Crash

Crash                                     3088

Saturday, January 14, 2006-11:33 A.M.

Dobie Maxwell almost killed my wife!

Two shows went off last night at Gary Field's Comedy Theater in Battle Creek, Michigan.  The first show was an uneven, stilted affair, populated by folks who couldn't afford to see Mad TV's Aries Spears in Kalamazoo.  And that was the good show.

Friday the 13th was in full effect for the second show, as every biker redneck moron that Battle Creek could shake out showed up and literally interrupted every punchline I could try to spit out.  I tried to close my show 15 or 16 times and then just gave up.  It was terrible.  Two nice girls walked out.  The club tried to quiet people down, but it was like a tire fire...one guy would shut up, and then another guy would errupt into distracting conversation.  It was a nightmare.

Dobie fared much better in the closing spot, because he refused to engage anyone in conversation for very long, and his style is much more rat-a-tat-tat than mine, and I'm pretty rat-a-tat-tat, but hecklers would always manage to jump right in just before a punchline.  At the end of the night, Dobie didn't even want to set up the merchandise table, he just wanted to retreat back to the hotel.  I convinced him to stay, and a nice couple came up and bought a couple of CD's.  Mission accomplished, we beat feat for the McCamley Plaza Hotel.

I've known Dobie for years, and two Christmases ago, we worked together in Mauston, Wisconsin, a tiny burg north of Madison that is home to about 4,000 people, although in the course of the weekend, we only got to meet about 50 of them.  Dobie is from Milwaukee, so he had plans to visit family on the Saturday, leaving me to my own company in a town that was little more than support for a truck stop.  In an attempt to get some exercise, I drove 20 miles to the nearest retail center, a Wal-Mart in the Wisconsin Dells.  I preferred a mall, but there wasn't one until Madison, and that was much to far to drive.  I suffered a mild panic attic in the store when I saw all the families and Christmas decorations and heard the Christmas music playing, and was missing my wife and daughter, then only 9 months old.  I got out of the store after spending only about 15 minutes walking around, and then drove back to the hotel where I laid in bed looking at pictures of my family and feeling consumed by melancholy.  The next day, it was so cold that my car wouldn't start, and I had to call AAA for a jump because conventional autos weren't strong enough to give me the juice I needed.  I drove home hot for much of the 15 hour ride, because I didn't want to take a chance that the car wouldn't start again.  That weekend was one of the lowest points of my comedy career, and I didn't make it any better by spending the day off (Thursday) hiding in the hotel and drinking Jim Beam which I had packed for the occasion, not knowing how much I'd appreciate it until later.

Dobie was the feature act at the Comix Cafe for Don Reese the day my wife and her mother got into a really bad car accident.  I had just started working at the club in management, and it was a Thursday, and I was in the club early, around 11:00 A.M., when I got a call from Don.  He was at Park Ridge hospital, where he went to have a lump in his leg checked out.  Come to find out, it was a blood clot, caused by the blood thinners he was taking for another condition, and the long drive from Iowa had exacerbated his condition, causing the clot.  The doctors at Park Ridge refused to release him on accounts of they insisted on keeping him under observation, lest the clot move up his leg towards his heart and kill him.  He called to let us know he wouldn't be able to make the show, and I made the decision to move Dobie up to close, and I would fill in the feature spot.

That night, Dobie, myself and club owner Ed Bebko were standing around, and I was called to the phone.  My wife and her mother were hit head-on as they were driving home, and they were at Strong Hospital.  The person from the emergency room said they were fine, but that I should get there as quickly as possible.  Dobie and Ed told me that I shouldn't worry, that they wereprobably in a fender-bender, and they were convinced to take the ambulance ride to the hospital to get checked out, just in case.  "Ambulance drivers always try to drum up the business" they insisted.  I settled down, and did the fastest, tightest, best 30-minute show of my life.  I ran out the back door to my Dodge Colt, and brushed the snow off with a swipe of my arm, and hauled ass tothe hospital.

What I found when I arrived was more like a M*A*S*H* unit.  My mother-in-law-to-be had suffered a crushed ankle, fractured wrist, and injuries to the face.  My wife (at the time, fiance'), had suffered deep bruises to the breast, a broken rib that wasn't diagnosed until much later, and both of them were in severe pain.  I stayed with them until 6 A.M., when they were released! and sent home.  I managed them into the tiny Colt, which was barely comfortable for one person, let alone three with two injured and not moving well.

I took the rest of the week off.  The club didn't have a problem with that.

Don got better and finished the week off.  He was booked to headline again, and got bumped to wrap-around for Tommy Chong and his hideous wife, Shelby.

Dobie returned to the club and eventually headlined in his own right.

Mama Davis healed up, but still feels the pain in her bones when it gets cold.

Pamela spent six months on the couch recovering from the broken rib they didn't see the first time they X-rayed, and still harbors ill feelings towards the driver of the other car who crossed the double yellow line and hit her and her mother, but was never breathalyzed even though he had just left a bar, and admitted to "drinking something" and his passenger was completely inebriated.

Neither the driver nor his passenger suffered any injuries, and were questioned at the scene and released.

I went back to work the following Wednesday, and did days doing laundry, cooking meals, doing personal care and whatever else I needed to do.  I worked evenings, and at night, I slept dead, dreamless sleep.

The next time someone tells me an ambulance took a loved one to the hospital, I'm just going to go right away.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY