The Gatekeeper at King George's Motor Lodge

In June of 1964, I decided to drop out of the Brooklyn Polytech Aeronautical Engineering program and head for Europe. My parents bought into the plan because they felt the US-Russian space race would ruin my generation by putting technology needs ahead of everything else we needed, and they didn't want my life caught up in that mess of BS. "Don't spend ("spend" is the important word there, Dave) your life on making money", is how they put it. I agreed. That was 48 years ago! I was 19.

So, one day, I tossed my textbooks in the Goodwill bin, nailed my sliderule above the doorway, packed a duffle bag, fed the guppies for the last time (I knew that my parents would flush them even before my cab got to the airport), hugged my parents and took off (my very excellent school grades earned me a free flyer ticket to London on British Air). On the way to the airport, I had an ear pierced and spiked my hair to better fit into the Eurotrash subculture that I hoped would embrace me.

Long flight, but comfortable; forgot what movie they showed. Fell asleep, woke up to a rough landing at Heathrow Airport. "Now what?", I kind of wondered. No friends, the weather was cold and damp, the people talk funny.

Well . . . for lack of a detailed plan, the next morning I was sitting on the cold ground in a London "tube" station, playing my harmonica (Deep South Blues was my featured style) for food money. Never thought about it before that morning, but no one pays attention to train station harmonica players; I threw some coins in my cup to give the folks a hint, but some homeless guy took them. "Thanks kid", is how he put it.

But . . . fate was kind to me after all . . .

This skinny chick in fishnets walked by and dropped a £100 note in my cup ("Nice pants" is all she said), and I was set for next few days of sleeping on the trains and eating out of vending machines. I made a few extra coins by giving short, but inspired political speeches to the train riders. To be honest I think mostly they gave me money to shut me up or have me move into the next car, but that was just fine with me, because it meant I could simply start the same speech again to a new crowd. I could work the morning and evening rush hours on just 3 short speeches.

After a week, I had saved a month's rent, and so I got a room just across from Kensington Palace, which allowed me to grab afternoon tea with the kitchen help, after the tourists were finished and gone for the day. One day, I got brave enough to stand on a milk crate at the palace entrance and give my speeches to the incoming tourists. The palace staff and grounds keepers couldn't figure what to do about me, and they let me be for a few days.

Just as they decided best to ask me to move along, that skinny chick in the fishnets (from the train station) showed up, and turns out she was the Queen's wardrobe mistress . . . . "Hey, Dave, is that you again?" . . . ."Yes, Your Ladyship, it's me again" . . . "Oh, no need to call me that when I'm wearing fishnets and chewing gum." . . she turns to the maintenance guy, "Make Dave a nice box to stand on, and see that he gets tea and tuna salad at lunch". She turned to me . . . . "And you be sure to come up and see me sometime." . . . "Yes Your . . . um 'mam."

As time went by, the tourists took pictures of their kids standing with me, I got to be a local legend of sorts and the palace staff got me a colorful outfit to wear. I even recorded my speeches so all I had to do was lip synch all day long, and that made me even more popular ("Can you spot him lip synching? He's so good at it. He should run for Parliament, don't you think?"). I sold the tourists CD's of my speeches (even the 2 speeches that aired on that BBC special, A Yank in the Queens Courtyard) and also autographed photos of me and Lady Fishnets sipping tea (naturally decaffinated Earl Grey) in the Queen's parlor.