MY FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME

 

Little Joe and me

Back in 1966, (BC-- before children) Chris and I drove our early 60's model VW Microbus from where we were living in Spokane, Washington, to Fallon, Nevada.  Chris's Uncle Russ and Aunt Opal owned a ranch there.  Chris's dad had moved from New York City to live on the ranch at that time.  While there we were treated to a visit of a new tourist attraction near by.  It was a duplicate of the set built for the TV Show "Bonanza." Bonanza was a western series that ran on NBC from 1959 to 1973.

While touring the ranch we discovered that the stars of the show were on the property.  The show featured Loren Green as Ben Cartwright, Dan Blocker as Hoss Cartwright, and Michael Landon as Little Joe.  Chris was able to take slides of me as I posed with the three actors.

Lorne Greene and me.

Dan Blocker and me.

Below is a picture of our group one of the other visitors took of us that day.

Aunt Opal, Uncle Russ, Dad, me, daughter of Dad's friend Betty, Chris, and Betty.

On our return trip back to Spokane after our visit, Chris became very sleepy.  I volunteered to drive.  It was late in the evening and there were no lights on the highway.  Chris had instructed me to never put my brakes on in a curve so as we swerved from one curve to another I didn't put on the brakes.  Suddenly Chris became very wide away as he was thrown from side to side as I was driving.  He decided to drive the rest of the way as we were traveling on a road next to a cliff which had a steep drop off.  I didn't notice the danger so just drove like we were on a normal road.  So ended my long distance driving career.

Back in Spokane my grandparents on my dad's side had purchased a color TV.  One time while we were visiting, Grandma asked Chris to adjust the color on the TV set.  He spent several minutes adding blue and green and various colors to try to get a balance.  Grandma was not pleased with the colors he was applying.  Since she was watching "Bonanza" at the time, Chris made the whole screen green in honor of Loren Greene!  Grandma was not pleased.  

Those are my memories of meeting some famous people.  Possibly my generation will be the last to even know about them.

Psalm 49: 17 For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him.