I’ve met a few famous people in my life, but none of them has taken a bite out of my hide like one famous Tulsan’s dog did.    
   As I mentioned in a previous column, I threw Tulsa World morning newspapers with my mom from 1972 – 1977. On occasion, I would substitute a Tulsa Tribune evening route for a friend.
   This one particular time, I was substituting a route and delivering the papers from my bicycle. I rolled up on this house in the 1900 block of South Evanston and the next door neighbor’s dog saw me, ran toward me and bit me in the leg. 
   The bite brought blood and I ended up going to a neighborhood doctor and getting a penicillin shot.
   The dog’s owner was Gailard Sartain.
  Sartain, who graduated from my alum mater, Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, about 15 years before me, was sort of a Tulsa icon. At the time, he lived in a modest brick home in the Florence Park neighborhood about six blocks from where I lived.
   While working on his master’s in art from the University of Tulsa, Sartain sidelined as a cameraman on Tulsa’s KOTV, Channel 8, the local ABC affiliate. From July 1971 until the summer of 1973, Sartain joined forces with another famous Tulsan, Gary Busey, and the pair, along with another Tulsan, Jim Millaway, were the characters behind a late night show, Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi’s Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting. The show wrapped around old horror movies on Saturday nights and was a favorite of many young people.
   Even though I never watched the show, mainly because my mom didn’t let me, I knew who Sartain was from television. I also had a poster of him as the Uncanny 7Up man in my clubhouse.
   The role as Dr. Mazeppa led to Sartain being noticed by Jim Halsey, a well-known talent agent of the day, who suggested he join the Hee Haw cast.
   Sartain joined the show in 1972 and became a regular with another Tulsan, Roy Clark, and Buck Owens. Some of his skits including the bumbling store employee, Maynard, the chef at Lulu’s Truck Stop and a truck driver in “Let’s Truck Together” sketches with Kenny Price. He remained with the cast until the show was cancelled in 1992. 
   His first major film was “Nashville,” featuring Keith Carradine and directed by Robert Altman. He went on to play the Big Bopper in the Buddy Holly story in 1978 with Busey, appearing in the Academy Award nominated, title role.
   He acted in more than 60 movies and television shows during his career such as “Mississippi Burning,” “Guilty by Suspicion,” “The Outsiders,” “Equinox,” “The Grifters,” “Ali,” “Hollywood Knights,” “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “Hey Vern It’s Ernest,” “Ernest Saves Christmas,” “Ernest Goes to Jail” and “Ernest Goes to Camp.”
   He was also quite an artist and illustrator and some of his original artwork was featured in Leon Russell’s album, “Will O’ The Wisp.” Russell was also from Tulsa.
   If I can find an address for Sartain, I’m going to write him a letter and bring up the dog bite and see if he responds. He did pay the $13 bill for my shot. If my memory serves me right, my mom called him about the dog bite. I wish I still had the bill. It might be worth some money these days. Also, I wouldn’t mind having a signed piece of his artwork. 
   There were a lot of other famous Tulsans who I have never met including Anita Bryant, a singer, actress, author, activist and Miss America runner up in 1959; David Gates of the 1970s band, Bread; Elvin Bishop, who wrote the song, “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” Garth Brooks, singer songwriter; Tony Randall, actor; Russell Meyers, Cartoonist of Broom Hilda; William G. Skelly, founder of Skelly Oil Company and Spartan School of Aeronautics, who my mom worked for in the late 1950s and early 1960s; Jeanne Tripplehorn, former Tulsa radio host turned actress, whose father was Tom Tripplehorn, a guitarist with Gary Lewis & The Playboys; S.E. Hinton, author of “The Outsiders,” which featured Sartain in the movie version, and “That was Then, This is Now,” and “Tex,” and Paul Harvey, the man behind, “The Rest of the Story.”
   Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day and always.

    My dad was superstitious and he took it seriously, especially when it came to black cats and walking under ladders.
   If a black cat crossed the road in front of the car, he stopped, turned the vehicle around and went the other way. It didn’t matter where he was, where he was going or if he was early or late, he hit the brakes and went a different way.
   One black cat experience that comes to mind happened in July 2003. My folks made the trip from Oklahoma to visit me in Iowa. We decided to tour the northeast part of the state, mainly so my mom could visit the Laura Engalls Wilder home and museum in Burr Oak. We also visited the Bily Clocks Museum in Spillville and the World’s Smallest Church in Festina.
   The trip also led us into Minnesota with a stop at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and the Spam Museum in Austin. We also ate at a Culvers for the first time. I do enjoy Culvers.
   Somehow, we got off course and ended up taking the backroads to Rochester. We came up on an Amish man cutting hay with a team of horses pulling an antique thresher. My dad loved the old way of farming, so we stopped to watch the man at work, but he got off the thresher and acted as if he was fixing something.
   If you know anything about the Amish, they don’t take kindly to having their photo taken. The Amish see it as a violation of the Second Commandment, which prohibits the making of “graven images.” This young Amish man knew that and found solace hunkered down by the thresher until all was clear.
   We watched for awhile and as we got ready to leave, a black cat crossed the road in front of our van, and my dad saw the critter.
   “Aren’t you going to turn around, son?” my dad asked.
   “No,” I answered, thinking this is nuts.
   “You have to or bad luck will happen,” he said.
   So, there we were in the middle of nowhere Minnesota and a black cat just walked in front of the van. At the urging of my dad, I turned the van around and took a different road.
   Somehow we made to Rochester and found the Mayo Clinic. It was later in the day. The building was closed, so we didn’t get to go inside, but I did stop and take some photos of Mom in front of the Mayo Clinic sign.
   I wanted to visit the Mayo Clinic because in 1948, when she was 12, she became ill and missed an entire year of school.
   Back in those days, my grandparents were poor and didn’t own a vehicle. They did have a tractor and my grandpa would make a bed for my mom on the plow and carry her to town to see the doctor.
   She wasn’t getting any better and on this one particular visit, my mom told me that the doctor told my grandparents that he was going to try one thing, and if she didn’t improve, he wanted to take her to the Mayo Clinic. My mom said my grandparents told the doctor that they couldn’t afford that. He told them that he would cover the bill.
   Mom’s doctor gave her a shot penicillin and it healed her. I don’t recall what caused the ailment, but the penicillin saved her life and a trip to the Mayo Clinic.
   Another time, I had returned to Oklahoma to see the family. It was sometime in the late 1990s after I had moved to Iowa.
   My brother, Tom, was in the hospital in Tulsa for some issues with his stomach. Dad and I drove to the hospital to see Tom and when we pulled into the parking lot, a black cat went strolling past.
   We went into the hospital and found a seat in the waiting room. We hadn’t been there too long when my dad got up and said, “I’ll be back.”
    I waited there as he headed outdoors.
   He had been gone for quite a while and I got to wondering about him. I stepped outside and looked around the parking lot for him. It was a Saturday afternoon and there weren’t too many cars in the parking lot.    
   Suddenly, he came out of the bushes on the other side of the parking lot headed for the hospital door.
   “What the heck is going on,” I’m thinking to myself. 
   He had gone looking for that black cat, telling me he wanted to make sure it didn’t come around there again.
    Those are fun memories that I will never forget. I hope you are making family memories, too!
    Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day and always.