Luck or Something Like It by Kenny Rogers Read Free Book Online Page A

hurt when he asked, “What’s the signal for get up?” So we all answered, “How about ‘get up’! See if that works.” All we heard was the meek voice of what sounded like a seven-year-old saying, “Get up, horsey, get up,” but Mikey just lay there. It was a perfect match. Mikey the accountant and Mikey the horse. We all chose to ride off and leave him, knowing Mikey the horse would get up and follow us. When Mike caught up with us, he kept saying unconvincingly, “Boy, that was really fun. It doesn’t get any better than this.” That’s as close to a sense of humor as a business manager/accountant is allowed to have.
    Another in-law, my sister Barbara’s first husband, Sonny Gibbs (who is not to be confused with the NFL player of the same name), had a big role in at least two experiences that changed my life. Sonny was, in his time, a legendary high school athlete in Houston, and Barbara was crazy about him. When I was twelve, the two of them got roped into babysitting for me on a night they were to attend a really special concert. Having no other choice, they dragged me along to the concert. The main attraction: Ray Charles. I was both wowed by the stage performance and stunned by the love and admiration the audience showed him. They applauded his music and laughed at his jokes. I left that place that night wanting very much to do the same thing.
    I also realized for the first time that night something essential to being a performer. People will sometimes clap to be nice, but no one ever laughs to be nice. They laugh when they think something is funny. It’s either there or it’s not.
    My brother-in-law Sonny was a great athlete, but he was also something else: a drug addict. Everyone, including Barbara, knew this, but no one talked about it. One day, out of the blue, he asked me to sit on the front porch and talk for a few minutes. I had no idea what he wanted to talk about, but it soon became apparent. He wanted me to promise him that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes that he had made that had sidetracked his whole life. He wanted something good to come from his life, and warning me off drugs was, in his mind, a good start. He asked for a solemn pledge to avoid drugs and I gave it to him. And, with a few infractions along the way, I have largely kept that pledge.
    I now had the example of my dad to keep me away from alcohol and that promise to Sonny to stay away from the very drugs that had consumed so many musicians and entertainers over the years. Once again, someone had taken the time to care about me enough to change my life.
     
    In 1954, a good thing happened. With my mom working extra jobs and with Lelan, Geraldine, Barbara, and me all contributing to the family income, the Rogers clan was no longer poor enough to qualify for public housing. We had moved up a notch on the economic scale. We moved out of San Felipe Courts and over to the north side of Houston, right across the street from Jefferson Davis High School, just as I was starting high school. I was coming up in the world.
    My paperwork to transfer from my old neighborhood high school, San Jacinto, to Jeff Davis hadn’t come through by the first day of school, so when I showed up at San Jacinto, I knew I was in for a wasted day. Rule follower that I was, I had never before had the audacity to skip school, but now was my big chance. Some friends and I decided to drive to a place called Spring Creek, about twenty miles north of Houston.
    What a day! We had borrowed a brand-new red Mercury convertible from my brother Lelan’s friend Frank, just back from a tour of duty in the military, swam in the creek, and then headed home at sundown. We all went back to San Jacinto the next day, where we were politely greeted by four city detectives and promptly arrested and taken to jail in handcuffs. That was a shocker, to say the least.
    As it turned out, a delivery truck from Ben Wolfman’s Furs had been robbed the day before in the same area and