Rodolfo Acosta

            On Thursday morning I finished memorizing “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords and found a set on La bôite a chanson (Song Box), which I transcribed. Ultimate Guitar and another site had the same chords. I’ll look some more tomorrow and then start working them out. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the third session of four. For the first 2/3s of the session it continued to have tuning problems but settled down for the final stretch. I audio and video recorded the session as I will every day until October 15. I almost made it through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on the second take and then hit a wrong chord. After a couple more fumbled takes I finally got through but fumbled a word and probably got a chord wrong. I’m almost halfway through the project and I don’t know if I’ve gotten one good take of that song.

            I weighed 88.35 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. On Yonge Street a skateboarder jumped off his board in front of me and I almost hit it but he grabbed it just in time. On the way back I stopped at Freshco where the grapes were $8.80 a kilo but I found a flyer for No Frills that shows them for $3.17 a kilo. Since I knew I could do a price match I got seven bags of green grapes. I also bought two packs of raspberries, bananas, a small whole chicken, a pack of ground sirloin, a bag of crinkle cut fries, two packs of Full City Dark coffee, and a jar of salsa. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos at 18:00. I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I worked on synchronizing the old concert video with the studio audio. The original Christian and the Lions band at this El Mocambo concert in 1994 played the song more slowly than Brian Haddon and I did in the studio. To line the video up with the audio throughout most of the song so far I’ve just had to cut out small sections of the video timeline. This time I started with the third line of the second verse. I made cuts before “and on and on”; “from coffeeshop”; “sometimes I think”, and “one millisecond”. That synchronized them up until “careening into limbo”, which are the last three words of the second verse and which are also behind in the video. I’ll cut out about half a second before those words tomorrow and that should line things up leading to the second chorus. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video but didn’t have time to review the rest of September 9. I’m still converting the MP4 videos the camera makes to H264AVI format. I should have all the September 11 videos converted by the end of the day and convert part A of September 12 overnight. 

            I sautéed the ground sirloin and added a jar of salsa. I had a potato with gravy and a ladleful of the sirloin chili while watching episode 11 of The Big Valley. 

            Mariano, a childhood friend of Nick is the son of a woman who cleaned the Barkley house. When they grew up Nick gave him a calf. Mariano moved back to Mexico and became a rancher. Now he has returned to Stockton, having crossed the border with 93 head of cattle to take them to market. Nick inspects his herd and says they need to be fattened. Mariano has a week before the market opens and so Nick offers to rent him the north pasture at a penny an acre. After moving his cattle there one of them dies. His main hand Rico says it’s anthrax but Mariano refuses to accept that. He says it’s Trail Fever and tells them to bury the animal and keep quiet about it. The next morning Eugene Barkley tells Nick and Heath that one of their hands counted Mariano’s cattle this morning although not on the family’s orders, perhaps expecting to find more than 93 because of theft. But what he found was that when he counted there were 91. When Mariano sees the second cow dead Rico again declares that it’s anthrax. He believes there is a miasma in the pasture that is causing it and wants to move the herd out before more are killed. Mariano insists to all his men that it’s not anthrax but rather trail fever. Nick and Heath go out to Mariano’s camp to investigate. They see a dead cow and agree that it’s anthrax. Nick says not to move a single cow out of that pasture. Nick and Heath gather their hands and make sure they all have rifles and send them out to surround the pasture where Mariano’s herd is grazing. Mariano tries to move his herd out but they stop him. Nick tells him that anthrax spreads like a brushfire and could kill 3000 head in less than a week. Nick walks through the herd and sees another one drop. He says the herd has to stay behind the fence but Heath says they have to be shot. Mariano again tries to move them out but Nick says they will kill every one that leaves. Mariano thinks it’s the pasture that is causing the deaths. Nick says no one knows how anthrax starts and sometimes it suddenly stops. That evening at the Barkley residence the butler Silas says everything is going to be fine and that he has seen anthrax suddenly disappear. Heath confronts Nick and insists that Mariano’s entire herd has to be shot. Nick says that when he and Mariano were ten years old Mariano used to come with his mother when she scrubbed the floors. If he played with Nick his mother made him call him “Senor Nick”. That night at dinner, Eugene brings up the idea of vaccination but nobody else in the family has heard of it. He says they are experimenting with it at his university. It’s a new technique developed by a scientist named Louis Pasteur. Eugene says he’s seen it work. Hawthorn, one of Eugene’s professors has been injecting anthrax germs into healthy cattle. The others don’t know what germs are. Eugene explains they are so tiny they can only be seen under a microscope but they cause anthrax and other diseases. Heath makes fun and suggests the germs are something like faeries. Eugene leaves for Berkely. The next day there is a standoff. The Barkleys and their men won’t let Mariano’s cattle out and Mariano won’t let anyone in. Eugene returns home with Professor Hawthorn and the vaccine. Victoria takes them out to Mariano’s herd and gets Mariano to lower his rifle to talk with her. The idea that anthrax spreads from cow to cow is new to Mariano because people at that time believed that it came from the ground. Mariano says there is only one way he will believe the vaccine is safe. If the Barkleys inject it into their $10,000 prize bull (It would be worth more than a quarter of a million today). They bring the bull but Mariano insists further that the vaccine could be water and so they need to bring the bull in to mix with his herd to prove the vaccine can work. They bring it in and as soon as the bull collapses the professor injects it with the vaccine. Shortly after that however the bull dies. Mariano is about to begin shooting his own cattle when suddenly the bull comes back to life and stands again. Mariano’s herd is saved and everybody is friends again. This was the most interesting episode so far. 

            Rico was played by Rodolfo Acosta, who was born in Chamizal, Chihuahua, which at the time was considered US territory but is now part of Mexico. He studied drama at UCLA. He won a scholarship to the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico. He was married to Jeannine Cohen but she divorced him in the 50s when she found out he was secretly sharing an apartment in Mexico City with Ann Sheridan. His film debut was in Soy un Profugo. He appeared in several Emilio Fernandez films. This led to work in Hollywood. He starred in The Tijuana Story. He was typecast as mostly villains. He played Vaquero the ranch hand on the first two seasons of The High Chaparral but was fired because of drinking.

September 20, 1994: Ejawsay took my picture

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday I posed for an afternoon class at Central Technical School. There I ran into Ejawsay and she took my picture. In the evening I worked at the Ontario College of Art until 22:00 and so I was late for my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. My co-host Mary Milne had gotten the event started and I missed Matthew’s first time reading his poetry. Adina was there when I arrived.

Richard Long

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the sixth and seventh verses of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have the whole song in my head tomorrow. 

            I weighed 88.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 89.15 kilos before lunch. I had a slice of multigrain bread with margarine and five-year-old cheddar. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. In Koreatown a guy came running across the street between two parked cars and almost collided with me. He stopped himself just in time. A few years ago someone didn’t stop himself and I slammed right into him, damaging my bike. 

            I weighed 88.2 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:21. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I synchronized the old concert video with the studio audio for the first chorus. I had to cut some of the video to line them up. I also synchronized video and audio for the first two lines of the second verse: “Well I walked along the street today, same route that I took yesterday”. After that the video falls slightly behind again. I’ll deal with that tomorrow. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video. The video for September 8 finished being converted to H264AVI. The 29 gig file got boiled down to 8 gigs. It’s weird how the first time I converted a 25 gig file to that format it ended up at 1 gig. It’s still the best option I’ve found though. I finished reviewing the September 8 video. I think there’s something wrong with the Gibson electric guitar. It goes out of tune way too often. I think the only song that sounded okay was “Leave the Naïve Alone”. Also the light was a bit harsh for the video. I reviewed the first ten minutes of the September 9 video and it was a cloudy day so the light was less harsh. On top of that I was playing the Martin acoustic and it sounded much better as well. 

            I steamed a bag of shrimp and mixed them with two ramen cakes and their hot garlic flavour packs. I had the soup with a beer while watching episode 10 of The Big Valley. 

            Heath has just brought a package to mail on the night train and is walking along the street when he hears and then sees a struggle in the dark. Then he hears a man in pain. He rushes over to find the dead body of respected citizen Colonel Asheby. He hears someone running down the alley and sees them climbing the wall so he goes after him. He catches Korby Kyles and they fight until Korby surrenders and says he didn’t kill him. There is an inquiry and Heath testifies. Jacob Kyles comes to ask Jarrod to defend his son because no other lawyer will touch the case because Korby refuses to plead guilty. Jarrod turns him down as well but one can see from his face that he questions that decision. The problem is that nobody likes the Kyles. They are the opposite of the Barkleys in almost every way and it’s true that they are criminals and so no one doubts that Korby committed the murder of a man who will be missed by everyone. Jarrod’s sister Audra is involved with planning the new orphanage and the widow of Colonel Asheby is financing it. Audra is worried that Jarrod is considering taking Korby’s case because Mrs. Asheby may withdraw her support. The more public opinion is convinced of Korby’s guilt the more Jarrod wonders about it. He tells Heath there is a shadow of possible but not probable doubt. Heath tells Jarrod not to turn Korby down just because he saw him do it. Jarrod goes to see Korby in jail. Korby shocks Jarrod with the accusation that Colonel Asheby was the middle man for the opium trade of all Central California. Korby worked for him to carry the stuff to the buyers. He says what was happening in the alley that night was the payoff by the leader of a Chinese gang. Korby had come to get his money and saw the Chinese man stab the colonel. Korby says he pulled the knife out and chased the Chinese man. Jarrod says the story is so wild he almost believes it. Korby says, “Thanks Jarrod” but Jarrod says, “Don’t you ever call me Jarrod!” Jarrod visits the Kyles place and it’s pathetically run down. While he’s talking to Jacob, Korby’s brothers try to steal some silver decorations from Jarrod’s saddle. Jarrod catches and stops him. Jarrod’s whole family besides Heath is against Jarrod taking Korby’s case. Victoria says it will hurt Heath’s reputation to dispute what he saw. Jarrod thinks he’s off the hook when he hears that Matt Cooper is going to take Korby’s case, but then he hears Matt say he thinks Korby is guilty because he looks guilty. Heath is forging a new branding iron late at night when Jacob and his two sons come to threaten him against testifying in Korby’s trial. He refuses and so they beat him up, saying they’ll burn the house down. After that Jarrod’s family is shocked when he says he’s going to take the case. Mrs. Asheby withdraws her support of the orphanage. The trial begins and Korby is on the stand. D.A. Greene is questioning him about the curved knife that was pulled from the colonel. Korby says he wouldn’t own such a knife. He demonstrates by throwing his own knife across the room to stick in the wall behind the audience. Jarrod calls Asa Harmon to the stand. He is a special detective employed by Senator Harrison’s investigating committee. He confirms what Korby told Jarrod about Asheby, who was for twenty years a prime mover of an opium ring dealing to the Chinese gangs from here to San Francisco. Jarrod calls Heath to the stand. Jarrod says the nearest street lamp to that alley is thirty meters away and could not have lit what Heath claims he saw. On top of that there was no moon that night. He convinces Heath that he may be mistaken about what he saw. But Greene calls train engineer Henry Bingham to the stand, who says the light from his train shone on the colonel and on Korby Kyles in the alley and he recognized both faces. Bingham points out Korby, who panics and tries to run out of the courtroom. Jarrod feels bad about defending Korby but his family forgives him. 

            Jarrod Barkley was played by Richard Long, who had no intention of becoming an actor but took a drama class for the easy credit. He went straight from high school acting to film acting. His movie debut was in Tomorrow is Forever. He played Tom Kettle, one of Ma and Pa Kettle’s sons in that series of films. He co-starred in Cult of the Cobra, Fury at Gunsight Pass, Tokyo After Dark, and House On Haunted Hill. He played Rex Randolph on both Bourbon Street Beat and 77 Sunset Strip. He co-starred in the sitcom Nanny and the Professor and did voices for two animated versions of the show. His last film was Death Cruise. He was married to Lucille Ball’s second cousin Suzan Ball in 1954 until she died 14 months later.

September 19, 1994: I posed all day at OCA

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I posed from 9:00 to 16:00 at the Ontario College of Art.

Audrey Dalton

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the sixth verse of “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian. There are eight verses left to nail down. 

            I memorized the fifth verse of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments to my translation. There are three verses left to learn. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice for the first of four sessions. I spent a lot of time doing retakes of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” because I kept fumbling. At one point when it looked like I was going to make it all the way through the camera shut down to cool off. I finished the song, restarted the camera and made it through to the end, although I think I hit a wrong chord on the finale. There’s a guy who busks in the morning in front of the Dollarama. He has a guitar, which I guess he plays, but primarily he has a loud sound system and plays mostly Beatles songs over and over. Usually he starts around the time I’m finishing recording but this time he not only started early but decided to set himself up in front of my building and so he was a lot louder. My recording might be a write off this time if his karaoke was overwhelming. 

            Last night I tried converting the MP4 file of my September 5 song practice video to H264AVI. This morning I looked at the result and it looks good. It boiled 25 gigs down to 1 gig and I don’t see much difference in the two videos. I finally found a decent format and it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. Over the day I converted September 6 as well. 

            Last night when I went to bed my guitar pick-up battery was still in the charger and the green light was still on as it had been all day. This morning when I got up the light was finally off. 

            I weighed 89.25 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On the Bloor bike lane I had the green light at Shaw when a car suddenly turned left and cut me off. I squeezed my brakes just in time to keep from slamming into the asshole’s vehicle. 

            I weighed 88.75 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:54. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I worked on synchronizing the thirty year old concert video with the studio audio. For my line “Out on the battlefield of dreams amid countless unmarked graves of schemes” my mouth isn’t shown until I sing “countless”. The video was behind the studio audio and so I cut out a bit of the Charlie Chaplin clip from Modern Times until they were lined up. For “unmarked” the video fell behind again but I only needed to cut a little bit of it after “countless” to synchronize them again. I got them lined up again for “I save the world and win the girl but walk away unknown”. Then there’s a lyrical pause before the chorus, which begins with me singing “Oh!” while jumping up and then “Me…” when I land. I got the jump synchronized with the studio audio. I’ll figure out tomorrow how much of the first chorus from the video I can use. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video. Then I reviewed the rest of the September 7 video and the first 25 minutes of September 8. The Gibson went out of tune a lot. My performance of my song “Vomit of the Star Eater” is improving. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a steamed rainbow trout fillet while watching episode 9 of The Big Valley. 

            Victoria Barkley is at the local chapel to bring flowers for the altar and to donate money to the orphanage that the priest runs. A man named Tate approaches her about his being fired as a ranch hand yesterday. She tells him that Nick warned him about drinking on the job. Suddenly there is an earthquake (this is California after all). Tate comes to in the wine cellar. Victoria regains consciousness a minute later. There was one more person in the church when the floor collapsed, a pregnant First Nations woman called Naomi. Her nation is referred to as “Mollock” in this story but there is no such Nation and it seems to have been a corruption of Miwok. Since this show’s location is supposed to be California’s Central Valley, the nation would be Interior Miwok. But there is a Modoc nation on the border between California and Oregon, which is probably the nation being referred to but Naomi is supposedly from the Modoc reservation which would not be in that area. Tate finds a bottle of wine but Victoria smashes it. She remembers that her family once owned a gold mine that the cellar was part of and so there must be tunnels. They start searching the walls for doors and find one but it’s blocked. Tate finally manages to batter it with Victoria’s insistence. Both Tate and Naomi are somewhat fatalistic about the situation. The door opens to a mine tunnel and so they make their way in. Meanwhile Victoria’s children are searching for her. They know she went to the church but the padre thinks she got out okay. A looter has been captured and one of the items in his possession is Victoria’s purse, which he found in the church. They realize she must have gone down with the floor into the basement. The brothers head there to start clearing away the roof rubble to get below the floor. Under them Naomi tells Victoria she doesn’t want the baby and that she wants to die. Victoria tells her to stop feeling sorry for herself. She’s been rejected by her nation because she is carrying a white man’s baby and the father is married and doesn’t want her either. Tate guesses that the father is Ralph Snyder, the owner of the general store who has a reputation for making late night visits to the reservation. Above them the brothers are digging the rubble when Heath sees gold flecks in a rock. He asks if there was a mine there and Jarrod says there was. Heath says there must be records of the entrances and Jarrod says they must be at the recorder’s office. Heath goes there and Ralph volunteers to help him. While Heath is searching there he suggests that Ralph look for records at the land office. Later Heath comes to the land office and catches Ralph setting fire to some records. Heath beats the story about Naomi out of him. Later his wife Ann confronts him about why he wanted to destroy the records. Down below Naomi is in too much pain to go on. The tunnel they are in branches into two. Victoria suggests to Tate that they each go ten meters into a tunnel and then come back. The one Tate picks collapses and that’s the last we see of him. Victoria just assumes he’s dead and doesn’t even call his name. Such a weird end to a character who calls out to be redeemed. This is a strange and poorly written story. Heath says all mines have an escape outing. Nick says their old ranch hand Jeff Wilson used to work in the mine and maybe he remembers. He says there was once an exit in Little Canyon. They head out there and eventually it comes back to him and they find the mine entrance. They have to dynamite it to get through. Meanwhile Naomi has her baby but dies. Another weird ending of a character, especially since there should be some attempt by the writers to not so indifferently erase a First Nations character. Victoria and the baby are rescued. Ann Snyder wants to adopt the baby and suddenly Ralph is somehow willing to act like the father that he is biologically.

            Ann Snyder was played by Audrey Dalton, who was born in Dublin. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her film debut was in The Girls of Pleasure Island. She starred in This Other Eden. She moved to Hollywood and co-starred in My Cousin Rachel and Sardonicus.

September 18, 1994: I wrote a melody for "Chalkboard Serenade"

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday either Nancy picked up our daughter or I took her back to Scarborough. I wrote a melody for my poem “Chalkboard Serenade”. I went to the home of Mistress Susah, a dominatrix I connected with through Telepersonals. She said she wanted to see a guy masturbate upside down and come in his own mouth. She had me give her a foot massage. But she told me she had herpes and so I decided not to pursue a relationship with her. That night I performed on the open stage at the Pilot Tavern in Yorkville.

Katharine Bard

            On Monday morning I realized that I’d forgotten to recharge the pickup battery for my Martin guitar. I put it in the charger three hours before I would be starting to record song practice. I hoped that would be enough at least for today and I could finish charging it later. 

            I memorized the fourth verse of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are three verses left to learn. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing the electric and it looks like it’ll be the Gibson since the Kramer is still in the shop. Otherwise I would alternate between the two guitars. Li’l Demon Guitars is closed on Monday but I guess it’s possible that I’ll hear from Gian this week. I haven’t played the Kramer at all in this recording project so far. I made it through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” but played the same wrong chord near the end as yesterday. The camera shut off to cool down a couple of times so I would give it about three minutes each time before restarting and just ran through the song, which actually helped me play it better once the video was back on. After the memory card was full I was still recording audio but near the end I noticed the computer had shut down. I assume the power had briefly gone off. Unlike a couple of failed attempts last year to recover the sessions after power outages, this time I was able to recover almost everything because I was smart enough to save the session with a name this time. I didn’t lose any audio that was recorded while the camera was on. 

            I weighed 88.95 kilos before breakfast. 

            I’m still trying to find a decent file format to convert my MP4 videos that won’t take up as much space but still shows a high definition image. I’ve been trying to convert my 25 gigabyte September 5 song practice video but every format I’ve spent hours changing it to comes out as about 500 megabytes and shitty looking. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On Bloor Street a pigeon misjudged its flight and got caught between my arms, flapping against me until it got its bearings and flew free. On the Richmond bike lane a guy on a standing scooter refused to let me pass on the left and insisted that I go by on his right. 

            I weighed 88.95 kilos at 18:00, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in a long time. When I get off this soft diet I’ll be able to control my weight better. It turns out that a piece of meat is less fattening than a bowl of chili. 

            I still haven’t found a decent conversion format for MP4. I’m trying XVid AVI but it doesn’t look like that will be any good either. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:15.

            I downloaded the clip from the end of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Then since my Total Video Converter was busy and since the file was smaller than a gigabyte I converted it to WMV on Cloud Convert. Then I imported it into Movie Maker and edited everything out but seven seconds of The Tramp and Ellen walking away from the camera and down the long country road. I inserted it into the main video to correspond with the line “take her to the show”. After that I worked on synchronizing the old concert video with the studio audio for my line “Out on the battlefield of dreams”. But since in those old Christian and the Lions concerts I didn’t play guitar, my hands on the microphone often cover my mouth in the video, so I have to synchronize them on the words I can be seen singing.

            I uploaded today’s videos. I reviewed another ten minutes of the September 7 video. I think maybe the action on my Gibson is too low. It sounds a bit rattly. “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” didn’t finish well that day. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the rest of the ground pork chili while watching episode 8 of The Big Valley. 

            It’s Audra’s birthday and it’s a big bash so I assume it’s a landmark birthday, although no one mentions her age. Linda Evans was 23 so maybe this was Audra’s 20th. Among the guests is Audra’s childhood friend Evan Miles who has been away at school. Evan had never seen Audra as a woman before tonight. They dance and he says he wants to kiss her. She lures him out to the garden and they do kiss but then he starts wanting more and won’t stop when she tells him to and so she screams. Heath comes out and punches Evan. Audra blames herself even though Evan was obviously not being a gentleman. From his mother, Jennie Miles’s reaction there is a suggestion there is something wrong with Evan. His father Wally Miles makes excuses for bringing him home from school but apparently there was trouble. Jenny tells Wally she’s lost him and he’s his son now. Later Evan comes home with alkaline dust on his clothes. Meanwhile Nick and Heath are bringing their horses to the only watering hole in the south section but the horses won’t drink. Heath tastes it and finds the water has been poisoned with alkaline. They don’t suspect anyone of doing it deliberately because it could have happened naturally. They have to put a fence around the waterhole because although the horses won’t drink it the cattle might. There’s another waterhole about five kilometers away and the quickest way is along a trail that crosses Walter’s property. When Heath gets to the trail there is a barbed wire fence and a No Trespassing sign where there never was one before. Evan is on the other side but Heath disputes the fence because the trail is actually the property line but Evan says it’s on their property. Evan says to send Audra to reason with him. Heath cuts the fence but Evan fires his rifle in the air and sends Heath’s horses running away. Heath jumps Evan and beats him up. Wally has suddenly fenced his entire property but two of the Barkley cows have jumped over. Nick and Heath come to get their cows but Wally and his hands, plus Evan are lined up on the other side holding rifles. Nick says they’re coming in and as they cross, Wally’s men start shooting the ground in front of them. But Evan shoots Heath’s arm. Wally is shocked because he had no intention of anyone getting shot but he doesn’t know which of his men hit Heath. He suspects it was Evan and suggests to him later that he go away for a while again. That night Evan is on the trail on horseback when he hears another horse. From cover of trees he sees it’s Audra and follows her home and into the stable where he tries to rape her. When she resists, screams and scratches him he begins strangling her. Her mother walks in and tries to stop him but he pushes her away. She grabs a rifle and shoots and kills him. It seems to me she could have shot his leg. At the scene of the shooting Evan’s parents are there and the sheriff, who says there will be an inquest. Wally says it’s murder. Jarrod says that he has information that Evan’s family may not want revealed at a public hearing. He has the documentation of Evan’s very long criminal record short of going to prison. Jenny admits Evan was sick. 

            Jenny was played by Katharine Bard who starred in the second version of the radio series Claudia and David. She did a few movies and TV shows, some of which were produced by her husband Martin Manulis, such as Playhouse 90, Suspense, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and Adventures in Paradise. He also produced the film “Days of Wine and Roses”. She was married to him for 44 years until she died. Her father was undersecretary of the US Navy.

September 17, 1994: My daughter and I went to the playground

Thirty years ago today

 

            On Saturday I had my daughter with me. It was a nice day so we would have gone to the playground.

Katherine Ross

            On Sunday morning I memorized the third verse of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments to my translation. There are four verses left to nail down. 

            I tried to increase my chin-ups from 20 to 21 but couldn’t get past 20. Yesterday for the first time I couldn’t do 20. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. I audio and video recorded the session for the fifteenth day. There’s a month left in the project. I made it through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” in a couple of takes but I hit the wrong chord near the end. I spent a lot of time on “Le Moribond” (The Dying Man) by Jacques Brel because I recently changed one of the chords. I’d been playing it for a few years with an E flat but now when I hear it on video that chord sounds off and so I’m trying a G instead, but it keeps throwing me off. 

            I weighed 89.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            I weighed 89.95 kilos before lunch. That’s really high! I had a slice of multigrain bread with margarine and five-year-old cheddar.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 88.25 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:00. 

            I reminded myself several times today to buy beer when I got home from my bike ride. I even reminded myself on my way out but when I got home I forgot until they closed at 18:00. I looked online and found that the one in Uppity Village is open until 20:00 so I headed down there. The cashier was very perky and said, “Welcome to your LCBO!” 

            I searched for clips of either Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin that might fit with my line “bring her to the show”. I settled on the end of Modern Times when Chaplin and his leading lady are walking arm in arm down a long road. 

            Since yesterday I’ve been constantly converting the MP4 files of the videos of my daily song practice to AVI. Often I’ve used AVI WMV and that has worked but sometimes a 25 gig video gets made into a low quality video of 500 megabytes in which I can see the pixels. So far AVI MPEG4 seems to work better. But they all seem to fluctuate, sometimes they convert in high definition and sometimes not. 

            I had a bowl of the ground pork chili I made yesterday with a slice of multigrain bread and a beer while watching episode 7 of The Big Valley. 

            Nick and Heath are branding cattle when they hear gunshots. Their neighbour Bert Hadley is stopping a coach because it is about to cross his land. He knows the coach belongs to Don Alfredo with whom he is in a land dispute. The coach is carrying Alfredo’s beautiful daughter Maria and her chaperone Isabella. Both Nick and Heath are charmed by Maria’s beauty. They say they can cross their land. The Barkleys feel bad about Hadley’s behaviour since they sold him the land and so Nick and Heath go over to smooth things over. Heath takes the opportunity to begin courting Maria. He invites her to the Fourth of July celebration in town. But Alfredo does not approve of Maria being with Heath because he is only a half brother of the other Barkeys. Alfredo says Hadley’s land as well as that of seven of his neighbours belongs to him. His lawyers are working to prove this in court but he says he while not drive Hadley or the others out of their homes. Hadley comes to Alfredo with one of his bulls that jumped the fence and mated with Hadley’s two Holsteins. Hadley aims to teach Alfredo a lesson but Alfredo shoots the bull himself and says he understands the need to keep a line pure, and then he looks at Heath. Maria convinces her father to come to the July 4 celebration and she and Heath spend time together there. Alfredo hears from his lawyers who have found the original land grant, which confirms that the land in question belongs to him. Heath and Maria have a regular arrangement to ride together on the north ridge. They fall in love. Alfredo sees them together and comes to see Victoria about a merging of their families through marriage but with Nick and not Heath. Victoria finds this offensive. To keep Heath away from Maria, Alfredo goes back on his word and serves Hadley and his neighbours eviction notices. Hadley is angry when he hears about it and referring to Heath he tells Nick that eight families have to leave because of one mongrel. Nick hits him. Hadley decides that when Alfredo gets his land it will be bare and dry. Heath comes to see Alfredo who tells him that his family has an 800 year old unbroken line to Spanish royalty. Heath and Maria are riding together when they hear that Hadley is about to burn his own home. They try to reason with him but it doesn’t help. At the last minute Alfredo rides up and tells Hadley he won’t evict them. Maria decides to go back east according to her father’s wishes because to be with Heath would destroy him. She says goodbye. 

            Maria was played by Katherine Ross, who started as an understudy in Actors Workshop productions. Most of the work she won at first was in television westerns. Her TV debut was on Sam Benedict in 1962. Her film debut was in Shenandoah in 1965. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her co-starring performance in The Graduate. She co-starred in Mister Budwing, Games, Hellfighters, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, The Betsy, A Climate for Killing, Eye of the Dolphin, and They Only Kill Their Masters. She starred in The Stepford Wives, The Swarm, The Legacy, The Hero, Fools, and La hazard et la violence. She starred as Francesca Colby on the prime time soap opera The Colbys. She won a Golden Globe for her performance in Voyage of the Damned. She married Sam Elliot in 1984 and they are still together. She and Elliot co-wrote, produced and starred in the TV movie Conagher. She played the psychiatrist in Donnie Darko. She wrote the children’s books Little Ballerina and My Favourite Things.

September 16, 1994: I performed at the quarterly Sanctuary party in the church

Thirty years ago today

            On Friday morning I worked for a Design class in room 210 at the Ontario College of Art. That night was the quarterly Sanctuary party in the church downtown, with the usual open stage and dinner. I probably performed with Steve Lowe. Mary Milne was probably there.

Sherwood Price

            On Saturday morning I memorized the second verse of “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him) by Serge Gainsbourg and made some adjustments to my translation.

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice for the second of two sessions. I audio and video recorded the session for the 14th day and will continue until October 15. I spent a lot of time doing retakes of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” until I got through to the end. There weren’t any major mistakes that I recall. 

            I weighed 88.95 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in a long time. It’s because of this diet the dentist put me on. With my regular diet I have it almost down to a system in terms of portions but eating a bowl of chili with a potato and gravy last night took me over the top.

            Around midday I headed down to No Frills where I did a price match on five bags of green grapes. I also bought a watermelon, two packs of raspberries, bananas, shampoo-conditioner, Basilica sauce, hot garlic ramen, two containers of skyr and a bag of wedge fries. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before a late lunch at 14:50. I had an untoasted slice of multigrain bread with margarine and five-year-old cheddar with a glass of raspberry iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 88.75 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:53. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I selected a one second clip of a tightrope walk from Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus. I inserted it into the main timeline to correspond with the line “this three ring circus in my head”. I then synchronized the concert video of me singing the line “How can I reconcile the two” with the studio audio. After that the video is ahead of the audio for the line “and bring her to the show” so I need to find another clip to push it back. 

            The MP4 videos from my camera take up a lot of space and so I had to get rid of some downloads and convert the first two videos from two weeks ago into AVI so I would have room to upload today’s video. I’m going to have to convert all the MP4 files to AVI and that’s going to be hours of work. I’ll need to have Total Video Converter working every chance I can. 

            I sautéed some ground pork and added salsa, Basilica sauce, water, two Szechuan flavour packs and two ramen noodle cakes. I had a bowl with a slice of multigrain bread and a beer while watching episode 6 of The Big Valley. 

            There is a strike at the Barkley Sierra Mining Company and it has started to turn violent. The Molly Maguires secret society has moved in and a bomb kills one member of management and wounds Colin Murdoch the manager. The Barkley family decides to send one of the brothers to investigate. Heath says he’s the best choice because he worked in the mines before he learned that he was a Barkley. He arrives at Lonesome Camp where strangers are suspected of being company spies. A saloon girl named Bridey attaches herself to him and comes to his hotel room. He pays her to tell him the name of the leader of the Molly Maguires, and it’s O’Doul. Heath goes to see Murdoch and we hear him calling himself “Heath Barkley” for the first time. Murdoch says the miners went on strike because he cut their wages. It seems he did that so management would have more money. Murdoch owns 5000 shares and is confident the mine will reopen in a week. Heath guesses correctly that he plans on bringing in Chinese strike breakers who’ll work a lot cheaper. When Heath gets back to his room O’Doul is waiting for him with a gun, but it turns out they are old friends from the mines. Heath tries to get him to talk with management but O’Doul says action is required. He tells Heath he should leave town within the next two hours. That night Bridey wakes him to warn him that a lynch mob is coming for him. She takes him out the back and shelters him in her home where she cares for her disabled father. Her father spends the night telling him all about the broken promises made by Tom Barkley to the miners. Meanwhile Sam Hummel the controlling stockholder wants to buy the Barkleys out at the price the stock was before it went down. The family is discussing it when Heath comes home. He says the miners are striking against the broken promises of Tom Barkley. He promised housing, safe working conditions, decent wages, schools, security for the old and injured, and a company store that sells at cost. What they got was leaky roofs, rotten timbering in the mines, children begging in the street, a company store that sells at four times cost and they live on potatoes. Later in Lonesome the company tries to bring in Chinese workers and there is a riot. The mine guards start firing on the protesters and one is killed. Heath asks Murdoch to sign a proxy allowing Jarrod Barkley to use Murdoch’s 5000 shares as he pleases. He signs the paper and now the Barkleys have controlling interest. Meanwhile O’Doul gets Paddy to pretend he’s dead so when they carry the coffin into the mine graveyard it will be O’Doul inside with a bomb. Bridey attends Paddy’s wake but then sees him sneaking out for a drink and suspects something. She warns Heath and he goes down in the mine after O’Doul. Heath manages to put out the fuse and then fights with O’Doul who ends up shot and killed. The strike is over and Murdoch promises to keep the promises made to the miners. 

           
O’Doul was played by Sherwood Price who attended the Shuster-Martin School of Drama then joined the Little Playhouse Company. He toured with the Piper Players and when they got to Hollywood he stayed. His first film was a co-starring role in Scorching Fury. He co-starred in the TV series The Gray Ghost. He played Owen Carter on Ben Casey. He was best friends with Robert Vaughn and they co-owned the Ferdporqui Production company which made documentaries.

September 15, 1994: I looked for modelling work at the art high schools

Thirty years ago today 

            On Thursday I probably went to art high schools like Central Tech and Northern Secondary to round up work for the new school year.

Peter Breck

            On Friday morning I memorized the fifth verse of “Allons z'enfants” (Join the Ranks Kids) by Boris Vian. There are nine verses left to learn. 

            I published “Passion for Two”, my translation of “L’Amour à deux” by Serge Gainsbourg on my Christian’s Translations blog and posted the lyrics on Facebook. There are thirteen Gainsbourg songs left in my project to translate his entire works from 1958 until his death in 1991. I memorized the first verse of his song “Dis-lui toi que je t'aime” (That I Love You Now Tell Him). 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice. It always throws me off switching to the longer neck after four sessions with the Martin because it doesn’t feel like the chords I’m reaching for are in the same place. I audio and video recorded the session as I have since September 1 and will until October 15. There was lots of fumbling and I don’t know if any takes were keepers. I was finished song practice almost an hour later than yesterday. 

            I weighed 87.5 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 3. 

            I weighed 88.6 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.

            I weighed 87.85 kilos at 17:30. September 3 was the last time it was that high in the afternoon. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I saw that last time I got the concert video in synch with the studio audio for my line “just this three ring circus”. But now I see that after that the video of me singing “in my head” is ahead by almost a second so I need to insert some video to push it back. I looked for something with a circus theme starring Buster Keaton and there is video of him performing at a circus in France but what he does isn’t circusy. I stumbled on The Circus by Charlie Chaplin and in it he performs a high wire act, which I think fits for my video. I downloaded it and converted it to WMV, then I imported it into Movie Maker. I edited it down to 40 seconds and I’ll cut it further tomorrow. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video. These are very large files in the MP4 format and so I might have to convert them all to WMV before I run out of room. I reviewed the video of my September 6 rehearsal up to the 60 minute mark. It was a not bad day of achievement in terms of getting through songs and there might even be some keepers. 

            I had a potato with gravy and the rest of the ground beef chili. I ate while watching episode 5 of The Big Valley.

            Jacob Tanner and his grandson Chad are travelling by wagon with a large amount of money. The story opens with him fighting off a robber on the way. They are headed for the Big Valley and the Barkley ranch. He first meets Audra and Heath and he asks for Thomas. He was an old friend of Thomas and is sad to learn he’s dead but he and Victoria have a happy reunion. Thomas, Victoria, Jacob and his wife Margaret all travelled together to the Big Valley. They were caught in a fire and Victoria was thrown from her horse. Jacob left his wagon to save her but while doing so the horses bolted , the wagon overturned and Margaret was killed. Jacob is the reason the Barkley clan exists. Jacob has been saving for thirty years and he’s now come for the land in Oak Meadows that Thomas promised him. Victoria says that was always his land and he doesn’t need to pay for it but he insists. Meanwhile Jarrod Barkley is negotiating with the state on behalf of the Big Valley to have a dam built in Oak Meadows. The people have put up money towards this project and they stand to gain from the construction of the dam. When they learn about Jacob they are angry. The Barkley family is divided on this issue. Victoria and Heath are with Jacob while Nick supports the dam. Jarrod as a lawyer tries to be objective. Comparisons are made to Thomas Barkley standing up to the railroad even though the railroad also represented progress. Even if the majority profits, if it’s at the expense of the rights of the individual then there is injustice. Margaret is buried in Oak Meadows. The town turns against the Barkleys and there is a brawl at the saloon. The sheriff breaks it up but blames the Barkleys. Jacob has built the framework of a cabin but a mob from town comes out to tear it down. The Barkley brothers come to defend Jacob against the next attack but Jacob is killed in the shootout. Chad is given the money Jacob paid for the land and then sent to be raised by his uncle in Denver. The people want to name the dam the “Jacob Tanner Dam”. Victoria says Jacob would have approved but I don’t think so. It’s actually sickly fucked up to name something that gets built anyway after the murdered victim that tried to stop it. 

            Nick was played by Peter Breck, who was the son of jazz musician Jobie Breck. While studying English and drama he also became a singer in local clubs in Houston. He was discovered by Robert Mitchum who cast him uncredited in Thunder Road. He co-starred in The Beatniks, Portrait of a Mobster. He starred in the films Lad: A Dog, The Crawling Hand, Hootenanny Hoot. His first TV appearance was on Gunsmoke. He starred in the 1959 TV series Black Saddle. He played Doc Holliday on Maverick. He moved to Vancouver, British Columbia where he established an acting school called The Breck Academy. He starred in Terminal City Ricochet and Shock Corridor. He had a photographic memory. Someone who clocked the draws of all the TV gunslingers found that Peter Breck had the fastest draw in television history.

September 14, 1994: Diane Pugen said her student was a drummer and suggested I leave him my tape

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I worked for Diane Pugen at the Ontario College of Art from 9:00 to 16:00. I played the tape of my band for her and told her I was looking for a drummer. She said that Jim Bravo, a student in one of her classes was a drummer and suggested I leave my tape with him. 

            That night I went to Fat Albert’s open stage and did my songs “Angeline” and “Megaphor” with Steve Lowe backing me up on guitar. Then we went to the open stage at Albert’s Hall where Tenesia was hosting and we did the same set.

Virginia Christine

            On Thursday morning I uploaded “L’Amour à deux” (Passion for Two) by Serge Gainsbourg to my Christian’s Translations blog and prepared it for publication. All that’s left is to post a video with it, then post my translation on Facebook before moving on to the next of the last few Gainsbourg songs on my list. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of four sessions. I audio and video recorded the session as I will every morning until October 15. I made it through “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on the first take without any major mistakes. I needed fewer takes on a lot of the other songs too and finished a little sooner than usual since I started the project. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 3. 

            I had time before lunch to sand the left casing of my bathroom door.

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I did a price match on five bags of grapes. I also bought two packs of raspberries, two packs of five-year-old cheddar, a trout fillet, a pack of ground pork, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, a jat of Basilica sauce, and a jar of salsa.            

            I weighed 87.05 kilos at 18:21. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:15. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Me and Gravity” I imported the video of Buster Keaton stunts. I copied it to the end of the timeline and edited out everything but the scene from Three Ages when he jumps from the roof of one building and tries to reach another but falls. I inserted the clip to the beginning of the timeline and started cutting parts of it out so it would push the concert video back until it was synchronized with the studio audio. But I cut out too much and had to click “undo” several times until the audio was ahead. Then I deleted smaller bits of the Keaton video until they were lined up for “just this three ring circus”. It seems to go off again after that so tomorrow I’ll figure out what to do next. 

            I uploaded today’s song practice video. I reviewed the rest of the September 5 video and the first 14 minutes of September 6. I need a rainy day or two to get caught up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a bowl of the ground beef chili I made yesterday with Basilica sauce and salsa. I ate while watching the fourth episode of The Big Valley. 

            In this story Audra Barkley is chasing a herd of wild horses to get a closer look at their black leader when she somehow gets into their path and is in danger of being trampled. Meanwhile a pack of wild horse catchers or mustangers is also after the herd and it’s their leader Lloyd Garner who notices Audra is in danger and jumps to pull her off her horse just in time. They roll into the river. That night a gang of masked extortionists ride to a farm and throw a rock through the farmhouse window of Harry Coleman asking for money in exchange for protection. He goes to tell the Barkley family about the problem. They learn that it’s not only Harry who’s encountered these marauders. When one of Harry’s neighbours went to the sheriff he was punished with having his crop burned and his well poisoned. The Barkleys think he should fight and say they will help but on Harry’s way home he is confronted by the gang. He defies them and pulls the mask off the leader who is Lloyd Garner. Harry doesn’t know his name but he’s seen him in town. Lloyd shoots and kills him. At the Mustangers’ camp by the river there are also women and Lloyd’s sometimes mate seems to be a girl named Francie. Later at the general store Lloyd meets Audra again. She’s buying some supplies and finds it’s too much for her horse so Lloyd offers to help her. He’s surprised when he learns that she’s taking the food to Harry Coleman’s widow Margaret. He’s even more shocked when she tells him her last name because the Barkleys are Lloyd’s next target. Audra invites him to supper so her mother can thank him for saving her life. The next night Lloyd tells Audra his story about losing his family when he was ten when the Union Army overran the South. He joined others in the same situation and they ran west together. The next day Lloyd brings as a gift to Audra the black horse and asks her to dinner in town. They have a romantic evening and he escorts her home where they find the Barkley stables on fire and four horses have died. The extortionists have left a note demanding $2000 or next time it’s the house. Heath is suspicious of Lloyd because last time they saw him he overheard them tell a farmer they would be protecting his farm that night and would be away from their own. The next evening Lloyd calls on Audra and finds Jarrod, Nick and Heath in the parlour where he is asked to wait for Audra. They question how Lloyd can afford to give their sister a fine horse when his adopted family of mustangers need to be fed. Lloyd had said that he was in Santa Fe last and it turns out that farmers there had the same problem with a gang of protectionists. They now directly accuse him and he refuses to answer them. Then they fight when Audra walks in, allowing him to escape. Lloyd goes back to the mustangers’ camp and says the men are moving out. But his second in command Turk is taking over. Just then Audra rides up and Turk has her taken hostage and held for ransom. The Barkley’s pay but also follow them to their camp. When the money arrives Lloyd puts Audra on a horse but Turk stops her and says they can’t let her live. Lloyd pushes Turk away from her horse and slaps it to send her off. Turk shoots and kills Lloyd and is about to shoot Audra when her brothers arrive and he is shot. Later Audra takes the black horse into the wild and sets it free. 

            Margaret Coleman was played by Virginia Christine, who acted on the radio while attending the University of California. She appeared in 23 episodes of the radio version of Gunsmoke. She made her stage debut in Hedda Gabler and that led to a film contract. Her film debut was in Edge of Darkness in 1943. She co-starred in The Mummy’s Curse and The Scarlet Horseman. She became known for 21 years in the 60s and 70s as Mrs. Olsen, the Folgers Coffee woman. Her home town of Stanton, Iowa converted its water tower to look like a giant coffee pot in her honour. Her character was so iconic that it was parodied in skits on many comedy shows.

September 13, 1994: Mary misplaced Marjorie's prize money

Thirty years ago today

            On Tuesday from 13:00 to 16:00 I posed for Natalka Husar’s class at the Ontario College of Art. That night I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. Adina came that night. When Mary Milne arrived she told me that she’d misplaced Marjorie Robero’s prize money from last Saturday’s Parkdale Art Festival. Nik Beat and Marjorie came to announce their Ménage à Trois show featuring the poetry of Marjorie Robero, Nik Beat and Tim Maxwell.

Lee Majors

            On Wednesday morning I revised my translation of “L’Amour à deux” (Passion for Two) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it. Tomorrow I’ll upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog and prepare it for publication. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the third of four sessions. I audio and video recorded the session as I will every day until October 15. I made it through a few songs without any obvious mistakes. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in a long time. I made french toast with a slice of cinnamon-raisin bread but found it a bit heavy. 

            I weighed 87.65 kilos before lunch. I had an untoasted slice of multigrain bread with margarine and five-year-old cheddar and a glass of raspberry iced tea.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 87.65 kilos at 17:45. That’s the most I’ve tipped the scale in the evening since September 3. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:30. 

            I searched for video clips of collapsing structures, falling things, and falling people. I finally bookmarked a video of Buster Keaton stunts, including his attempt to jump between two buildings but missing and falling down the side. I think that’s what I’ll use for the opening of my “Me and Gravity” video. I downloaded it and converted it to WMV. 

            I uploaded today’s video of song practice and reviewed most of the rest of the September 5 video.

            I sautéed the ground beef, added a jar of Basilica sauce, a jar of salsa, the flavour packs from two Szechuan noodle cakes and then the noodles. I had a bowl with a beer while watching episode 3 of The Big Valley. 

            A statue has been built in honour of the late Thomas Barkley and a commemoration ceremony will be held for the unveiling. His widow Victoria Barkley wants one of her son’s to wear Thomas’s boots at the event but the boots won’t fit any of them. Eugene suggests Heath try them on and they fit perfectly. But Heath never knew his father and has mixed feelings about him because he abandoned his mother when she was pregnant. He’s not sure if he wants to wear the boots. Later Eugene the youngest brother attacks Heath because he doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t be proud of being Thomas Barkley’s son. The family, including Heath, goes to town before the ceremony and checks into the hotel. Victoria finds Heath drinking at the bar and has a drink with him. She asks him to tell her about his mother. Victoria says she and Thomas had only been married a few years when he went to Strawberry where he’d invested in some mines. Strawberry was the beginning of him becoming wealthy. She’s got to know if Heath’s mother loved Thomas. He says she spoke very highly of him. Victoria is worried she’s been lying to herself about how Thomas felt about her. She asks if any of Heath’s people still live in Strawberry. He says just his Aunt Rachel who isn’t really his aunt but was his mother’s best friend. Rachel and Hannah helped raise him. There was also his uncle Matt and his wife but they weren’t close and the few times he saw them were too often. Victoria is upset over her doubts and leaves. Nobody sees her drive the carriage out of town and to Strawberry. In the general store she asks for Rachel Caulfield and learns that she died. She asks for Hannah and the store owner directs her to a green cabin on the edge of town. Heath’s Uncle Matt is in the store and sees the Barkley name on the side of Victoria’s wagon. Across the street at the empty hotel Matt owns is his wife Martha half heartedly fighting off the advances of an out of work miner named Phelps. Matt tells Martha that Victoria is in town. Victoria finds Hannah, who is a senile old black woman. At first Hannah thinks Victoria is Heath’s mother Leiah. Victoria asks Hannah if Thomas loved Leiah. She only knows that Leiah loved Thomas. Victoria asks where to find Matt. Hannah says at the hotel but warns her to stay away from them. At the hotel Victoria meets Matt and Martha. Martha claims she and Matt helped raise Heath and she thinks that something is owed to them for their sacrifice. Victoria asks if $5000 would be enough (that would be about $154,000 today). Martha is pleasantly surprised by the offer. Martha says Thomas loved Leiah, especially when she was carrying his child, but he loved money more than her and left to get rich. Victoria says her lawyer son Jarrad would advise her to think before she signs a cheque. Victoria leaves and is getting into her wagon when Hannah tells her to come back to the house. When she goes there Matt puts her wagon in the stable. Hannah says Leiah found Thomas beaten half to death and robbed in an alley and nursed him back to health. Hannah also says Martha and Matt never did anything for Heath. Rachel was found dad in the bottom of a mineshaft and Hannah thinks Martha and Matt killed her. Hannah gives Victoria a letter from Thomas to Leiah. Meanwhile Victoria’s children are wondering where she is. Heath figures it out and leaves. Victoria goes to Matt to ask for her wagon. Martha bars her way and asks for half the money she promised. She says Rachel had an accident and fell down a mineshaft. They’ll have to take Victoria there to show her. Victoria runs for the door just as Heath walks in. He takes her to get the carriage. Martha calls for Phelps and offers herself to him if he kills Victoria and Heath. He heads them off and waits at a mine they’ll be passing. He fires his rifle but misses and is killed by Heath’s return fire. Victoria reads Heath the letter and it shows that Thomas Barkley did not know Leiah was pregnant when he left. Heath puts on the boots.

            Heath was played by Lee Majors, who was on his way to becoming a football star when a spinal condition ended those dreams. He earned a degree in History and Phys Ed. His first film role was an uncredited part in Straightjacket. He was cast as Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy but had to turn it down because The Big Valley took off. He co-starred later in Owen Marshall Counselor at Law. He starred in The Six Million Dollar Man. After that he starred in The Fall Guy. He starred in the films The Norseman, Steel, The Last Chase, Starflight, and Keaton’s Cop. He co-starred in Out Cold. He was married to Farrah Fawcett and apparently the song “Midnight Train to Georgia” was inspired by their relationship. He looked a lot like Elvis Presley when he acted on The Big Valley and his nickname was “Blonde Elvis”.