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.