"And now it's time for one last bow, like all your other selves, eleven's hour is over now. The clock is striking twelves." - Doctor Who

Now when I look back to remember, the only thing worth telling you is: My life was made of moments of love. That’s really all that is important. That you get to keep.

In the words of one of my greatest teachers, Joseph Campbell: “Follow Your Bliss”

Just think Bob… if you had only followed “the plan” and stayed with the schooling, your woman could be sleeping with an executive!

"These are the kind of songs that people might sing to let you in the audience know that we really like you and care about you. We uh, understand how hard it is to laugh these days, with all the terrible problems in the world."

Chorus: "Help everybody, so they all get some action Some love on the weekend, some real satisfaction
Be strictly genteel" -Frank Zappa

Wife’s and Sweethearts: May they never meet.

“Rose lipped maidens and light foot lads” - Out of Africa

Below is a five-minute refresher to remind us that art reflects life, and if we look closely, we may get a glimpse of that shining needle weaving its way through our very lives.

Peter and the Wolf: “Pierino e il lupo”

And the Story Begins…

One night, somewhere around the seventh or eighth grade, Jan and Sally, from down the street, showed up at the front door of our house. They told my mother they wanted to invite me to their New Year’s Eve party. My mom came back to my room and said I had an invitation. “ There are some older girls at the door. Do you know those girls? They look too old for you.”
I replied: “Oh, that’s Jan & Sally, their friends of mine…”

Yes, I knew who they were but never had even spoken to either…

I was granted the time to spend New Years’ Eve with them but told to be home soon after Midnight! The party was a planned attack, which began right when we arrived, down the street at Sally’s house. They ripped my clothes off and when I was holding on to my underwear with the backside pulled down and started crying, they let me be.
I spent the party in my underwear. What’s a guy to do?

There is a perfect line in the movie “Empire of the Sun” where Christian Bale is explaining to John Malkovich why all John’s stuff is missing after John was in the hospital after being beat badly by the Jap commander: “They Were Bigger.”

After that night, I remember becoming friends with Jan and she and I studied the whole Paul’s dead affair for weeks. Looking at LP covers and playing songs backward!

This has been difficult for me to nail down time-wise. I think I was somewhere between fourteen and fifteen years old when I conceived the idea for the Bean Bag.

I wasn’t old enough to drive, or I wouldn't have been in the den that evening with my stepfather and mother watching television.
Ike, whom I considered my actual father, had a small metal ashtray with a beanbag bottom resting on his knee.

Ike, “Robert, come empty my ashtray.”

“Yes, sir,” and I crossed the room picking up the ashtray and headed to the utility room to empty the butts in the trash.”

Ike owned the local Sealy Posturepedic Mattress plant. He was also a member of the Kenya Safari Club and had gone on his second safari to Africa. While the boss was gone, the workers at the plant went on strike.
Making mattresses required, among other things, a team of seamstresses. Miss Edna was the head seamstress.

In the late 1960s, by the time a message could reach the safari club and then send a runner out into the bush to find the safari, and then return to Cowtown, it was all over.
Large orders were not being fulfilled, and I have no idea what other issues may have arisen.


On my return from dumping the butts I had the ashtray in the palm of my hand upside down and exclaimed: “Would you have Miss Edna make me a big one of these that I can sit on, lay on, or throw at my friends, or even jump on?”

Virginia, my mother, said dismissively, “Oh, Bobby, don’t be silly!”

Ike added, “Wait a minute, Virginia, I think he’s got something there.” Ike turned to me and asked, “Would it have a metal bottom?”

Bobby: “No, sir, it would be all fabric so that you wouldn’t get hurt diving from the bed to the bag!”

Ike laughed and asked: “What shape? Round like a ball?”

Bobby: “No sir, it would be like Poo Bear, large at the bottom and smaller at the top.”


The next evening, Ike returned home with the prototype of the Bean Bag Chair. Walking in, he said, throwing the device on the floor, “Try that out, Robert.”

Sitting on the Bean Bag, it only took a second to tell him that the beans are too large and there are too many.

Ike picked up his bean bag ashtray, looked my way, and said: “Get us a pair of scissors.”

Handing the scissors over as if they were surgical instruments, Ike began to cut open his ashtray. And yes, inside the patient lay tiny Styrofoam beads…

The very next day, Ike returned home and tossed prototype two on the floor, inviting me to sit on the vinyl bag.

“Oh yeah! You got it now, Ike.”

Mr. Haas asked me to take the new device to my room and have some fun with it. Ruff fun… I agreed, and then I jumped from the bed onto the bean bag, letting Toby, my woolly monkey, have his turn, which he was happy to do. I tried various positions, both sitting and lying, then threw the bag against the walls.

After Toby had an accident, I knew that vinyl was the correct choice. After cleaning the mess, I noticed that there were quite a lot of tiny white Styrofoam beads on the floor.

I returned to the den, recounting the beads that had escaped from the bag. We looked along the seams and found where it was splitting.
Ike nodded his head and closed his eyes in deep thought. Upon opening his eyes, he said: “Looks like a job for Miss Edna.”

Over the next few days, Miss Edna devised what she called the Texas Double Stitch. And now the product was ready to manufacture.

At some point, I burst through the door and exclaimed: “Purple & White! Orange & White! College colors! We can sell them at the campus student stores. Perfect for their doom rooms!”

My mother did not think much of my new college idea, but Ike tuned right in on that.

I added pointing to Virginia, “And for you, Ma’am, he’s going to make one for you out of Mink.”

Mother looked directly at her husband and said one word: “Sable.”

Being outnumbered two to one, Ike reluctantly accepted.

Then, Virginia told him how perfect that would be for the Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalog.

And so it was. The Bean Bag was trademarked as the Texas Leisure Chair.


That Sable Bean Bag became “the chair” that Ike would take to companies such as J.C. Penney and Pier One, among others.
It only took one sitting for people to agree on how wonderful it felt and fall in love with the most comfortable chair in the world.

In 1972, after Nixon opened up China for international trade, Ike even took the Bean Bag to China. They were not impressed or just copied it. Anyway, the great thing about that trip was that Ike brought home a new Akai four-channel reel-to-reel for me.
That tape recorder and the Teac 2340 reel-to-reel that Valerie’s mother gave me would soon lead me to my career in the music business.

When I was 16, girls lined up in the yard to get their turn in my bedroom late at night. The reason for such meetings was that I was not trying to do anything more than make out and maybe do a little petting, and the word got around between the girls…

Most guys at that age have a one-track mind and are trying to get there “now.”

When my mother found out, she got furious about this late-night action: "You're going to get one of these girls pregnant!" I told her: “No, Ma’am, they will not, and that's the whole point: No one’s getting pregnant!”

That didn't matter, and Mother had someone put screws in all the screens on my windows. The screws in the screens remain to this day.

Then one night, Jennifer and I were sneaking down the hall past Mother’s room; she must have been awake, and I got bitched out again. Later that day, Mom drove me to some old apartments on Camp Bowie, showed me mine, and handed me the key.
Talk about a 16-year-old kid going from the frying pan to the fire.

“So through the eyes love obtains the heart. For the eyes are the scouts of the heart and the eyes go reconnoitering for what it would please the heart to possess, and when they are in full accord and firm all three in one resolve, at that time perfect love is born from what the eyes have made welcome to the heart. For as all true loves know: Love is perfect kindness. Which is born, there is no doubt, from the heart and the eyes.” - Joseph Campbell

The late summer before eleventh grade, on a Sunday, I was with my family having lunch at the Pancake House on Camp Bowie. Also there having lunch with her family was a young lady that looked about perfect. My god was she beautiful! She had chocolate eyes and no makeup. I guess she goes to Western Hills and that will be the end of that.

Here is a picture of my girlfriend Joanne, who was also my first lover. The picture above is the year she was the US National English Merit winner working on my term theme. Well… the papers got an -A but that was scratched through and it was changed to an “F”. The english teacher wrote: “Bobby, Someone put a lot of time an effort into this paper. Too bad it wasn’t you!”




I got news for you teacher: This is my fuckin’ term theme right here.

I was ALWAYS late to class because I was carrying Joanne’s books from class to class. And that girl had a LOT OF BOOKS!

I was always making excuses to get out of class early so I could carry more books.
My eleventh-grade art class had a project where we were to bring a cardboard box from a refrigerator. We were ask to create an environment inside the box. Once finished each individual box, we tape all the boxes together end-to-end where students could crawl through the spaces. On the exit of my box was a small floating ship suspended by a balloon. On the aft side we’re the words “I Love JS.” I ask Joanne if she saw that. She said she did and I then finally asked her out.

My first date with Joanne was to the TCU bonfire on the old golf course up the hill, now owned by the school. The bonfire was beautiful. We were the last two people there and watched the flames of our desire. She said it was the best date ever. After all these years, I agree. That was the best date.

Joanne told me something to the effect of; I was different than the other guys. They all were fast, ruff and had only one thing on their mind, themself. On the other hand you, Bobby seem to be thinking and caring about me…

For while, my stepfather kept a duplex over in Arlington Heights in case my mom kicked him out. Well, folks it just so happens that little Bobby Hickey had a key to that shack. It was there in “our” private space that Joanne & I learned what went where. We then headed down to our local Planned Parenthood. She in 12th grade and I’m in 11th. They ask us if we knew what we were doing. Joanne replied: “I think we will find out soon…”

We enjoyed going to experience Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair and some great movies including A Clockwork Orange. Joanne had read the book and told me that was the name of the book the author in the movie is writing and the author was explaining that man should be like an orange but is clock like instead. Or something like that…

Joanne’s Pascal senior prom rolled around. We got a motel room. Joanne’s Pascal senior’s “Overnight at Six Flags” rolled around, we got a motel room. We drove to Austin to check it out because she was heading directly to UT, no spring semester. We got a motel room.


I would skip school at Paschal on Fridays and drive to Austin to spend the weekend. I am laughing so hard right now because I remember Joanne came up with what she thought at the time was a good business idea for Austin.
The to-go only restaurant would be called “FOOD & DUDE” where you could order a meal and a man who would deliver, then stay at your dorm room for a while. Fair play: I wanted a matching to-go only restaurant called “FOOD & BOOB” and you can figure out the rest.



We again enjoyed watching a colorful bonfire together in a vast field outside Austin with many iconoclasts at J. Ice's "First Annual Mesca Fest."

I remember Joanne and I got a six pack on one night and headed to the drive in. I got sick from drinking too much and threw up in my step dads’ new Lincoln Continental. I did not have another drink until I was 30 years old and on the road. I still do not drink. I mean every once in awhile, I’ll have a beer with Mexican food or wine with steak or Italian.

One of the best gifts Joanne gave me was Leonard Cohen’ first album. Which I carried on cassette ‘round the world and fell in and out of love many times to these beautiful songs. Their meaning and depth grew as time went by. Thank you so very much Joanne.

I love you forever.

When summer rolls around, Joanne heads directly back out of town to work as a lifeguard at some summer camp. That summer when Joanne shows up at my first rental house she had the world's best tan. My God, that girl was so unbelievably beautiful!


Then Joanne tells me she slept with an older collage-man in Austin. Not only that but, also tells me she thought she was in love with Scott McReynolds for about a week. Scott was my diving partner when we were under eleven-years of age. We both dove for Buford Swim Club at UTA. He never once beat me at anything in life, and now he wants to steel my girl behind my back? That little shit…

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