This was all provoked by Marlo Thomas and a St. Jude’s Hospital commercial. They always leave me little weepy. I immediately turn the channel, too, whenever they show the ASPCA abandoned dogs commercials. I’m just a wimp.

Anyway…

Jeri.

My woeful performance on the “Ten Famous People You Have Met and One You Haven’t” Facebook survey– my famous people were pretty anemic, including G.D. Spradlin, the actor who sent Martin Sheen Up the River in Apocalypse Now and the guy whom singer Trini Lopez portrayed in The Dirty Dozen. (“Lemon tree, verrry pret-ty…” Trini Lopez sang. The G.I. he portrayed blew stuff up.)

I remembered that Jeri was my date for the 1969 Arroyo Grande High School Winter Formal. She was very bright and had a refreshingly sardonic sense of humor that was about 23 years older than the rest of us. Jeri and I were just friends, with no romantic inclinations, except for the ones I felt for her car.

She drove a 1966 Mustang 2 +2 Fastback, with a classic short-block 289 V-8 under the hood. Sigh!

Alas, we went to the Madonna Inn for dinner in my father’s 1965 Chrysler, which, for those of you not up on your Chryslers, was roughly the size of the carrier USS Eisenhower.

Jeri and I on our way to the Madonna Inn.

No, Jeri was not a Famous People. We’ll get to that right after we order.

Yes, baked potatoes with sour cream, please.

As we were beginning dinner (TWO prime rib dinners, $13.74. I kept the receipt), Jeri punched me in the arm. It wasn’t something wrong with the prime rib. It was DANNY THOMAS, sitting in a booth thirty feet away with Mrs. Madonna, and Jeri wanted his autograph. If Danny Thomas wasn’t exactly a celebrity on the scale of all four Cartwrights AND Marshal Dillon in the Madonna Inn Liberace Room on horseback, he was close enough for two kids from Arroyo Grande, California, USA.

The Madonna Inn–as always, casual and understated.

Now, I worked with Jeri on the school newspaper, and she’d punched me in the arm before. She could leave a bruise if you’d deserved it.

So, after about the third punch, I went over to the booth, introduced myself, blushing profusely and speaking in what must have sounded like Urdu (I knew Mrs. Madonna slightly; my Dad worked for Madonna Construction) and Mr. Danny Thomas provided the autograph.

Danny Thomas and his lovely daughter, Marlo, at St. Jude’s, the incredible hospital Mr. Thomas founded. (Below) Mr. Thomas’s sitcom was at one point on opposite The Andy Griffith Show, which was awkward, because Thomas was Griffith’s executive producer.

That is not really the point of the story, but I have misplaced the point somewhere.

Oh, here it is: TWO prime rib dinners for $13.74!