My mom has spent the much of the last 12 months in a hospital or assisted living going through rehab for her broken hip. But her heart failure, diabetes, and immobility are really taking a toll on her will to keep fighting. This, in turn, takes a toll on her four children. She is back in her bedroom now in the apartment she shares with the oldest of my three sisters. I’ve been trying to talk to her as much as possible, to let her tell stories, if for no other reason than to pass some of them on to my daughter. But sometimes it’s the ones my mom doesn’t even mean to tell that are the most fascinating.
Since my father’s death in 2005 she has slowly jettisoned a lot of his material possessions. Some of that stuff fell, piece by piece, into my possession including (but not limited to): some paper-thin long-sleeve Ely Western-style shirts (pearl buttons!), 2 sets of mounted steer horns, a jean jacket and a small black suitcase with a lot of his personal effects from the army. After moving from a house into an apartment, my mom has started to give away some of the relics of her past as well. One thing she recently gave me was a piece of paper with Dick Clark’s autograph:
Best Always, Dick Clark
with the “Always” deformed by a single drop of liquid. I turned over the rectangular slip of paper to see that it was from a receipt book. $35 for rent of 5C3. October 21st, 1972-October 28th 1972.
“Who is Mr. Stephan, and why did you have his weekly rent receipt?”
“Oh, ha, well… I was with…um…a family friend, his wife, when we met Dick Clark. I didn’t have anything for him to autograph but she had that rent receipt in her purse. Richard Stephan…he went to jail for a long time.”
I perked up. “For what?”
“Well…he picked up a hooker. For one reason or another, she wouldn’t do what he wanted. So he shot her.”
“Shot her!? Killed her?”
“No, no, just in the leg. But the funny thing is, he had already driven her to the police station, telling her that he was a cop. He threatened to book her if she didn’t do, well, whatever it was he was asking. She tried to jump out of the car and he shot her.”
“Wow. Creepy.” And incredibly stupid. It turns out, Dick Clark has the second most interesting signature on this slip of paper.
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