A Trip To Always Remember **Frankenstein

Dad never was able to afford it so I never really got to take a real vacaton as a kid. When I was 19, I managed to get my own video store opened and it did very well from the first day. Word soon caught on and the money really started rolling in. There weren't that many places to rent movies in 1982 so we stayed very busy. Late in the Summer of 1983, my best friend and I took two weeks off and flew to California.

We stayed in West Hollywood and we made sure to take in all of the sites. Being from a small town in East Tennessee, we were shocked when we drove past Melrose Avenue and saw two guys holding hands as they walked down the street. We were just trying to find our hotel! LOL.. Everything I had ever heard or read about Hollywood turned out to be true. Just outside our hotel, there were some free papers which were filled with nothing but ads for "escort" services and classifieds of people wanting to do much more than I would have thought anyone would actually advertise. It was amazing! I had never seen anything like that in my life!

Of course we walked down Hollywood Boulevard. It was cool seeing all of the stars on the sidewalk and the hand prints outside of Mann's Chinese Theatre. It struck me as funny when I saw that Frederick's of Hollywood was hot pink and purple. We stood on the corner of Hollywood and Vine and talked about how we had seen so many scenes in movies take place right there. It was hard to believe that I was actually there.

We took the tour at Universal Studios and had the time of our lives. Once again, there was the discussion of how many times we had seen some of those things in movies. Some of "streets" looked so familiar. One thing that was especially neat was getting to drive past the Psycho house, The Munsters house, Beaver Cleaver's house, etc. It was there that I learned that my hands are exactly the same size as Leslie Nielson's since there were prints of them in cement there on a wall.

We took the NBC tour and went to see The Tonight Show. We were fortunate enough to actually get to see it when Johnny Carson was there along with Ed McMahon and Doc Severinson. The guests that night were Bob Ueker, Dyan Cannon and an opera singer whom I had never heard of. It was so great since I had been watching Johnny my whole life.

I also went to a great wax museaum. I drove right past Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm on the way there. I didn't even think of stopping at either place. I just had no interest for some reason. To each his own, I suppose.

We had been huge fans of a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland all of our lives and we actually got to visit the editor at his house. His name is Forrest Ackerman and he is such a nice man. His house is a museum of props and memorabilia from all of the old classic horror and science fiction movies. He has so much there, it's hard to believe. I actually have a photo of myself holding the Martian arm which appeared at the end of the original War of the Worlds. I've met him twice since then and I hope to again this summer. If not then, perhaps next year. He's getting close to 90 now but you'd never know it. He's just the same as he always was. Not only getting to meet him but actually going to his house was a dream come true. Like I said, he is so nice. When I called him from the hotel, he said that we were welcome to pay him a visit and he even offered to come and pick us up if we needed him to.

That was a trip I'll never forget as long as I live!

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