Posts by Richard

We interact as an engaged couple, and eventually, inexorably and impulsively, we canter to our wedding ceremony in May of 1974.  She joins the Lamb’s Players. As performers in a nonprofit theater company, we are what people call starving artists, and we are dirt poor. Our apartment has a few chairs, an old beat-up coffee…

Weight training, performing and card play all have their satisfactions but there is still one thing missing, and that is a girl. Every guy needs a girl. One of my high school friends is Mary Cobbs. Mary has long, soft, copper-colored hair and brown eyes. She is a straight-A student and both a gifted artist…

Word gets back to Jim Blowers that the woman standing behind me noticed when I uncut the deck.  Is that true?” Jim asks me. “Were you cheating?” “No,” I lie. I don’t think Jim believes me, but I don’t care. In my mind it’s okay to cheat drug dealers – that every penny I take…

As I play, I’m thinking, “I hate drug dealers!” From a few hours of their marijuana smoking and (likely using other drugs) I notice how loosely the play is from the stoned, stupid-sounding gamblers, and I’m easily able to gather a pair or trips and stack them.  I offer the deck to be cut. Now…

“Seated at my table again is Lori, karate Master John Douglas, stuntman Bobby Yerkes and writer-actress Kerry Jo. Can you all please share those crazy shuffling stories?”   “Yeah,” Jon, Lori says, “Growing up my brother would have me pretend to be a member of his audience. He would perform his magic tricks and card moves…

Kevin says to me, “Pull up a chair.” These guys don’t know how poor my eyesight has become. For the druggies that don’t know me from the past, I use my fallback excuse for holding my cards so close. “I’m extremely farsighted and can’t see a damn thing close up,” I say. “This morning I…

I ask real casual like, “Can I join your game?” I sense the four guys looking at me, trying to gauge just how much of a chump I may be.  “Have any cash, Little Rick?”  The inquirer’s name is Kevin, and the fact that he talks for the table tells me he’s still the reigning…

After watching John Scarne, I’m anxious to try out some new moves in a real gambling environment. So, I have Jim drive me to a card game in the mountains east of San Diego. It will be with a group of old drug dealers. I was told they play poker every Saturday and I’m hoping…

We are on the fourth week of a six week LP tour, and I’m very excited because the film, “The Sting “is playing in theaters throughout the country. At every stop along our tour, troupe member Glen Hansen and I buy tickets for the film. Glen will sit in the neck-breaking front row so I…

We are on the second week of a six week LP tour and we’re setting up to do a show at Boulder University. All the buildings have rocks sticking from the sides of the walls. And of course my first impulse is to start climbing straight up the building. Bernelle Hansen, the Lamb’s Players stage…

Steve says compassionately, “Rick, I love you, brother, but you are looking off to the side of Randy and Lynn as you speak to them. I know you have trouble seeing them, but it doesn’t look right, Rick; it just doesn’t look right.  I know you can’t see anything forward, but do you think you…

Steve Terrell and Glen Hansen are directing one of the scenes in which I’m in. Steve notices that I’m not looking toward the other actors; instead, I am seemingly staring off to the side of each actor as I recite my lines. Even though I am engaged in the scene, my sensitive ears never miss…