1990 - Rush Limbaugh                                                                         Home


    Around 1990 I began to hear about this national talk show with a conservative host named Rush Limbaugh who was pretty funny. I tuned in to his show and immediately I realized that the theme song that he opened his show with was the instrumental that I had played drums to and dedicated to the person standing outside my door some seven years earlier.

I had never heard that song again in the intervening period until I heard it as he opened his show every hour. Something seemed familiar about his name and after a few weeks of listening I started to remember the conversation I had had with the man in the bus station in 1972 and eventually I remembered the man's name was the same as the host of the radio show I was so fascinated by - Rush Limbaugh. The reason I remembered his name was because my former roommate Tommie was always talking about his drug rush in the early 70s and when I met Rush in 72 I had associated his name with that memory.

Of course I was captivated by his show and started to follow it every chance I got. I soon learned that he had been in Ft. Myers in the early to mid 80s every spring working for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. I learned that he had been the young man I saw escorting the singer of the national anthem out to the field prior to the first game in Kansas City in the 1985 World Series between the Cardinals and Royals. Since I was a life long Cardinal's fan I was watching that series.

I had lost contact with Wes by then so I couldn't go ask him about Rush, but I soon figured out that Rush must have been one of the people talking to Wes about me and he must have been the man who came to my house to talk to me about a radio show while I was playing drums that night in the mid 1980s. Little did I know that when I said "YOU DO IT" that I was talking to someone who had the ability to do it and would actually do it.

Now I realized where the "Ditto" that I was picking up around that time was coming from.

Now I understood why Wes had asked me about losers on his radio show. It was because of the conversation I had had with Rush in 1972 when I mentioned that I was leaving some losers at the U. of Ill. Campus. Rush would have had to have told Wes about meeting me. That was the only way to explain it all.

Now I understood why Wes had asked me about my habit of smoking cigars and what I knew about them.

Now I understood why Wes had asked me how I had became a libertarian. It was because Rush knew that in 1972 I was a liberal hippie with mush for brains. I realized that when I said that my views had started to change as soon as I crossed the Mason-Dixon line because of several conversations I had had Rush knew that I was talking about him being one of the persons who influenced me.

Now I understood why Wes had asked me about mental telepathy after Rush had came to my door while I was playing drums and I yelled out “I can't – You Do It!”. Rush must have thought I was telepathic.

So many of the things I heard on Rush's show I realized that he had picked up from me. The "half my brain tied behind my back" quote, the name of his first book "The Way Things Ought to Be." Even some things I said on local talk shows in the 90s I heard come from him. I once described fascism as a system where the government allows you to own private property but controls it in such a manner that you might as well not own it. I heard Rush say the exact same thing on his show while listening in 2005. His mother lived in Naples, Fl and may have followed some of the local talk shows herself.

     Of all my encounters this has to be one of the strangest. I meet a man in a bus station in southern Illinois in 1972 for a 10 minute conversation. Some ten years later while working for the Kansas City Royals during spring training in Fort Myers, Fl he reads about me and my political involvement and my software business in the Naples paper and starts to listen to me on a local talk show.

He's a former disc jockey with experience in radio and a strong interest in conservative politics. He finds it hard to believe that I was the long-haired, maggot infested hippie with mush for brains that he talked to in 1972. Only I no longer have mush for brains. I have been transformed into a libertarian/conservative who is talking about radical ideas and owns a computer software business. How did this happen? Could his talk to me have had something to do with it?

He calls the radio station and makes contact with Wes and tells Wes about his meeting me in 1972. He would have heard from Wes that I had contributed $5000 to Ed Clark and was partly responsible for Clark's national abolish the draft registration speech. Wes would have told Rush of my making money in gold and silver in 1980. So he has seen this long haired hippie with mush for brains transformed into a man who owned an electrical contracting business and sold out of that to start a computer software business and is providing accounting software for the new PC industry, is getting write ups in the local paper for his activities in the LP, and is generating interest with his ideas on local talk shows and appears on the way to becoming rich. I have since learned that at the time he was not in good financial shape so he must have been amazed at my transformation, maybe even a little envious.

Rush tells Wes he wants to talk to me. He may have even made up the part about wanting me to start a radio show just as a hook to have a reason for checking me out. Wes tells me some people from Fort Myers want to talk to me about starting a radio show and that they will be coming to see me.

Then Rush comes to my house and hears me playing drums. He waits till I pause between songs and then knocks on my door. He hears me yell back "I CAN'T - YOU DO IT - THE NEXT SONG IS FOR YOU!" Now he thinks I have the capability of mental telepathy when it was just a lucky guess. Since he was a disc jockey he probably recognized the instrumental that I had never heard before. After the song he gets in his car and leaves deciding to start his own show. Maybe that was what he wanted all along, but he lacked the confidence (I know - hard to believe that).

Sometime later he has been able to work something out in Sacramento and he calls in to tell Wes about it while I'm listening. I have to wonder if Wes didn't put him on right before me to get my reaction. I still don't know what's going on at the time. Rush starts his show and picks the song that I dedicated to him for his theme song to make me aware of who he was. He also gives his first book the title that I had suggested - "The Way Things Ought to Be." He uses the half my brain behind my back quote and the irreverent humor that I used to practice.

Of Course I'm flattered that he chose to honor me with the use of some of my ideas. He's welcome to all of them. This is one of my Forrest Gump encounters that there is no doubt in my mind that I had some part in affecting the world even though I'm still a nobody.

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