United Nations as a Harper’s Magazine correspondent. Then, as mom finally fledged her last kid, I slipped on one of life’s banana peels and came skidding home for a breather. We briefly teamed up to start a PR agency that revived her dream-self. Her latent brilliance immediately asserted itself with our first client – Chuck Berry

By age 62, fully resurrected, she started a TV broadcasting career. Within three years she was a national star.

That’s when I realized that during all those years of urging ME to dream big (and not have kids), she was talking to herself.

I took her advice to heart and didn’t have kids until age 50 – I had been too busy pursuing grandiose dreams, and ended up as overwhelmed by them as mom had been by kids. I achieved many things but not one of the moon-shots – except for the book I always dreamed of writing. It’s about to be published. It’s a memoir inspired by both parents called, “LOST in Tule Town”. It’s about a real little town I came to after a ruinous run at life. On my first day in town, the river on its western boundary called to me and became the centerpiece of life-altering years.

My mother’s voice dogged me throughout those small-town years, urging me onward, upward as I gathered the strength and personal power needed for another run at the big time.

I went on to lead newsrooms in the Bay Area filled with young women, and shared my mother’s story with them as inspiration – to assert themselves and never to ask permission when it comes to pursuing dreams. Shoot for the moon – or even the stars – and never be discouraged at falling short. Look around at where you landed. Far, far from where you started.

And then, get up and shoot again, and again, and….

Keep questing.

And, yes, I was talking to myself.

 

Mom and Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry practically invented rock and roll, I told my skeptical middle-aged parents in 1975.

I had been staying with them for a few weeks after arriving from San Francisco in my cool 1965 Olds Cutlass convertible that a friend sold to me for $75. Although my parents were thrilled to see me – they had been begging me for months to come home and start a PR business with them – they weren’t so sure about making a Chuck Berry concert their first promotion. We had started the business by renting a small office in a strip mall in Orange, putting in a battered desk and chair someone had left on the curb, installing a phone with three handsets and an answering machine I brought from San Francisco, and printing a thousand cheap business cards for $3.99.

Winckler PR and Advertising was born. But we didn’t have any clients until I
took a smoke break and wandered all over that strip mall, looking in store windows and perusing bulletin boards. On one there was an innocuous flyer advertising a benefit concert for the U.S. Olympic Volleyball Team. In small print almost too tiny to read was the featured attraction: Chuck Berry.

“Who’s Chuck Berry? mom asked when I showed her the flyer.

“Chuck Berry!?” I said. “The rock and roll legend? Chuck Berry duck-walked his way into my generation’s nervous system while pounding out “Johnny B Goode” “Roll Over Beethoven,” and “Maybelline.” He stitched together rhythm and blues with country music, and threw in his own bad-boy impulses, influencing bands like the Beatles and Rolling Stones.”

“Oh,” mom said when I took a breath. “That’s very nice, but I don’t know anything about rock and roll.”

Make it up! I told mom, challenging her with the same line she’d been throwing at me for years.

Yeah, she said, and just like that turned into Chuck Berry’s instant best friend. She grabbed the flyer and called the phone number on it. Someone answered and she exploded into the phone about Chuck Berry being God’s gift to mankind. The person on the other end agrees.

“So why didn’t you put Chuck Berry’s name in big, bold type that screams at people? No one cares about volleyball. And why aren’t I reading about his concert in the newspaper? Why don’t I hear about him on radio?”

You need someone to properly promote this concert, she said. You need Winckler PR and Advertising.

We had our first client.

It didn’t take much to start getting stories about Chuck Berry in the local newspapers, and to get local DJs chattering about his volleyball benefit concert. Everybody heard of him, but when we start pitching the big media outlets like the Los Angeles Times and ABC TV, the entertainment writers were tepid. Berry hadn’t had a hit in years and only played backwater venues and for charities that no one cares about. Like volleyball.

We didn’t get the major publicity we need, which helps explain why, half an hour before Chuck is due on stage, the place was half empty. It echoed. Mom was in a panic. She grabbed handfuls of unsold tickets and ran out into the parking lot, giving them out for free. But even this yielded few takers. I saw Chuck peek out at the empty hall and shake his head. This was nothing new to a guy who’d fallen into obscurity. He sent word that he won’t perform without being paid in advance. The organizer refused but Chuck was adamant.

Curtain time came and went with no Chuck. The crowd, though sparse, was hardcore and started making noise. Bring on Chuck Berry, they said.

“Chuck! Chuck! CHUCK!! We want Chuck!” they chanted. The organizer looked nervous.

People started standing on the tables, stamping a rhythm with their feet. “WE WANT CHUCK! WE WANT CHUCK! CHUCK! CHUCK! CHUCK!”

Mom was pissed. She believed every show must go on, no matter what. She stormed backstage and, despite the crowd’s loud chanting, you could hear her screaming at Chuck Berry to get the fuck out on stage and perform!

Money first, he calmly told her.

Mom rushed back and cornered the organizer. “Give him a goddamn check, now!” The organizer wrote a check.

Nope, said Chuck, I don’t take toilet paper. Gotta be cash.

Mom rushed back to the organizer and demanded the cash proceeds. He gave her a thousand dollars.

Good enough, said Chuck.

And then, to my astonished, star-struck eyes, as the band struck up “Johnny B. Goode,” out came the legend himself, pounding on his guitar as he hopped across stage, doing his crouching, skipping trademark duckwalk.

But the performance ended in mid-quack. Chuck stopped, straightened up, cocked his ear at the on-stage amplifier and declared it unfit for his artistry. Then he walked off stage with my mom roaring at the top of her Irish lungs in pursuit and the crowd turning vicious. They booed, they threw things, a bottle flew on stage.

Above it all you could hear mom bellowing, “What! You need a better amplifier???”

The boos were growing. More things were thrown. Rioting was about to break out. And then things calmed as the angry crowd saw my plump, be-wigged, middle-aged mom drag a big new amplifier across stage with help from the organizer. A band member plugged it in as mom stalked offstage.

“Now play, goddammit!” she yelled at Chuck Berry.

And damn did he. Out he duckwalked again and just rocked and rattled and rolled those true believers when he hollered out the signature, “Johnny B. Goode”

Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell

Now that steamed up-crowd was really tearing the place apart, and mom herself was pounding on tables just like everyone else as Chuck Berry bounced back and forth across the stage, driving home the rockingest audience participation chorus in music history:

Go go
Go Johnny go
Go
Go Johnny go
Go
Go Johnny go
Go
Go Johnny go
Go
Johnny B. Goode

As a concert, it turned out to be a huge success. As a fundraiser, though, it was a flop. After all the bills are paid, including $500 to us, the volleyballers didn’t get a dime. But I had a priceless 45-year-old memory that I am glad – and sad – to say, has outlived its makers.