To understand the events of 1967, I have to take you back to 1966. Lyndon Johnson was President and I was 17 years old and attending Taft, a New England all-boys boarding school located in Watertown, Connecticut.

Back in the day, New England boarding schools were strict places with a whole range of rules and regulations that regulated a students life from the time he got up in the morning until the time he went to bed at night. Notice I said “he”. At that time, the boarding schools were not co-educational. That revolution was still a handful of years in the future. If you want an idea of what went on at an all-boys boarding school, read A Separate Peace or watch The Dead Poets Society or for a UK version check out any of the Good-by Mr. Chips movies. American prep-schools were modeled after their British Eton-like counterparts.

But this isn’t a reflection about prep-schools. It only starts there. Actually, it started back in the late 1930s early ‘40s when my father learned to play the trombone and got a job playing with a swing band in a roadhouse down in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. In the summer of ’66, I found my father’s old trombone and decided to take lessons. Prep-schools being pre-schools, my wish to emulate my father was immediately embraced by the faculty and Mr. Young was assigned as my trombone teacher.

Phil Young was a great guy. Well over 6-feet tall with close-cropped blonde hair, he taught music, coached football and was the associated conductor of the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra in Waterbury, CT just a few towns over from us (a short car ride of no more than 15-minutes). I liked the man. He put up with my limited musical talent and let me come to my own realization that playing the trombone was not in my blood. In fact, I like the man enough that I took a “Permission” to go and see him conduct the second half of a Symphony presentation one pleasant fall evening.

At that time, when you were “in” a boarding school you were literally IN that school. To leave the school for any reason (except for walking to the designated shopping areas along the main street of Watertown, CT) you needed a signed “permission” slip. Every student was allowed three one-day Permissions and one over night Permission each month. They were something you guarded with religious devotion. A Day-Permission could get you as far as New York City. Trains left the Waterbury train station on a very convenient schedule. With an over-night Permission, you could leave school on Saturday after classes (yes… we had classes Monday through Saturday) and not have to be back until bed-check on Sunday night.

My parents were supporters of the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra and good friends with the Musical Director, Sayard Stone. On this particular evening, the Symphony was going to be performing with José Greco, the world renown Flamenco dancer. For those of you too young to remember José Greco, at that time he was the most requested performer on the Ed Sullivan Show. For those of you too young to remember the Ed Sullivan Show, it was the premiere venue for variety artist on TV during the Golden Age of TV. When the Fab-Four (the Beatles) made their first US appearance, it was on the Ed Sullivan Show. When Elvis Presley (the King) made his world debut, it was on the Ed Sullivan Show. Ed Sullivan could make or break you as a performer and when people wrote to him requesting to see someone, José Greco was the first one on their lists. Gayle offered to introduce my parents to José and they wondered if I’d be interested in going along with them. With Phil conducting the second half of the program, I figured why not. It would be killing two birds with one stone. I would get to meet a famous person and make brownie points with one of the school’s masters.

Back in 1956, José made AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS for Michael Todd. Michael Todd was married to Elizabeth Taylor and the two of them were Hollywood’s premiere power couple. After shooting the movie, Mike Todd gave everyone a parting gift. José’s gift was a blue terrycloth bathrobe with the AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS logo stitched on to the breast pocket. José carried that robe with him on tour everywhere. Once, he left it behind and he literally got off the plane to go back and get it. Fortunately for him he did, because that plane crashed killing everyone on board.

For José, that blue terrycloth robe was his good luck talisman. Superstitiously, he never got into make-up unless that robe was draped across his shoulders. But on that night in Waterbury, CT with a green full of people (the performance was outside on the main green in the center of town with a special stage set up to accommodate the symphony orchestra and José’s dance troupe), José lost it. Really… he lost it… in more ways than one. He lost his bathrobe and because of that, he had a classic deva hissy-fit and refused to perform.

The green was mobbed. The only two other times in my life that I have ever seen that many people on the green in Waterbury, CT was one for John Fitzgerald Kennedy when he made a campaign stop before his election and two for President Ronald Regan when he gave a speech there. So with this throng of humanity milling about, I separated myself from my parents and went backstage to wish Phil luck with his portion of the show.

Backstage was in an uproar. José had locked himself in his dressing room and was refusing to come out. I found Phil and asked him what was wrong. He told me that José had lost his good luck bathrobe and was refusing to perform. I asked him what the robe looked like. Phil had never seen it but was told that it was some kind of a blue terrycloth thing.

On my way to the backstage I had passed a row of garbage cans. I remembered seeing the corner of something blue sticking out of one of them. So I went back to check. Sure enough, it was a ratty old, beat up, terrycloth bathrobe. I brought it back inside and gave it to the first stage hand I saw. He immediately ran off with it and I went to find Phil, again. Only, I hadn’t taken more that a few steps when I heard a voice shouting, “That young man there. Bring him to me!”

Before I knew what was happening, I was swept along and ushered into a small dressing room. When the door closed behind me, I found myself standing in front of a gaunt, pale-skinned man with receding hairline, hawk-like nose and dressed only in a white tank-top t-shirt, green boxer shorts, black socks with garters and lovingly cradling that old bathrobe as if it were his favorite kitten.

He started talking about Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor and the trouble they had getting the sound of his boots striking the table on which he was dancing. It was José Greco… THE José Greco standing in front of me in his underwear. I honestly couldn’t tell you which shocked me more that he wore boxers or that he wore garters. But then he did something that totally fascinated me. He whipped the blue terrycloth bathrobe around his shoulders, turned to the mirror and began to make up.

While he told me the story of the bathrobe, he picked up a tin of clown white and whited out his whole face from his hair line to where his neck met his torso. Once he was Kabuki white, he drew in a hair line and painted his scalp black. Then he took that same black and with a brush drew in the lines around his mouth, and nose and cheek bones. He also lined the sides of his throat. Then he began to apply layers of flesh-tone colors until within a few minutes of my having entered the room, he had transformed himself from a skinny little Italian guy from Brooklyn, NY into the living poster of José Greco complete with the tight Andalusian pants and vest and castanet’s.

“Well, how do I look?” he asked.

“Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille,” I said hoping that he would catch the movie reference. He did and laughed. “You know, I’m supposed to meet you after the show,” I said. I told him of Mr. Stone’s offer.

“Great, see you then,” he said.

I hurried back to my folks but never got the chance to tell them what had just happened. Because of the delay for the lost bathrobe, once Jose was ready, the show immediately went on and I took my seat. José performed. Sayard Stone conducted Mozart’s overture to “Don Giovanni” and Bethoven’s 7th in A Minor. Intermission came and went and I still hadn’t said a word. Phil conducted some works by Shubert and then the show was over.

My parents, myself and several other Symphony supporters went backstage and waited in an inconspicuous area for Sayard to take us to meet Mr. Greco. When it was time, he came back and escorted us to José’s dressing room. We entered. José was still in make up, but he had taken off his costume and was wearing the blue terrycloth bathrobe that I had rescued from the trash bin. Sayard started to make the introduction. I don’t think he got more than two or three words out of his mouth before José burst in…

“Hey, Eric, how did you like the show?”

“I thought it was great, especially that move you made with your lead dancer…”

“… her name is Nana…” He went to the door. “Hey, Nana. Ven aqui pronto. Quero que conozcas a un amigo mio…”

Nana came from the dressing room next door. She was even more beautiful up close. José rattled off something that my high school Spanish did not pick up. Nana gave me a big smile, a big laugh and a big hug and I immediately fell in love with everything Spanish.

When I turned around, I discovered a half a dozen or more adults standing there like abandoned marionettes with their hands at their sides and their mouths wide open.

“Oh, I met him earlier,” I said as if that were going to satisfy everyone’s curiosity.

José came to my rescue. He told them the story of the bathrobe. I told them how I found it. Case closed… right? Not exactly. José was hungry. Because his costumes were so tight, he never ate before a performance. He didn’t want a distended stomach to ruin the line of his poses or the symmetry of his moves. However, Waterbury being Waterbury, at this time of night, the only place open was the White Tower Grille, a good spot for a great tasting, greasy hamburger, but not exactly the spot that anyone want to see José end up at.

Then my father said, “Why don’t you come out to our house? We only live about 5-minutes out of town. Eric and I would be glad to cook you something.” I loved my old man. If I hadn’t, I would have at that moment. José agreed and from midnight until 6 a.m. dad and I cooked bacon and eggs and whatever else we had in the kitchen and fed José and Nana and the rest of his troupe. José regaled us with his ‘on the road’ stories. Nana played with my mother’s collie. The others sat around the table. Everyone talked. I understood one word in ten. It was an absolutely memorable night. So memorable that I kept my mouth shut about it when I got back to school. Why bother to tell them something they weren’t going to believe anyway.

Life went on. Perhaps the only change for me was that I applied myself in Spanish class with a new vigor that surprised my Spanish teacher. Then, about two weeks later at lunch, my name echoed across the dining room loud speaker… “Mr. Ruark report to the Dean’s office immediately!” Okay… now I was sweating. You don’t get called to Mr. Oscarson’s office at lunch unless you are in serious trouble. How could I be in trouble you ask? Well let me count the ways… no I’d better not. Let’s just say that I was not the perfect preppie and maintained a cache of embargoed commodities that would get me and other people suspended or expelled if the powers-that-be found them. (Basically cigarettes and beer.)

So, putting on the bravest face I could, I stepped away from the lunch table and walked down to Mr. Oscarson’s office and knocked on the door.

“Come in, Mr. Ruark,” he said. “How many weekend permissions do you still have?”

“None,” I answered. “Used the last one a couple of weeks ago.”

“Well, you do now,” he said.

“You’ve lost me, Sir.”

“I just got a call from José Greco. Apparently he wants to see you tonight in Springfield, Mass. He was most insistent. I told him you were out of permissions, but he asked me to make a special exception for you. Lord knows why, but I agreed. I called your parents. They are picking you up at 4. Enjoy yourself.”

Oskie and I got along. We understood each other. Ever since the car incident. You see, at prep-school, students weren’t allowed to have cars on campus. I was a spoiled child. I make no bones about it. It was the way I was raised. In my own defense, I will say that I very rarely asked for anything. I didn’t need to. My parents gave me things before I could open my mouth.

When I turned 16 my parents bought me a car. It was 1953 MGTD. It was old. But it ran well. Dad repainted it red. Top speed was only about 65 mph., but damn it was a sweet little car. I kept it until 1975 when I put it in storage to take my honeymoon and when I got back, rats had gotten into the storage area and had eaten the wooden frame, the leather seats and wooden steering wheel. They started on the battery and the rubber hoses, but the battery acid killed them. The car was nothing more than a pile of red metal in the middle of the concrete floor. Yes, it was insured, but…

Anyway, Oskie drove a green Jaguar sedan. I had been home for a weekend and for some reason, which I no longer member, my parents couldn’t take me back to school. So I hopped into the MG and drove it back to Watertown. When I got to the Taft campus, I parked my red MG directly behind Oskie’s green Jag. It took him a week to notice it. And I wasn’t ever the worst offender. Impala Al was legendary. I didn’t even get a nick-name out of it.

José performed in Springfield and took my parents and me out to dinner afterwards. The same thing happened when he performed in New Haven. He called the school, I got a ‘get out of jail’ card free and had a great time. Then came New York City and the Carlisle.

Whenever José was in NYC he stayed at the Carlisle. Once again, we were invited to dinner. Only, on this occasion, there was a real crowd around José. Several people had come over from Spain and José was showing them a good time in the big city. He had me sitting next to a fellow named Andrés. The man’s whole face and body was a study in angles. Andrés was thin, muscular, and his naturally dark skin was made even darker by a deep, deep tan. I was having trouble understanding him. He was speaking Spanish, but a Spanish I had never heard before. It was throaty and guttural. It was as if he were swallowing vowels and putting more emphasis on the consonants. I later learned that he was Andalusian. Anyway, we were getting along pretty well, when Andrés suddenly turned to José and rattled off something. José nodded. “Buena idea.” Then he turned to my father. “Is it okay if I take Eric to Spain with me this summer?”

My father thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Eric, do you want to go to Spain?”

“Sure,” I said. Yes… it was that easy.

Not long after graduation, I found myself in Madrid. It was June. I was 18 years old. I had my passport, some American Express checks which I quickly converted to pesetas and I was pretty much on my own. José had been delayed in the States. I had an introduction to his wife, Lola (she was his lead dancer in AROUND THE WORLD IN 80-DAYS), and her Madrid phone number. I called. She was expecting me. The first thing she did was take me to rent a car. We had a short journey to make to a small town to the north. Andrés wanted to see me.

Oh… didn’t I mention it… Andrés Vázquez, that ruggedly handsome man who came up with the idea of my going to Spain in the first place, was the number three ranked Matador in Spain at that time. Only El Cordobes and Paco Camino were ahead of him in the number of ears awarded.

Andrés was a major celebrity. There was a movie about him playing in theaters across the Iberian peninsula and James A. Mitchener had devoted a whole chapter about him in the book, IBERIA. Andrés was fighting in a small venue in a little town an hour or so outside of Madrid. It was a rehab fight. He had been gored recently and had taken this little corrida to test the strength of the stitches holding his chest together.

With matadors there was no such thing as a “disabled” list. If they got injured, they did not get any time off. They were contracted to perform at a certain place and time and once the posters had been printed, they performed whether they felt like it or not or they had to forfeit their fee. Matadors, like the A-listers of today, had a posse of people to support. They were called a Quadrilla. They included Picadors, Doublers, a Doctor, and a whole slew of other people.

Andrés had been injured performing a stunt. As he explained it to me, when a bull charges, he charges with his feet under the center of his body. It’s actually a position that pinches off his breathing a little bit, so that after a series of hard charges, when the bull wants a breather he stops and stands with his feet slightly farther apart to open up his chest cavity for deep breathing. The bull won’t charge again until he brings his feet closer together. The movement is so subtle that most people in the arena don’t notice it. It’s when the bull is standing with his feet slightly apart that the matadors do all those tricks that excite the crowd.

Andrés was on his knees taunting the bull. His cape was behind him stretched out on the sand. He had been watching the bull’s movements and figured that he had the animal’s timing down. The bull would charge several times hard, then rest with his feet apart. He’d bring them back together, pause a beat, then charge again. Andrés planned to take the bull on his knees. As the bull brought his feet together, Andrés would start to swing the cape. Andrés figured the cape would distract the bull at the last moment allowing the horns to pass just under his chin. With the bull’s attention fixed on the cape, the animal would duck its head around the matador’s kneeling body and follow the cape as it passed behind the matador’s head. That was the plan.

Everything would have been perfect if the bull had pulled his feet together and charged. Only he didn’t. He charged from the wide stance throwing Andrés’ timing off. If he stood up, the bull would charge him and not the cape. (Franco Cardeno had half his face ripped off when he stood up in front of a charging bull when trying this stunt in Sevilla in April 1997.) When the bull hit Andrés, the horn raked across the front of his chest, ripping the costume from shoulder to shoulder and tearing into my friend’s flesh like a chainsaw through soft wood. Several hundred stitches later, the wound was closed. Only he had another fight coming up and needed to know if his damaged pectorals could stand the strain of the cape, the muleta and the centrifugal forces necessary to keep the fabric between him and an angry 1500 pound animal.

This was a little local corrida with smaller, younger bulls. Andrés dedicated one to me and gave me the blood coated bandoleras as a souvenir. The little bull proved to be a real test. Andrés’ damaged pecs were not healed enough to anchor the matador’s movements. Andrés let me sit in while his doctor re-stitched some of the ones that had pulled out. Afterwards, I suggested an ace bandage to hold his arm closer to his chest to take the strain off the damaged muscles and allow his biceps to do all the work. It would be risky. It meant that he would have to keep his arm closer to his body and that would move the bull in closer, too. At the next full corrida, with suit of lights and the whole panoramic shebang, with his left arm secretly pinned to his side, Andrés kept the bull so close, that the animal’s horns took nicks out of his shins. With the bull’s blood on his abdomen from the animal’s body rubbing against his, and with his own blood flowing down his legs, Andrés had the crowd on its collective feet cheering for him to be awarded two ears or more.

I spent that summer as part of José’s extended family. He had three children with Lola: Pepe, Carmella, and Lolita. Through Lola, I met Juan Bandera, a well-respected artist who had a son my age, Juan, Jr., who took me clubbing, a young teenage daughter (way too young for an 18-year old like myself to be interested in) and a prodigy, Nono Bandera, who at the tender age of 10 had already recorded his first record and was fighting full-sized bulls with the men. (The matadors had to kill the animal for him, because he was too small to reach over the bull’s horns with the sword. In fact, the sword was bigger than he was. )

When I wasn’t clubbing with Juan, Jr., I was drinking scotch with his father. After a hard day’s painting, Juan, Sr. would like to head over to any number of little Flamenco clubs that dotted Madrid, and sit at a small table, drink scotch and water, smoke and just let the music wash over him. There was something special about just sitting there with a bottle of White Horse and a pitcher of water between us and the performers just a few feet away. In the lulls, Juan, Sr. and I would talk about art, life, and he would correct my Spanish when I said something wrong. It was a great way to learn.

At the end of June, Lola and the family moved down to the Torre del Greco just outside of Marbella in the little town of San Pedro de Alcantara. I tagged along with them.

The Torre was a wonderful hacienda-like complex with a servant’s quarters, guestroom, large back yard surrounded by an 8-foot hedge. There was a gate in the middle of the hedge. When you opened the gate and took one step forward, you were standing on the sands of the Costa del Sol. The Mediterranean was only twenty or thirty yards straight ahead. To the left in the distance you could see the Marbella Club pool. To the right, jutting up over the horizon like a small stone in the middle of a blue sea, was the Rock of Gibraltar. From the Torre’s back gate, the Rock looked about half the size of my little finger’s nail.

Life was tough. I spent my days either perfecting my tan staring out at the incredible blueness of the Mediterranean or traveling from Malaga to La Linea following the matadors whom Andrés had introduced me to. Nights, when I wasn’t escorting Lola to the various Flamenco clubs that dotted the region, I divided my time between Mercedes’ place in San Pedro (a little go-go club where Tina danced), the British bar near the Plaza de Torros (where Victoria tended bar), the bar run by the big Irishman on the main street, and Pepe Moreno’s discotheque located on the main road across the street from the Don Pepe and Skøl hotels.

Marbella, at this time, was a not-so-sleepy little city located about half way between Malaga and Gibraltar. It had not yet been “discovered”. They hadn’t dredged the harbor so the big multi-million dollar yachts were still parking themselves up the coast at Torremolinos. But that didn’t stop a lot of well-known personalities from hitting the surrounding beaches.

The hottest place in Marbella was Pepe Moreno’s discotheque, bar, restaurant. Unlike the other bars, Pepe’s was open all night and anyone who was anyone usually showed up there. (Except for the night Brian Jones, the Rolling Stone who committed suicide in 1969, partied at Mercedes’ and needed a ride back up to Malaga. I gave him one and heard all about Mick Jagger’s marijuana problems back up in London.)

Pepe’s was THE place to hang after all the other clubs had closed. On this one particular evening, I had just seen a corrida featuring Jaime Ostos who I personally considered the best bull fighter in all Spain. (Andrés may have been my mentor, but there was something electric about the way Jaime Ostos handled the cape and muleta.) After the corrida, I headed over to the British bar to flirt with Victoria. Did I mention she was blonde and beautiful and had the most exotic British accent I had ever heard? Okay, she was blonde and beautiful and I was momentarily infatuated.

When the bar closed, I took Vicky to Pepe’s to meet with the rest of the gang. There was a large group of us who hung out together on a regular basis: Mercedes and Paquito who were bar owners and had their own posses, then there was Tina, Juan, Vicky and me. I dropped Vicky off at the table with the rest of the crew and went to the bar to get us both a drink. While I was waiting for my order, George Hamilton stepped up beside me.

This was 1967. There was no mistaking George Hamilton. He was 28-years old and a world-famous actor who was dating Lynda Bird Johnson, the daughter of the President of the United States. There wasn’t a newspaper or a tabloid that he hadn’t appeared in. He was dressed all in black: black shirt, black pants, black belt, black socks, black shoes and his hair was perfect. I was impressed. For the lack of anything better to do, I nodded to him. He nodded back.

“That is one incredibly beautiful woman you came in with,” he said. (Did I mention that Victoria was incredibly beautiful?)

George Hamilton was talking to me. I had just spent the summer hanging with some of the most famous people on the Iberian peninsula and now I was standing at the bar in Pepe Moreno’s with one of the most recognizable men in the world talking to me. I took a sip of my drink and tried to be James-Bond-cool about it. “Yeah, she is, isn’t she,” I said.

“Are you two an item?” he asked.

“Nah. Just friends. She’s English and runs the bar over by the Plaza de Toros.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I asked her to dance?” he asked.

Okay, what would you have done? I mean, I was no slouch. I considered myself good looking. I had just come off a season of playing lacrosse at my prep-school, and I could fit into Harry Belefonte’s clothes. (Harry had recently stayed at the Torre as José’s guest and left a trunk of his calypso clothes behind and Praise God, he and I were the same size.) I knew I looked buff. But I was no George Hamilton.

I caved. “Hell, no. I’ll introduce you,” I said picking up our drinks. But then I stopped. I turned to George and said, “Aren’t you supposed to be seeing someone kind of on the serious side?” I was referring to Lynda Bird Johnson.

George looked at me and smiled. “I gave up bird watching a couple of weeks ago,” he said is a slightly conspiratorial tone.

At that moment, I was an incredibly rich man. I was sitting on the scoop of the century (well, decade, at least). This was a story of mega proportions. The National Enquirer was offering $40,000 1967 dollars for something of this magnitude. George Hamilton had just told me that he had broken up the President of the United States daughter. This was front page headline tabloid material in every country in the world. If I had a cell phone, I could have been driving a Porche by noon.

But cell phones were still 40 years in the future and I wasn’t interested in the money. However, I was interested in something. I turned to George and said, “I’ll be happy to introduce you, just do me one favor.”

“Sure. What?”

“Pretend you know me.”

“No problem. What’s your name….”

George and I walked back over to the table. I put the drink down in front of Victoria and said, “Hey, Vicki, just ran into a friend of mine at the bar and he wants to dance with you.”

Everyone looked up and froze. I had seen that look before back in Waterbury, CT. Everyone was sitting there with their mouths open.

George put on a Golden Globe winning performance. We’d been old friends for God know how long and he was surprised as Hell to run into me here at Pepe’s of all places. When we had them hook, line and sinker, he asked Victoria to dance and that was the last I saw of them. Really. It was the tail end of August and I had to get back to America to do my freshman year at Rutgers University. I was long gone before Vicki ever got back from wherever George and she disappeared to.

Back home when I told everyone what happened, no one believed me. I didn’t think they would. Then the story broke in the National Enquirer. I’ve often wondered who got the $40,000 for my scoop?

Fate, time and death have scattered everyone to the four winds. José died in the early ‘90s. When I last checked, Andrés was in his 80s and breeding fighting bulls somewhere in Spain. I have no idea what happened to Mercedes, Paquito and their crews or Tina or Victoria. Every now and again, I see George Hamilton on TV or in the movies.

I do have a fantasy, though. One day, I would like to attend something that George Hamilton is performing in and stand outside for an autograph. As he is signing my playbill, I want to lean in and ask, “Where in the Hell did you take Vicki? I never got a final drink at that little club she ran.” … just to see what his reaction will be.


(If you liked this post, you might also like my SciFi/Mystery novel, MURDER BEYOND THE MILKY WAY http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Beyond-M... )