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University—a six-week program that culminated in a single performance of a fifteen-minute play: Stone Soup. I starred as the Traveling Stranger who convinces the selfish starving townspeople to collectively make a stew by contributing bits and pieces of food to his pot of water with a stone in it, so that everyone would eat better. It was kind of like The Music Man meets The Galloping Gourmet.
    My father had an upcoming out-of-state band competition, which was also to double as a rare family vacation. The destination was Canyon City, Colorado, home of “The Royal Gorge—Colorado’s Grandest Canyon,” featuring soaring granite cliffs that towered a thousand feet above the rushing Arkansas River. We’d collected brochures and pictures and I had looked forward to visiting the awe-inspiring natural wonder for months. There were no awe-inspiring natural wonders in or around Sand Springs, though people did travel upstate to the Tall Grass Prairie to see tall grass.
    As for heights, in nearby Tulsa, there was the semi-awe-inspiring un natural wonder of the Prayer Tower at Oral Roberts University—a sort of Jetsons-meets-Jesus edifice that more resembled a ride at the county fair than a place of reflection.
    The Royal Gorge was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and I secretly planned to paint my name on a rock and, when the aerial tram was suspended high above the gorge, throw it over the side so that a part of me would be there forever.
    Coincidentally, my single performance of Stone Soup fell right in the middle of the band trip. My parents were still only in their twenties, but they somehow found the wisdom and respect to give me the choice: I could go with them or stay and do my fifteen-minute play, miss the vacation, and be separated from my family for a week for the first time.
    I chose to stay and do the play, under the care of Memo.
    Getting to make that decision forced me to attach a value to my love of performing. At seven years old, I knew what I wanted to do.
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    I could not get enough of music and theater and movies. I spent much of my days escaping over a turntable, listening to a peculiar amalgam of blues and R&B (Billie Holiday, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin) and musical theater ( Mame, Oklahoma!, Funny Girl, Gypsy, Carousel ); and many weekends watching MGM musicals on television (especially anything with Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, or Fred Astaire).
    Unfortunately, my immediate area didn’t provide much for the young thespian. The closest thing Sand Springs had to community theater was the living nativity scene that took place each Christmas in the “Triangle,” a grassy median across the street from the library and catty-corner to Taco Town. I had to think outside the triangle.
    I began putting together neighborhood extravaganzas, mostly revue in style, which featured the Broadway and pop hits of the day. These were performed in our unfinished basement—with a cement floor, wood-framed ceilings, and two weight-bearing metal poles in the middle of the room, which proved perfect for hanging a backdrop and provided a backstage, quick-change area. The cinder block walls made for excellent acoustics.
    I thought the shows were wonderful, and after I’d mounted a few of them, I decided they needed to be seen by more people than no one, which had been the sum total of our audience thus far. But I was concerned that the entertainment palate of my fellow Oklahoman neighbors wasn’t sophisticated enough for the type of fare I was serving, so I knew I had to come up with a marketing scheme to snag them. Something they could relate to. After careful thought, I had an idea.
    I spent the afternoon handwriting flyers on construction paper and distributed them in a three-block radius, inviting one and all to an “Evening of Music . . . and Bowling!!” I set up two two-by-fours on the concrete floor for lanes and used my