A souvenir from time with a comic legend disappears...then resurfaces
Had he ever played a smaller house?
Back in the days of vaudeville perhaps, when, according to other comics, he didn't yet have an act. But certainly not since making a name for himself, starting with his regular radio appearances in the 1930's.
This, then, was his most sparse audience in years - just myself and a few others. Then again, nobody was expected at all; this was, after all, just a sound check.
Still, I (and I guess the few others) just had to be here, had to get as much of him as we could while he was around; comic names his size rarely graced our city with their presences.
We giggled appreciatively over each one-liner - maybe even loud enough that he could hear us - and relished every familiar "But I gotta tell ya..." that got him from joke to joke to joke.
I remembered the book that I kept in the pocket of my warm-up jacket, the one I brought to pass the time while I waited for the Messiah, and wondered which of the names therein would aspire to his mantle. It seemed unlikely that any of them would, their shaggy hair and adult material a stark contrast to his gentlemanly countenance and family-friendly wit. Somehow, though, I knew that times would change, and that either Gabe Kaplan or Franklin Ajaye or Jay Leno would become the new Bob Hope.
The mikes met with Bob's approval, and soon, the few of us who were there doubled, tripled, quadrupled. The band struck up his theme song, and Bob, lead by a golf club, strode upon the stage.
Though I had heard all of the material, I still laughed. It was not unlike my book, the one with the transcriptions of all the hot comics' routines. No matter how many times I read them, they still made me chortle.
The show ended with a standing ovation (of course!) and I left high on the thrill that I had spent time in the company of a living legend.
The bus home hit an especially long red light. I reached into my pocket, looking for...
...my book! My book with all those routines! It was gone!
Worse, it had my one souvenir of Bob in it: my ticket stub from the show!
Was it too late to hop off the bus to go to look for it? Damn! By now, the fairgrounds would be closing!
The next day, still in a state of complete despair, I ventured to our corner store to get my dad a pack of cigarettes (yes, they sold them to minors back then!) Walking by the used paperback display, I noticed something; another copy of it, that book, that book that I so loved!
What luck! This was not an easy book to find!
I grabbed it. Its front pages held another surprise: there it was, tucked undisturbed between Joan Rivers and Robert Klein: my souvenir of Bob!
This was my book, mine, thee one! Some enterprising so and so had obviously come across it after I left it behind, and - the dumb cluck! - had sold it for chump change! He hadn't even bother to rifle through its pages; he didn't even know what a treasure he had! Ha!!!
The cashier busy with a fussy costumer, I sneakily slipped the book back into the wooly pocket that had been its longtime home.
One pack of cigarettes later, myself, accompanied by some of the hottest rising comics in the industry - and better still, proof positive of my audience with Bob Hope - left the store.
Hey, storekeep: thanks for the memories!
