Quickies: (Don’t You Just Love Quickies)

Copyright © 2021 by Don P. Marquess.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

All images are copyrighted by Don P. Marquess

Cover Art credit to Don P. Marquess

Rev. date: 08/27/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

830544

CONTENTS

 Preface

Eric and Tracey Tavener

George C. Cockerel, May He Rest in Peace

Lobster, Anyone?

The Evening That Almost Ruined Our Lives

Jack Buck, My Partner & Friend

Mel Famie

Baseball

An Unforgettable Evening at Busch Stadium

John Rooney, The Pro

The Honeymoon (Almost)

Burt Reynolds - Peachtree Plaza

Karen – Busch Stadium Attendant

What Time is It?

The Most Incredible Day

Trip to Shreveport

Ducks on Parade

The Crushing of The Balls

Darlene Theusch (née Gardner)

Garfield, the Wonder Goose

The Deutschland Experience

Saturday Morning Breakfast

My Mother, The Brilliant Lady

My Brother, Robert Marquess

World-Record Gambling Conversation

Bill Haslett and The Las Vegas Caper

Linda Zorsch

Boarding House Audi

The Killer Stalactite

Breeders’ Cup Gambit

My Grandfather - The Indestructible

Beautiful Virginia Beach

Prom Night, 1958

Popcorn

The World’s Greatest Blackjack Dealer

Yankee Doodle Dixie

Three Quickies with Susan (I Just Loved Quickies with Susan)

The Great Gippo

Michael Barnes and The Seventieth Home-Run Ball

Las Vegas (We’re Gonna Kill ’Em)

Kennenbunkport, Maine

John Curry Marquess

Hotel Colombi

Henry Mancini, The Gentleman

The Fabled Waters of The Sea of Cortez

What Happens in Port St. Lucie Doesn’t Stay in Port St. Lucie

Oh Deer

The Cartier Watch

PREFACE

As I write this, I am almost eighty years of age. With any luck at all, I will make it. All of the stories in this Quickies book are real-life experiences with no names changed in any way whatsoever. I have not attempted to protect the innocent. Why would an innocent person care anyway? Probably most of the people mentioned in this book have long since passed away and therefore can’t refute nor complain about their names being used in this book, and the others would be disinclined to purchase this book anyway. I have loved telling these stories for years, and with urging of those who listened to them and apparently enjoyed them, I have been encouraged to put them in print. I have been told by several physicians and a few brainiacs that I have an eidetic memory, which is a near-photographic memory, so all of these stories are exactly as I remember them. I researched these from the recesses of my mind. And they have been researched for accuracy and verified by me. They are all written just as I speak them.

These Quickies are presented in the hope that after a hard day at work or a difficult day doing nothing, these true-life stories will bring a smile to the readers’ face.

My close friend, the late Rich Wolfe, writer of over fifty books, who used my photos on the covers of five of his books (four with my permission), all best sellers, termed my writings Thurberesque in homage to James Thurber. My stories are short and do not take a major commitment to read. They are sort of like The Far Side Cartoons by Gary Larson. Read them, smile, and then turn to the sports page. Think Max Shulman and Jean Shepherd.

Also, I was encouraged to write all of these stories by the noted child psychiatrist, David Berland, MD, since my stories are somewhat childish in their simplicity.

The world’s most honored professor of the piccolo, Jan Gippo, who wrote the bible of piccoloists, The Complete Piccolo, was on the faculty of Webster University and is currently teaching at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, and is also an avid reader, who strongly encouraged me to put these stories in print. Jan has always loved a great story.

I completed seven projects with Jack Buck, the Hall of Fame broadcaster, who every Saturday morning in his kitchen had me laughing at his sophistication in telling humorous anecdotes. Jack, in his later years, became a very prolific poet, and we incorporated his poems onto my photos. I spent many weekend mornings with him as he read his latest poem that would end up on one of my photos. Jack was a major source of my baseball-related stories.

There are stories that mention encounters with Burt Reynolds, Henry Mancini, and a few other celebrities of note. All of these stories are absolutely true-life stories that have occurred in my (almost) eighty years.

Hopefully, you will read them and enjoy doing so . . . but keep the sports page handy.

ERIC AND TRACEY TAVENER

Susan and I had been married for four months or so when she concocted this caper. Susan, by the way, was the most beautiful and intelligent person I ever met. She resembled a gorgeous combination of Barbara Feldon (Agent 99 in Get Smart), Marlo Thomas, and Cher, and she also possessed a delightful and devilish sense of humor. We were watching an old movie on TV called After the Thin Man, or one of the six or seven versions with the same Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) when Susan said that she thought the two of us could be private investigators. She even had our alias created. We would be Eric and Tracey Tavener. (She had apparently been harboring such thoughts for some time, because the names she mentioned were far too good to have been a spontaneous creation.) I immediately warmed to the idea and had thoughts that the Tavener Agency had a very reliable and distinguished sound.

I said, Susan, that sounds great. However, neither one of us has any experience whatsoever. We need more than just a great sounding name for our private investigating firm. We don’t even know how to secretly spy on anyone, much less tail anyone while being unnoticed. Herein is the origin of the caper.

Our apartment was in General Grant Colonial Village, a development that for a newlywed couple was just the most glorious complex we could imagine. (In reality, it was just nice, but to us, being newlyweds and goofy in love, it was absolute heaven.) It was named after the Civil War general whose farm was within shouting distance of the apartment complex. Also, the complex was in a slightly different direction of shouting distance from a very shady motel named Coral Courts that had a sign in front advertising hourly rates. It also had individual cabins with single car parking garages with overhead doors to the units. We needed some experience in tailing someone without detections, so we decided to go there and kind of lurk in the shadows on the parking lot of the Marlboro Lanes Bowling Alley next to Coral Courts. We waited and huddled in the car with the engine and headlights off. We knew that anyone leaving there at 10:30 p.m. or so on a Friday night had probably been up to no good. Shortly, our thoughts materialized. We waited for fifteen minutes or so, then . . .

A white Eldorado Cadillac was leaving Coral Courts. In the passenger’s seat was a woman with platinum blond hair. The driver was wearing a white hat with a black band. We imagined that he also had a pencil-thin mustache and a pinky ring, and probably looked very sleazy.

Susan, gleeful as she could be, said, Let’s get him.

So we waited until he left the motel driveway and turned left on the major Watson Road thoroughfare. Quietly and very stealthily, we started our pursuit. We lagged back, knowing that the Taveners were undetected. We continued behind, following a very safe one hundred or so yards behind. This was a great idea, and it was working. The Cadillac continued east to Jamieson Avenue and turned right, so we did the same, still knowing that we were invisible to our perp. He turned left on Eichelberger Street, then went two blocks, and turned left. We laid back and did the same. He drove around Francis Park, and so did we, traveling safely behind. Then, when we saw the car again, we saw no blond in the front seat, and the driver accelerated very quickly. We assumed that he had discovered our tail, told the blond to duck down in the front seat (or maybe threw her out), and was going to elude our pursuit. We would have none of that. He took a right, then another right, and we were closer behind him. Then he turned left on Eichelberger and had upped his speed to 50 mph or so. We were unrelenting and did the same. He sped across Hampton Avenue (another major thoroughfare), and we were right behind, closer to him than ever. He saw an alleyway and turned on to it at his increased speed. I slowed up and didn’t continue the pursuit.

Susan yelled and said, He’s getting away, why are you stopping?

I said, Susan, for God’s sake, what will we do if we catch him?

For the first time in a while, she was silent. Fortunately, we came to our senses and ended the chase. We both felt, however, that that man lived in fear for several days wondering who was pursuing him. I felt that he probably anticipated a wifely confrontation for a goodly (or badly) amount of time. Our foray into the private detective business failed, although we probably caused a man to live in fear for a while.

GEORGE C. COCKEREL, MAY HE REST IN PEACE

It was a somewhat sultry Sunday in August as Don Flaskamper and I exited the cool air-conditioning of the Redbirds Lanes Bowling Alley and stepped into the hot humid typical St. Louis summer breeze. As we were leaving the parking lot in my daddy’s ’56 mandarin orange and white Ford Victoria, we passed the rear of the Lucisic Monuments building where there were dumped and discarded tombstones. We supposed that the names were misspelled or the date of departure was incorrect or some other flaw that had to be reengraved. There in the discarded pile of headstones was a large stone with the name George C. Cockerel who died in 1953. This was in 1958, so we figured he had been dead long enough to not catch us lifting his monument. It was somewhat strange that Don and I thought the same thing at the same time. That tombstone was ours!! We also had the same idea what we were going to do with it.

There were a group of guys that hung around together in high school. Actually, I was an outsider in the group (which highly inventively was called The Group) due to the fact that I was Catholic and went to a private high school, while the rest of the group were heathens and went to a public high school. The oldest of this group (by several months) of five guys was Roger Goessling, a six-foot-five-inch 140 pounder. Tall and skinny, Roger who could devour six or seven Big Bevos in a single sitting. (In 1958, Big Macs had not hit the St. Louis market, but a restaurant named Schneithorst’s had their version named the Big Bevo.) At any rate, Roger, the tall and skinny, was not with us that afternoon, so he was the perfect candidate for our caper. We knew we were going to use that tombstone for a delightfully sinister prank.

We lifted that extremely heavy headstone into the trunk of the orange Victoria, and it made a resounding thump when it hit the trunk floor. We drove off to get the proper tools—two shovels and a bushel basket—so we could borrow (steal) dirt from a local construction site. Remember, this was a Sunday afternoon and no construction was going on. We filled the bushel basket to overflowing with dirt, placed it in the trunk next to good ol’ George C., and headed to the rear of the florist shop. We assumed that the florists did the same as the monument folks did and threw dead or moldy flowers in the trash in the backs of their buildings. We were right, a florist in our neighborhood had done just that, and we gathered three dozen or so slightly and greatly withered red roses from the alley in the rear of the shop. We then had all of the necessary ingredients for our project.

It was almost seven o’clock at this time, so it was getting dark, not very dark but just dark enough not to be easily seen but yet light enough to see what we were going to do. We drove to the alley behind Roger’s house, opened the trunk, and struggled to take out the headstone. Don and I were both strong kids, but this damn thing was heavy, probably close to three hundred pounds. We lifted it out and took baby steps to place it in the perfect spot in Roger’s backyard, placing it facing east so the morning sun would illuminate it adoringly. We brought the bushel basket of dirt and mounded it nicely in front of the tombstone just like it was a freshly dug grave. And then, just like the cartoon cat, Sylvester, we tiptoed our way back to the grave and placed the flowers. The red roses were the finishing touch,