Humpty Dumpty’s Wall

Humpty Dumpty’s Wall

By BR Chitwood

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall – Humpty had a great fall – all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again…

According to the rhyme, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall – well, gee, if he sat on a wall, it must have been, say, maybe a two-foot-tall wall. Yes, Humpty was ‘humpy’ and ‘dumpy’, but the fall could not have been so ‘bumpy or thumpy’. But, then, how would I know?

It is written that Humpty Dumpty was a canon during the English Civil War in the mid-1600’s AD during the siege of Colchester when the attacking army displaced Humpty from his position on a fortress wall – and, all the King’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Lewis Carroll wrote Through A Looking Glass and Humpty was an egg, and falling off a wall, a counter, a shelf would do irreparable damage to the egg and could not be put back together again.

Being reckless and restless in my mind-wandering, I thought of the ‘Mother who lived in a Shoe’, ‘Jack and his Bean Stalk’, ‘Jack and Jill’ and the hill, and, with a wry chuckle, thought about the ghastly Covid-19 Pandemic, the big city riots, the  collective mind of an Orb trying to find some ‘footing’ in a world that is loath to adjust to this restless world of dynamic change, this world where so much knowledge is doubling so rapidly and so furiously, where a multitude of frenetic minds and souls seek some reasonable facsimile to Nirvana.

With 7.8 billion people in our world of different learning abilities, IQ’s, needs and wants, it amazes me at times that sanity and sensibility can quell the vile thoughts of those most liable to rise to roles of anarchists, NOT because it is the right thing to do, but because they cannot see that glowing light on the hill.

Each of us breathe the same air, eat the same foods, enjoy the same activities, each in our own way viable, capable of good deeds and ideas for that all-peaceful world environment where hatred and incivility cannot operate.

Dreamers, Romantics, perhaps Fools, can write the sweet words and phrases that sound idyllic and even pedestrian, but, little by little, we can change and tame our ‘savage world’!

At least, it is a lovely mantra to carry with us from day to hopeful day.

BR Chitwood – June 18, 2020

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Knowledge Wrinkles

BY BR Chitwood

If you know that the Sun rises in the eastern sky after a night of darkness and brings the light of day… If you know that the Sun sets in the western sky after a day of light and brings back the darkness… If you know that the global sphere of Earth on which we live is constant in its elliptical orbital journey taking us through four seasons through all the unique hemispheres of this magnificent planet…

If you know these basic truths, you have knowledge. Of course, you know more than these fundamental facts, how we grow and multiply in population growth, how we find along the way our habits for living, how we find what it is we might like to do with our time for work, time for play, and time to consider the remarkable miracles in our world. We discover our attributes, those special talents we have, what we enjoy most in our patterns of living.

Some of us find our joy and talent in Sports and we become experts in throwing a football or making basketball shots that amaze the onlookers, slapping a puck thirty yards for a winning goal, shaping our golf game where we can precisely pick a six-iron, nine-iron, to reach our target green.

Some of us find fascination in Law, Medicine, public service, police work, and some like working on cars, busy with their hands building houses, big buildings, businesses.  Me, I enjoy ‘Writing’, finding enjoyment and fascination in the words I string together.

We grow in numbers. We immigrate. We emigrate to new lands, new habitats where the weather suits our clothes, where the sun keeps shining through the pouring rain, where we can bank off a northeast wind, and sail on a summer breeze.

That is the gentle side of thinking about what we do with our lives here on a Great Sphere we can only imagine how it got here, and what great intelligence made it. The theories are plentiful. The final truth is out there somewhere.

With different behaviors, different likes and dislikes, we people of different origin-mix try to make sense of it all, sometimes happy with our lives, sometimes angry and with force bring havoc, destruction, and death.

Why? How? Who? When? Where?

What factions are so tediously at work to cause these chaotic disturbances to a people who must in great quantity want to live peacefully and without rancor, hate, beatings, looting, big city riots?

Recently, a policeman subdued a man with a knee hard-pressed on a vital area of his neck, eventually causing death. This policeman and his three partners were arrested for the death as it was believed known by police guidelines that the kind of ‘knee-press’ on that area of the neck could be fatal.

For these unacceptable policemen’s actions, our entire country – the large cities, primarily, sustained riots, lootings, and deaths for weeks.

Most sensible people do not condone for one second the action taken by one Minneapolis cop and the lack of restraint by three other cops. Most sensible people want due justice done for the terrible mis-handling of this situation. Most sensible people would be angry as hell for this lack of police restraint and for the defying of police academy training and bad behavior.

Unfortunately, the Minneapolis Miscarriage of Justice brought out all the negative factions that seemingly wait in the shadows for such an action to make life miserable for business owners and the good and honest people of a democratic nation who want nothing more than their peaceful coexistence.

The Fractious Factions know who they are, and the majority of our country must know who they are as well…people who want their ‘big  money’ Power Brokers (groups and names omitted, but many patriots know who they are) to bring a great nation to its knees.

When we allow dirty politicians and the fringe groups who cross our borders to dictate their transported hatred and policies to the United States tax-paying citizens, there is great fear for our country…and we tax payers are footing the bill for all this ugliness.

In the beginning, there was the mention of knowledge – what we know. When I see our statues that speak of our history, when I hear and see our US History NOT being taught in some of our schools, when I see our colleges and universities using indoctrination techniques with our kids, I cringe, I kneel, and I pray.

By BR Chitwood – June 17, 2020

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©Stasis in the City

Photo Art by Randy Colas – Unsplash.com

By BR Chitwood

As I walked alone on a side street something was interfering with my music system, causing my ears to ache in crazy quakes. I stopped, leaned against a building and yanked out the ear plugs. My head was pounding with a piercing whistle-like shrill that was about to take me down with the pain.

I shook my head, hoping to kill the sound, my back flat against a brick building that seemed to be shaking. Then I heard the roaring and rumbling ahead of me at a major intersection. The noise increased, loud and ugly shouting, sirens blaring, mobs of angry people throwing bricks, rocks, other items I could not identify.

The madness within the cluttered masses lining the wide thoroughfare, the vile screaming, the fighting erupting all around me, completely shattered my consciousness, I turned back to the side street and slid down the wall to the sidewalk, totally, utterly in a hell of which I am sorry to say I did have an inkling. I could hear the sounds, and I was possessed by two alternating mind choices that flowed through me in some grippingly slow agony. I could only think in one dimension and there was no physical pain, just one pulsing shutter coursing through a body controlled by fear – my body now mute, unworking, paralyzed by the terror around me…an acknowledgement I had wished not to have.

I could not see myself, but I could imagine myself, sitting there on the sidewalk in the midst of some awful societal revolt, a paralyzed glob of humanity trying to figure out what was happening in the world from which I had been absent for some weeks.

‘Welcome Home, citizen, to your new country’.

I have never been active in any sort of civic programs of displays. A loner, one could easily call me. Yet, I have read the history books, their common themes of Corruption and Power, and have come to believe some wild scenarios – and, sadly, not of the spiritually uplifting kind.

Yes, news reaches me, and I know that a ‘World Epidemic’ known as Corona Virus – Covid-19 – exists. I know of the tens of thousands of deaths caused by Covid-19, and I know the slim parts of political power ploys and the players in the game. It does not take a brilliant mind to understand that ‘Power Corrupts’ – pure, simple, ‘Power Corrupts’. Money, Power, Sex Favors, any necessary means for the expediency of Money and Power.

Yes, news reaches me, and the sad truth is this Game of World Power, Nation Power, State Power, City Power, County Power, Business Power, will be playing out in every historical millennium…until, perhaps, death takes us to a home where Love is the only Power, the only Pre-set for Eternity.

Yet, here, on this city sidewalk, hunched against a weathered brick building, I can still hope I am wrong, that the world, its states, its cities, its People can determine a World worthy of Life and Love.

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©Stasis in the City

By BR Chitwood – June 15, 2020

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©️Filter Me

‘BUY SITE’ for above Author Bio – 90% True: mybook.to/B004ZGWQY8

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©️Filter Me

By BR Chitwood  

Filter from me the sad, weak spots of this Orb’s Voyage – filter away those memories that only reawaken strife, suffering, and thousands of stinging tears…  

The journey began on a lonely bucolic spot in Appalachia, its soil rich with it offerings, its mountains and green space alive with  snakes and wild beasts of prey whose nomadic nights of stealth searching were cut short by gunshots from the peasants who tilled the soil and raised their families with a roiling mixture of nascent anger and distrust both the displaced Cherokee and the stalwart, distrusting immigrants carried in their blood. 

These daring  immigrants who crossed the seas from England for better lives in a land that held the only promise open to them met the disgruntled red men and women and somehow forged a bond of sorts until the massive and deadly ‘Trail of Tears’ march forced by a government of questionable intent would bring the ultimate end of the Cherokee Nation.

That bit of history was important to me as it would be ultimately followed by ‘The Great Depression’ that would mark its time on my generation as it would on my parents. Because of the giant Economic impact of ‘The Great Depression’, no jobs, no stimulus plans in place, families were uprooted. A husband and father would often need to go into another state to find work to sustain his family, often in the process bringing divorces, suicides, crime waves and a societal near-collapse… The wealthy survived this period in our history, but this group was not without the awful tempo of the times.

My life began in the frantic after-period of the depression, a sad mistake I’m sure – not that a loving mother and an absent father would make that admission. I remember some of our living areas being in run-down neighborhoods in Knoxville, Tennessee and some of the terror moments when my Dad beat my Mom or my sister. I remember sitting in a paralytic fear, body trembling, my mind only able to stare catatonically straight ahead in fear. 

My parents were divorced, but my Dad came frequently to visit, and these were the times to dread and to fear. My Dad did not like my Mom’s family, felt they had caused a lot of the problems in the marriage, so he embedded those thoughts inside his head. I loved my Dad, and he never hurt me, but he did beat my Mom and my Sis…he was a product of the times, working out of state at times, always wanting to work for one of the rail carriers – which he did ultimately.

During the depression, I was sent to live with my Dad’s folks, and my sister, to Mom’s folks. It would not be too long until my Mom was able to bring my sister and me into a family environment. Mom worked as a telephone operator, in war assembly plants during WW2, and as a Boarding House Cook.

As one might easily conclude from this ‘Filter Piece’, life does indeed shape us. I have had a full life, so much for which to be thankful, beautiful ladies, love, acting, serving my country in the US Navy, and I’ve written twenty-one+ books. There, in that story-land world I find my ultimate peace and full satisfaction. Being fascinated by how life shapes us all, I have a fetish for fictionalizing true crimes, getting inside the heads of people who walk down those perilous roads.

My latest book, THE POWER MERCHANTS, was just released in May, 2020. It is a novel for our times, complete with the World Pandemic, Political Crises, Love, Murder, and a Billionaire’s evil penchant for ‘underage girls’ and currying favor from top-level politicians in the Federal Government.  

I hope you will buy a copy at your Amazon Location and leave a book review. The following AMAZON BUY LINK should take you to your own Amazon BUY location:

YOUR AMAZON BUY SITE: mybook.to/thepowermerchants

BR Chitwood – June 5, 2020

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The Power Merchants

Just released this month, here is the first book review for 

A Novel by BR Chitwood 

Book Review by John Dolan (Wordsmith estraidinaire)

Rating: 5-Stars

by Diogenes

Author Billy Ray Chitwood is at his best in this tale of lawless adventure.
Most of Chitwood’s books that I’ve read so far deal with themes of crime, individual purpose and romance, but with ‘The Power Merchants’ there is a political message to the story that I don’t recall in his other works. But of course, this being a Chitwood novel, a healthy dollop of love interest is never far away. This time the main protagonist – advocate Bradley Bennett – finds himself falling for the platinum-blonde police officer Penny Sawyer amidst the surrounding chaos of corporate skulduggery, illicit sex, corruption in high places, the political elite, and rampaging hit men. (In a nod to the present day, Chitwood even throws in Covid-19 for good measure.)
Highly recommended for lovers of action novels with a large helping of romance. 

Hope you will buy and enjoy this latest novel by Billy Ray:

LINK TO AMAZON BUY SITES WORLDWIDE

for: “The Power Merchants”

  Click here to Buy:    mybook.to/ThePowerMerchants

BR Chitwood – May 31, 2020

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A New World Order?

By BR Chitwood

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Too much!

Much too much!

Enter, Corona Virus Pandemic!

We have automatic washers and dryers for our clothes when they become too soiled and odorous.

We have become so ‘knowledge-driven’ that we re-double all that we know within weeks and months, NOT years, not decades, not centuries, NOT since ‘Sputnik’ and our frenzy to satisfy every need, want, and wish, NOW!

Enter, Corona Virus Pandemic!

We have RIOTS in our cities by the citizens and denizens when they feel an abuse by our official peace-keeping men in blue defiling the ‘letters of our laws’.

We have convicts released on our streets, some who immediately go back to their ugly criminal activities.

We have countries that vie for a dubious supremacy in the world’s trade economies, countries with totalitarian rule and governance, not freedom and liberty for all.

Enter, Corona Virus Pandemic.

This ‘mind’ with which I work is not of the brilliant shine. My mind roots itself in simple origins, rutted country lanes, out-houses, and kerosene lamps, a prosaic mind that cannot do quantum leaps with his manufacturing of ideas that could solve our country’s issues of so much importance…poverty, equality, parity, crime, punishment, progressive, conservative – the prodigious cycles of thinking that must go into these ‘We the People’ elements.

What will the world elite thinkers devise to solve these most confounding and profound twenty-first century and beyond dichotomies of problem solving: peace/war; high IQ/low IQ; art/theatre crime/punishment; life/death; et al.

Peace/War… Can the world find a common ground in prevention of war? Will there be in our knowledge doubling some new miraculous computer chip to defy those who would start a war? Will there be a United Nations with Teeth? A Constant Standing War Council who will convene regularly to determine through viable computer input what areas of the globe might need censuring and Stop clauses?

High IQ/Low IQ… Will there be an enlightened world where new studies promote new colonies being established for people who can fairly compete for jobs in an environment that places no stigmata on people who are disabled by genetic wiring, and, who can determine of their own Free Will the path they will take – with safe-guards against forcible mandates.

Art/Theatre… Will there be new Civic choices, new voluntary standards for the artists, actors, show performers, who want more options for their talent? Options that are provided by an Artist Commission devoted to the growth of a healthy and communal Entertainment lobby that is non-political by AC Dictate.

Crime/Punishment… Will we have a Justice System with new penalties for particular crimes? Will there be Penal Colonies established for the criminal habitués, those people who clearly show evidence that recidivism is impossible. Will those colonies be in habitats that are unappealing, dark and dreary?

Life/Death… Should our Medical experts determine without a shadow of a doubt that a person is dying in a most inhumane way, will the suffering end for the aggrieved with an injection?

Will multi Micro-Biological Tanks be able to do patrols through our blood veins, bringing new cells to replace the old, bringing cures for cancer, for heart conditions, for arthritis, and regenerate vibrant, youthful new human beings? Are these health crises truly to become extinct with the exciting work of Micro-Biologists?

Enter, Corona Virus Pandemic!

Is the Corona-V-19 with all its calamity and deaths a prelude to all the marvels that will shape this century and other centuries ahead. Are we beginning a new and colossal history forged by our Divine Deity?

Do we leave a chaotic world of our making, a burning cinder in Space for the fusion of God’s and Science’ New World Order?

BR Chitwood – June 1, 2020

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A Day in the Life…

Image Art by: Soroush Zargar – Unsplash.com

This dull-ass job is crap!

I am nothing but a frigging two-bit automatom, stamping tiny numbers onto white plastic wiring that will find their home on passenger airline jets in their electronic gear, but not before I tediously solder the metal wires inside the white plastic to their connecting joints – all to be approved by swilling quality control coffee drinkers in clean white smocks.

This job is the dull-ass pits!

Why do coffee-break times only go for fifteen minutes and lunch-breaks for thirty. This big-ass aircraft plant is for the shits, man, like a sterile prison where wire-stamping machines like the one I am on, pulling endless white plastic wires through a small fixed eye hole contraption on a long, long bench that goes forever down this interior part of the huge building that is called the sub-assembly Building ‘A’ – yeah, there is a ‘B’, a ‘C’, and a ‘D’…maybe, more.

Oh, and there are the arrogant guys who are referred to as the ‘Union Stewards’ (can you believe this crap?) and they live up to their frigging notoriety. The jerks march up to you while you are working and bark out orders, ‘do this’, ‘do that’, ‘keep your nose clean’, etc. You know what I’m saying here? The assholes are telling us how to breathe and not complain, what to say to the management if we talk to them.

Okay, I am bitter, if you have not gotten that far in this little ring-a-ding I am writing here. I have never ‘til this week worked in this kind of job, a lousy job controlled by a Union. Now, I can understand the rumors, the cold and hardass facts about Unions and big corporations…hey, yeah, it is a free country in which we live, and, hey, if this is your thing, come and get it. It is not for me.

For me, this is only temporary. I am young, just recently graduated from an Electronic Trade School, and this is my first real job of any kind. This is the job the school set-up for me…three hours in this plant and I want to take that bit of paper that I graduated and cram it up someone’s ying-yang at the school. Yeah, I know more about Electronics now, but ‘stamping those stupid white plastic wires! C’mon, it’s for morons, man.

These shifts at the huge jet airline plant affected most of my awake time. (Might have had some nightmares on troubled sleep nights.)

Remember, I was young – twenty-one years of age, so what the hell did I know? I looked at life as being then, as in, ‘NOW’, and I likely figured I was stuck in that horrible environment. To be fair, I am reasonably sure that some people who worked in that ‘Day-and- Night Mare’ perhaps enjoyed the pace the job required.

Yes, young, with some new realities in my life, some devastating to the ego and psyche, not to mention the heart and soul (then, maybe they are all one and the same…but, then, few women and men have lives sustained by all things beautiful, joy, love. peace. Some sorrows must enter at some point, some events that one spends a lifetime trying to understand.

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NOTE:    This was one of my first jobs after my discharge from the US Navy – before college, before any great transformation to social grace. This is most likely how I could have described the job referenced in the post. Thank God I was not there that long before a much better opportunity came up.

College, the English Poets and an English Major for my BA got my life in a reasonable place…not that life did not have a lot more to offer in way of disappointments, successes, and love.  (BRC)

BR Chitwood – May 27, 2020

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©Imagine

Imagine your day beginning with blaring

New orders and bleak sameness…

Imagine new restrictions of a totalitarian

Regime, darkly, rigidly enforced…

Imagine new demands from a deep-state, a

Pledge of allegiance to the ‘Party’…

Imagine night-time curfews with electric

Blackouts and roaming patrols…

Imagine a new History without noble

Heroes and Patriots to honor…

Imagine your country with no borders

And angry demanding mobs…

Imagine the air you breathe filled with

Pestilent and toxic fumes of death…

Imagine no Libraries, no book stores to

Honor loves and happiness of living…

Imagine no memories of our brave millions of

Fallen Heroes Who sacrificed lives in Wars…

Imagine the Bigotry and Hatred in the Minds of

Fools who killed our dreams, Our Freedom and Liberty.

©Imagine

By BR Chitwood

MEMORIAL DAY –  May25, 2020

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The Truth of Kay – ‘aka Kate’ –

Image Art by: Christian Holzinger – Unsplash.com

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©The Truth of Kay

‘AKA Kate’

by BR Chitwood

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In a post a few days ago I wrote a post entitiled, ‘A Pimple on Her Cheek’. While the short story was all that I wished it to be, a lingering nostalgia occupied my mind…there was indeed more to that story from a past that will stay active in my oft wandering mind until the end of my time.

There was indeed a beautiful raven-haired lady named, ‘Kate’, her real name was ‘Kay’, an actual name, an actual person, with whom I shared in a past time some happy, sad, confused and affecting weeks and months, drinking the nectar of love which I had never ever really known…

I had just left a marriage and three children after ten swirling years of Appalachian Mind Control, that is to say, a mind unable at the time to catalog and make sense of the world around me, a mind too young to make reasoned choices and decisions, a mind too eager to go to the next moronic level.

With the divorce, I began my odd California wandering. Bakersfield was a favorite spot so I decided to settle there for a while in morose mind-handling, feeling sorry for myself, sipping my cocktails, in and out of sorrow with my thoughts about my beautiful kids, when…

Kay Bruce came into my life, and she was a wonderful elixir to my grieving soul, that prior Appalachian Mind Control thing. Not only was she a needed and wonderful tonic, she was also beautiful, so delightfully English, a smart lady with a refined accent, long dark hair, and a sympathetic cushion for my cluttered head filled with bible belt guilt, remorse, and self-serving melancholy.

Kay and I were together for a time and she pampered me with her love and her good cooking, tried to assuage my mind and soul quakes. We went to nice restaurants, even met the great Hoagy Carmichael’s son, Randy, he a pianist of the first order, and we had a few pal-around weeks…even met his father, Hoagy, at an Airport dinner. Hoagy was between stops.

Beautiful Kay, for whom I did care so much, loved me, fed me her wonderfully prepared meals, and I fear I might have broken her heart. Too unsettled, at a crossroad in my life at which I could not emotionally deal or maturely understand. Hmm, perhaps that is still so.

Beautiful Kay, a singer with a lovely voice, while singing a wistful song of love and loss, all the while sadly and steadily looking at me as I sat solemn at the lounge bar of the nightclub. With tears about to come from a place of pain and poignancy on both our faces, I left the lounge and drove off into the night – where the tears did fall and I felt as small as a man could ever be.

That was the last time I saw the lady of beauty and love, but the haunt of her memory is there in the darkness as I try to sleep with all the crowded days and nights of yesterday.

Beautiful Kay, so many years have passed and yet your memory will never leave me.

I pray your life has found much happiness in it… Shortly after our time together I wrote a ballad for you. Were it possible, I would, together with Randy Carmichael, hop the first Time Machine to where you are, and I would sing it for you.

Here are the words…sing them softly, Kay. Bless you, dear Lady…

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©Eyes That Dance

So beautiful the night

So beautiful and bright

So wrapped up in delight

Am I…

With you here near to me

Then heaven cannot be

So very far away,

Just but a kiss away,

Oh, you,

With the eyes that dance.

Eyes that dance,

Eyes that dance,

Put me in a trance,

I don’t stand a chance –

I’m in love with the night

So beautiful,

And, you,

With the eyes that dance.

©by BR Chitwood

May 22. 2020

[Please forgive my huge Romantic, generational leap back!]

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Chasen’s Restaurant and Good Memories

 By BR Chitwood

I saw Ronald Reagan one time some years ago in West Hollywood as a friend and I walked some thirty feet away. Not President at the time but thick into politics. He glanced at my friend and me, and I lifted an arm and waved a hello to him. He gave us that patented smile, tip of the head, and raised his right arm in a return wave.

Not monumental, of course, but I was a young man at the time, having dinner with the stars at glittery Chasen’s Restaurant on Beverly Boulevard and at other West Hollywood haunts.

That one incident, a wave to a future US President, gave me the unique, simple pleasure to write about it these many years later and to open my aging mind to all the wonderful memories from those days in the ‘fast lane’ and neon lights of Los Angeles.

There are no earth-shattering declarations in this post, just some fond memories shared with my few blog friends and anyone else who might find these nosy tidbits of interest.

Well, maybe one declaration needs to be made, and, that is, the author of this post did live in Marina del Rey, CA, for some years, a short distance to the Pacific and Santa Monica, and I did have contact with some of the awesome people mentioned herein, but the bulk of my acting, film, stage, television commercials, modeling, took place in Phoenix, and I was represented by Bobby Ball Talent Agency who also had offices in Los Angeles.

One tidbit: Nick Nolte, a star who has so many Oscar-worthy films to date, was a Phoenix talent represented by Bobby Ball Talent Agency in Phoenix at the time, shortly before the “Rich Man Poor Man” TV series vaulted him to fame as a premier leading actor in Hollywood…

Nick was living in Phoenix at the time and enjoyed being on either side of the camera. Nick did the photo shots for my Bobby Ball ‘composite’ (the pics and acting credits given to potential seekers of talent for TV commercials, film productions, still modeling, magazine cover shots, et al). Nick was also involved, as was I, in the Phoenix Little Theater live stage productions. Along with Nick and other talents, I was privileged to do some Greyhound Dog Racing Tracks film work. I was chosen for some Shell Oil training films on location in Northern California and Chicago, Cigna Insurance commercials, magazine covers, corporation business reports…plus, many TV commercials, local in the Phoenix area, also regional, and national.

Nick and I had coffee at the apartment he shared at the time with a lovely lady, and it lodged in my mind that this guy was going to make it all the way. Soon after, I moved to California. Some few years later, I learned that Nick was to make his dreams become reality. Nick earned many awards along his way to stardom…

Along my way, I was invited by Screen Actors Guild president at the time, Patty Duke, to become a member of SAG. I declined the invitation as I was full-time employed with a major ElHi textbook publishing company.

Back to Chasen’s Restaurant and the fringe benefits of an erstwhile interloper…

Chasen’s Restaurant was open some sixty-odd years before closing in April 1995. Not long after its opening, Chasen’s quickly became the lunch and dinner choice for the mega-stars of Hollywood. Think of your favorite star in that period Hollywood panoply of stars, and he/she was most likely a regular at Chasen’s. Autographed pictures of Hollywood stars covered the walls.

Chasen’s was famous for its Chili and Hobo Steaks and a ‘Flame of Love’ cocktail. It was documented that Elizabeth Taylor ordered Chasen’s Chili flown to Rome while she was shooting the film, Cleopatra. It was doubtful that Chasen’s diners were there specifically for the food – I do not remember its popularity being about the food…some would say the food was not all that good. It was most definitely a restaurant of fun and frivolity, and the stars, I can believe, loved every moment they spent in that beautiful edifice. Chasen’s was the place to be.

At my first dinner at Chasen’s , I chatted for some moments with Janet Leigh, an aging but still beautiful lady of screen…she was the star of Psycho, an Alfred Hitchcock film. While talking to Ms. Leigh on my exit, Gregory Peck stopped to chat with someone in a booth at the other end of the room…I could not see well enough to determine with whom he was talking.

I am still unsure why my lady friend and I were seated in the room where the stars sat – non-stars were normally seated in the back room. I will easily go with the idea that they considered me a up and coming star.

(Ah, let me bask in that ray for a few moments…did not happen, but in another life? Who knows?)

It was Booth #2 in Chasen’s, his favorite restaurant, where Ronald Reagan proposed to Nancy Davis. Some decades later, Reagan would bring Margaret Thatcher to the illustrious Restaurant for dinner. That Booth #2, along with the booths that seated on a regular basis Jimmy Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock would be sent to the new Ronald Reagan Library.

Jimmy Stewart had his Bachelor Party at Chasen’s in 1945.

I happily ate up the tales of the old Chasen’s historic period…

One tale was that Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre got drunk one night at Chasen’s Bar, rolled the restaurant’s large safe out the door and abandoned it on Beverly Boulevard.

Another tale, for fans of Orson Welles, Chasen’s was designated by fate to become the restaurant where Mr. Welles would fire John Houseman in a rather angry manner and threw a can of Sterno at his target…the Sterno was aflame when tossed.

The old Chasen’s closed its doors in April of 1995 and the new Chasen’s, only opened for a few years, closed in 2000. Milton Berle booked the new Chasen’s Restaurant for his ninety-years birthday party. At its beginning, the new Chasen’s began with a boom, new and old stars showing up in their Rolls Royces and Limos, but the initial charge was blunted by new and flashy restaurants opening and getting much of the Star-Business.

Perhaps it is what old men do, maybe, even, old women: reminisce and ponder the lives they have lived, not that this in any way declares a forfeit for the time I have left. I have much more to share with the twenty-one books I have on Amazon, and I would like to report are selling in the tens of thousands…the two key words in that sentence – sure, you knew all along, would like.

Remember, with the Covid-19 isolation order still in place, my time for ‘chasing ladies’ and carousing, well, it would not be a realistic scenario, I mean, where would I go? No bars, restaurants, cocktail lounges, none would be open. Brothels are no fun. Maybe a short trip to Wyoming or South Dakota or Florida would be in order – guess those states are doing some carousing and chasing… My glibness does not become me, nor does it belong in this short sweet memory post.

Chasen’s bar would be a good choice but they are no longer part of anyone’s  itinerary.

Plus, I can no longer afford a Chasen’s.

Maybe I will write a Chasen fantasy story…

I just remembered, Chasen’s had at one time a Sauna and a Barber Shop, but, in those days, I could afford the tab.

Gee Whiz, I have had a great life

Okay, enough reminiscing… I will take an Alleve and write some more tomorrow.

 A Look Back in time to:

©Chasen’s Restaurant and Good Memories

       By BR Chitwood

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THE MAN WHO ENDED ‘THE COLD WAR’

President Ronald Reagan

President Ronald Reagan –

His Favorite Restaurant:

Chasen’s Restaurant