In that dreary year I spent roaming around Boldo avoiding fist fights I began to day dream that The Mamas and The Papas and I were the best of friends. I would someday move to California and go to all of their concerts for free and I would give them all tickets to my movies. This fantasy sustained me and held at bay a deep loneliness. I just knew I would get along famously with Mama Cass and Mama Michelle and I longed to meet Papa Denny the heartthrob tenor and Papa John the brilliant songwriter and musician. One look at them all sitting in that bath tub on the cover of their album and I was convinced that I was truly one of them.

The Mamas and The Papas were together for only two years. They broke up in 1968. The relationships between the members of the group constituted a soap opera of love requited and unrequited and loyalties forged and betrayed. They sang their story in the songs written for their four albums of original material. John and Michelle divorced in 1971. Cass Elliot died in London in August of 1974. Denny went back to his home in Nova Scotia. John continued to write and occasionally record but his drug and alcohol addiction took a heavy toll and he has never again reached the creative achievements he enjoyed while partnered with Michelle in the 1960's. Michelle forged a successful career as an actress in film and television and is enjoying herself and her second career to the very fullest.

I carried my scrapbook and my records with me when I left Boldo, Alabama and the South in 1976. I moved to New York City and then to Los Angeles where I began my career as an actor in films. Los Angeles immediately seemed to me an old friend and I have been at home here since I arrived in the Summer of 1977.

I met Michelle on my birthday (April 15th) in 1983 at The Palomino Nightclub in North Hollywood. Over the years we would see one another at parties and premieres and I finally asked her out to lunch in 1999. We met at Pane Vino in Hollywood and I brought with me a gift copy of the scrapbook I had started more than three decades before and finally confessed to my childhood obsession. We spent that beautiful late June afternoon in Pane Vinos' patio sharing our memories of days gone by and we became friends. Later that same summer we sat together in my dining room and sang along with a CD of "If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears" and I made sure the windows were open so the birds outside could hear it too.