Chapter Four.....Momma's Rock and Roll Job

Norwood. What a card! Class clown. Leg man. Could sing Elvis. With no music a tall. Good football and baseball and basketball player. Damn smart. A in everything, all the time. Some coaches like that shit. Some don't. Ray Lamos, the football coach liked Norwood. Put him both ways. Offense and defense. One of only three guys to go both. Thank jesus I didn't have to. I was the star quarterback. Benson Bunnies we were. Kinda richy area of Omaha. On offense, Norwood was the center. I stuck my hands up his ass and cornholed him whenever possible. The nigger teams thought we were candyasses up in Benson. Well, we were. I wasn't. I was big for my age. 6'2" at 16. Grew up in the Omaha Boys Home. A very nice orphanage a couplie blox from Benson High. Hell of a lotta nicer than Boy's Town out west of the city. Had to laugh when I went all the way to the top out in Hollywierd. Most of those rich kids never amounted to squirrel squat.

We were playing Central High. All jigs, except for a few poor pollox. They had Gale Sayers. Speedball. Later he made it almost as big as me with the Chicago Bears. Close, but no banana monkeyboy! Anywaze, it was around fall, 1957. Cold friday night. Close game, maybe one score diffy. We were ahead. Just needed to run out yer clock. Ol Lama made a punt snap back to me. He was a good long snapper, that's fer sure-zee. There was no nose guard so Denny took off straight down the field. I got off a purty good punt. Higher than my usual. Sayers was looking straight up. The ball and R.L. arrived simultane-yus. Norwood ran over Gale Sayers like a mack truck. Lil black dude wasn't full growed yet. He fumbled, more like he.....lateraled the pigskin into the end zone. Well, that's what it looked like from where I was coolin' ma heels. I don't do no punt pursuit. Fuck that shit. If ten guys can't cover then eat shit. Got in a fist fight with Coach Lamos about it once. Other boys fought with each other. I fought with the coaches. You grow up tough in an orphanage. Even a wealthy one.

Anywaze, back to that game with Central. Sayers coughed up the ball pronto when Norwood, who was about a hunnert and fifty pounds at 15, steamrolled em. The ball went in the end zone and Denny jumped up and covered it for a TD. The way the cheerleaders went nuts you'da thought it was the fuckin' Superbowl. Did everybody forgit who kicked the piece of shit down air?

By the way, I'm Nick Nolte. Yeah. The world-famous actor. Who gives a shit? The cops can still bust yer sorry ass. The money is just crap that buys you more crap. I think Norwood said that back at Benson but I didn't believe it then. Now I see. I guess he was always sayin' a lotta shit. Nobody paid any attention except a nerd or two. And some teacher who thought Rama was some kinda genius or some crazy shit.

His mother worked down at KOWH. They played rock and roll which was just coming in big time. She did continuity or whatever the fuck they call it. Commercials. Promo. I was down there one time with Denny. She was in this studio producing some spot. Telling the d.j.s how to act for the voice over. I sorta thought I might like to try it out someday but it took about twenty more years.

Norwood even said one time he was going to be in the school play. He like d(rama). Really it was because Carol Rivedal was in the cast. She was this really hot thang. Best in Benson, easy. Fat legs. Serious cute. She liked Norwood. Most girls did. He was sorta like a girl himself, in a strange way. But big and tough looking. He was a pussycat. Total Leo as one of these asshole Hollywood shits would say.

Norwood and Carol Rivedal were an item. He would gravitate to her like a dog on a boner. She lived on his street, Decatur out where the Benson district gets a little thin. The mansions turn into crackerboxes. Big catho-lick church, Pious X, made out of that stuff will withstand a nuk-a-lure blast. Corrugated steel. Funniest thing you ever saw. Never saw a church like THAT before.

Helen Norwood, the radio gal, his mother, had just married some air man from Offutt AFB, just south of Omaha. The so-called safest place in the U.S.. That's where they took Bush on 9/11. Safest place we got.

The air man's name was Jim Stacy. They called him "Jazz" cuz his initials were J.E.S.: James Eugene Stacy. I met him once or twice over at the house, 6679 Decatur where Norwood's mom would throw these rock and roll parties for Ram's pals and girlfriends. He got to bring home 45's from KOWH. They were one of the only early rock and roll stations so they got more records than they could possibly use on the air. He had a collection of about a thousand or something like that. He was crazy about that music. Well, we all were.

This guy Jim Stacy was a good guy. He was a lot younger than the mom, maybe ten years. He looked like a movie star, not me, but...Jimmy Cagney, Kirk Douglas, Bing Crosby. He was Irish. Short like Cagney. Chiseled like Douglas. Smooth like Bing.

Somebody said old Hell, the mother had been all tore up when Norwood's dad, a football player too, in Oklahoma, had splitsky. I guess she worked real hard in radio to bring up Norwood. Something like that. Now she was ready to have a new husband. She was pretty hot for that age, 35 or whatever. She probably could have had a dj or musician. Omaha has a damn lotta musicians, ya know. A real music city. Like Chicago or K.C.. The pork chop circuit. I can't do music. Finally understood how ya act but it took forever. Now I'm set.

Anywaze, Norwood wanted to be in the school play at Benson High. So he could fuck Carol Rivedal behind the scenery shop. He was a hound like that. They all took him for some kinda fuckin' intellectual. Listen up jack, he had it BAD for chix.

They were doing "Ah, Wilderness" by Thornton Wilder. Back then I could give a fuck. Later, I realized that if a play had a sofa in it, you could sleep there all night. You didn't need an apartment. That was cool when yer allergic to work like me.

Back in '57 I told Norwood if he went in the play he must be a fag. Kinda ironical what with me turning out to be Nick Nolte and all.