Okay, how do I tell this story???
 
I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Or, maybe not…
 
Sitting back tonight, deep in the late night of a warm summer’s night. A bottle of the grape, or so, gone down. My lady, she goes to bed as she always does. Good for her!!! Me, I sleep very little.
 
I pop over to YouTube to let it vibrate my brain with some music videos. Up pops this Country Western piece, sung by a sweet young, blonde, white girl.
 
Where was it filmed? …Which leads me to the creation of this piece and the memory of the memory… It was filmed at the Sagebrush Cantina. A spot over there in Calabasas.
 
Okay… Let step back five decades. Calabasas was not yet a spot for the rich and the famous to dwell. It was just a place over there to the left of the 101, at the far end of the San Fernando Valley,  off of Mulholland Highway.
 
One night, deep in the realms when Punk was new, my main-bud, Saturday Jim, he had somehow/someway found out about the goings on of this place. A place where they played Country Western music on Saturday nights and people did the two-step or whatever it is Country Western dancing is called.
 
We, him and me, being from Hollywood, I have no idea how he found out about this place. As Calabasas is not that close to the inner-city. We, him and me, being deep into the Punk Rock scene, I have no idea how he even thought I would be anywhere near interested into going to a Country Western establishment. But, he did. It happened. He had a cowboy hat. He even loaned me one. Borrowed from who knows who. I do remember it was too small and sat weird on my head.
 
I was reluctant but we were off. Him, making me promises about the possibilities that the girls there would be into two Punk Rockers from Hollywood. Punks with cowboy hats.
 
Man, I hated country music back then!
 
Now, there were a few events that took place that evening. Nothing worth writing about, however. I don’t know, maybe somewhere, I did write about them??? Most notably was him, Saturday Jim, getting hard slapped by a woman which he became way too friendly with…
 
Me, I did meet a sweet young Asian woman who looked (and felt) as out of place there as I did. We discovered we were both going to the same university. We promised to meet up, but never did.
 
Okay, move forward five decades. Saturday Jim has moved on to the great beyond. Sagebrush Cantina is still there. Punk Rock is all but a memory/all in the history books. …At least what it was there at the beginning. Country Music, I am far more found of it now than I was then.
 
So, what does this tell us??? I don’t know? Me, as an actor, there was always this bar up and over in Chatworth where they film country music stuff. I was in a few pieces shot in that place. Mostly commercials. Every now and then, I still see that location on the screen. So, they are still filming there. Sagebrush Cantina, not so much. So, why here, why now?
 
I don’t have an answer to that question. What I can say is, everything in your life/in my life, it all spins around. What you lived, you will be reminded of. How or why, I have no answers. But, it will happen. That something that pops into your field of vision, your ears, your mind, and it brings you back to a time gone past.
 
So, when it does happen, just be thankful for it. Let it caress your soul. Let it let you remember. For, if nothing else, your memories are a part of you. They are you. They are what you lived. You did what you did: good or bad. And, they all came to define the person that you currently are.

Remember the past but never get lost in the past.