(part 132) BACK IN 57

I awoke from my morphine dreams to the sounds of the hospital. I looked down at my legs and casts thinking, "Man, I sure fucked myself up this time." The dull throbbing pain was still hammering away as I tried to figure out my life.

There was so much damage at this point, that I wondered if I wasn't just totally nuts. The past nine or ten years hadn't gone too good, I thought, as I tried moving my feet inside the casts.

No such luck. They were frozen there like two chunks of ice. I stared down at them for a long time, wondering how long I'd be like this. After a while I drifted away, back into the softness of the morphine.

* * *

When I was a kid, back in 1957, in Tucson, AZ, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, combing my hair into various styles trying to get it just right, so I looked like a rock-n-roll star. With a cigarette dangling from my lips, I was suddenly startled by the sound of knocking on the door.

"What are you doing in there Bobby?" came my mother's voice, "You've been in there for 30 minutes. You better not be smoking in there," she warned. I knocked off the burning tip of the cigarette into the toilet and flushed it. "I'm not smoking," I lied, "I'm just going to the bathroom."

"Well hurry up, for God's sake. Let somebody else have a turn." I wildly waved a towel at the open window trying to make the smoke go out, saying, "OK, Ok, I'm coming." I reluctantly opened the door and exited the bathroom, hoping my mother wasn't going to run a smell test for smoke.

I headed for my bedroom and the record player, choosing a Presley tune called "Baby Let's Play House." As the music filled my room I was swept up in the driving rhythm and started moving like Elvis, I hoped, losing myself in my dreams.

* * *

After a day or so, my mother, one of my brothers, and Carol Paulus, came to the hospital. I wasn't all that glad to see them because of the circumstances, but it stayed pretty low key. I attempted to explain the various points of damage to my body as they stared at my legs and the casts.

"God it looks so bad," said my mother, "I didn't know it was this bad." "Yeah, I guess I really screwed myself up," I said, but I was lucky on two counts.

Number one, the roof had a little give to it, so I wasn't permanently crippled or killed, and two, I was operated on by a visiting orthopedic surgeon who happened to be at USC, and chose to take on my case for future publication in a medical journal. They seemed pleased with this information. We visited a little more, until I drifted off again.

* * *

Like I said, back in 57, I hoped I moved like Elvis, because my brother Bill and I were going to perform at Cal Rubin's Furniture City on Speedway Blvd. in Tucson that evening. We'd been doing that each week for a while now, ever since we'd won a talent search they'd sponsored.

We were The Macdonald Brothers then, and tried to look and act like The Everly Brothers. We had matching black Harmony guitars and shirts, and we knew some good songs, Be Bop A LuLa, by Gene Vincent, being one of my favorites.

Along with well known songs by everybody else, we'd stick in one of our own too, just to see how it went over. Back then, for a couple of hours a week, we were real rock-n-roll performers.


* * *

If it weren't for the morphine they were giving me in the hospital every few hours, I would have gone into withdrawl from all the other drugs and booze I'd been using. The constant dose of the pain killer, though, saved me from that particular ordeal.

The fact that I'd managed to survive two comas, and a bone crushing fall, in a matter of months, was somewhat of a miracle in and of itself, and would have caused most people to celebrate it as such. But inside my head was not like the inside of somebody else's head. This was my mind, and it was broken.

There was no deep realization that I'd been spared for something better, or that my guardian angel had saved my life three times in a row. In my mind, this was just some more of the same weird shit that always happened to me.

If anything, I viewed my circumstances as par for the course, and had no plans to change a thing. I vowed to myself in that hospital, that I'd keep going, and with a vengeance.

(PART 131) PAIN

I was taken to L.A. County Hospital by two girls from the building, and the big guy who had carried me out of my room. After they got me to emergency, and said their goodbyes, I was placed on a steel gurney and rolled into a crowded corridor, where I stayed for over five hours without any treatment whatsoever.

There I squirmed in pain, hour after hour, periodically breaking down in tears. At times, I could overhear the nurses talking to each other, saying, "He's just a drug addict trying to get pills, there's nothing wrong with him, he's just fakin' it."

I tried repeatedly to catch someone passing by who would help me, but without success. When I couldn't tolerate the pain any longer, I broke down and sobbed openly, begging for help. Finally an orthopedic surgeon was summoned after five hours.

As he began examining my feet and ankle, he became incensed over what he saw. He angrily demanded an explanation from the staff as to why no one had understood the seriousness of the problem. "Doesn't anyone here have eyes?" he demanded. "Did anyone even bother to examine this patient?"

The doctor ordered the same nurses, who had done nothing, to now prepare me for immediate surgery. "Get him ready now!" he yelled. This was a welcome relief to me in the state I was in by then.

As well as the swelling and discoloration of my feet and ankle, the doctor was extremely worried that infection had set in. Also of concern was possible blood vessel injury and nerve damage.

I had been there for hours and nothing had been done, but now I was the center of attention as the doctor continued yelling orders at the now remarkably attentive staff.

As the full scale rush to get me into surgery ramped up, I began feeling the effects of the various medications being fed into my body intravenously. I remember now the sense of relief I felt at the time, as I slowly drifted into unconsciousness on that gurney.

When I woke, hours later, the pain in both my feet and left ankle were singularly the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. As soon as I was able, I pleaded for something to ease the pain, but was told I had to wait until the effects of the anesthesia wore off.

Not too much later, an orthopedic surgeon came by to talk to me about the surgery and damage. He told me my ankle had been crushed, and all the bones in both feet were broken to some degree.

As a result of the massive impact on my body, I also had fractures to my lower vertebrae. He explained that the damage to my ankle was known as a paratrooper break, named for ankle fractures sustained by paratroopers during the second world war. Simply put, my ankle joint had disappeared.

He was still concerned about infection, such as sepsis, and gas gangrene being a problem, as well as nerve, ligament, and muscle damage. I had a cast that ran from the bottom of my left foot all the way up to my left hip, and a cast that ran from the bottom of my right foot all the way up to my right knee.

I would remain in those casts for six months or more, and in bed for nearly that long. As I listened to him going through the litany of destruction to my body, I stopped him saying, "Can't you get them to give me something for this pain, Doc, I can hardly stand it." He paused there and looked at me saying,"You know you've got other problems as well, my friend, that's how this happened in the first place."

"I wasn't trying to kill myself man, really, I thought I could make it," I said. "It was just a lot higher than it looked after being up so high before." "I didn't mean to imply that you were trying to kill yourself," he answered, "but I think the fact that you were up there at all is a pretty clear sign that something is wrong."

"Yeah," I replied. "just about everything in my life is wrong at this point. Just about every single thing I can think of." "What exactly does that mean?" he asked. "Well, I been in the music business for a lot of years, ya know and...," "Yes I heard you were a musician," he said.

"Yeah, well I never got paid for the stuff I did and it makes me crazy, and then I get loaded and...," He gently interrupted me saying, "I think I get the picture, Bobby. You get worked up over what's happened to you and it gets out of control at some point, like yesterday." "Yeah! Exactly! Just like yesterday, it got outta control. It just got completely outta control....."

"Well look," he said. "I'll make sure the nurse gives you something for the pain as soon as we can safely do that. You try to think up some better ways of showing the world you're dissatisfied with it, will you?"

"Yeah, OK Doc, I'll think up safer ways to be pissed off." "There you go," he said smiling, and turned and walked off through the ward. Later, a nurse came by with a shot of morphine, and I soon drifted off to another place....

(part 130) GROUND ZERO

I remember the wind suddenly changing directions as I fell through space to the roof below. Now free from my steel perch, I was transformed into dead weight, racing downward through the air.

In mid flight I remember thinking, "I should be on the roof by now," but I was not. The fact that I had time to think of this was signal enough that my judgement of the distance had been way off.

As I flapped my arms, trying to slow my descent and right myself, the angle of my trajectory veered slightly to the left. I hit the roof like a sack of concrete, landing on my left foot first, followed quickly by my right foot with slightly less impact.

My body crumpled like paper against the flat hard surface of the roof, slamming my mouth shut with such force it fractured a number of teeth and nearly knocked me out. I lay there in a heap for a moment, dazed and unsure of my condition. I was quickly surrounded by fire rescue as I crawled to a wall to lean against.

I couldn't speak at first, because the impact of the landing had completely knocked the wind out of me. I also distinctly remember, at the time, being aware of the complete lack of any pain whatsoever. Other than feeling I'd had the crap kicked out of me, I thought I was OK, because there was no pain.

I leaned back against a retaining wall, and a fireman cut the leg of my leather pants with a large pair of shears, looking for damage. "Hey man!" I managed to say, pushing my hand at him, "Those are expensive pants." He looked at me like I was nuts, which I was, and pulled back his shears, shaking his head in amazement.

I fought to gather my senses, while the bulk of the roof area deteriorated into a madhouse. I don't have any clear recollection of what took place up there after that, other than what I have told you, so the actual facts of that time period are a blank.

The next thing I do remember, was lying on my bed in the small room I had rented for a week, prior to climbing the tower. I think it was on Cherokee Ave. in Hollywood, a few blocks from the Pacific Theater. I had about 3 days left on the rent, and then I'd be out on the street again.

As promised by Dr. Ferguson, I was not arrested, or taken anywhere by anyone, which in itself is remarkable. I have no memory of how I got from the scene on the roof to the tiny room I was now in. I do remember watching myself on the news all afternoon, on a small portable black and white TV, and being amazed by the amount of coverage the whole thing received.

I watched it over and over, as they showed me on the tower at different stages. I remember those pictures vividly, and in particular, the look on my face when I jumped. I laid on that bed for hours, reliving the day and listening to reports, when the pain began to come. Where there had been none, now there was an explosion of pain.

My agony began to mount. I tried moving around and getting into different positions on the bed, but nothing helped. As the misery increased I found it impossible to keep my self quiet, and began moaning into my pillow.

I tried to get off the bed and go ask for help, but found I could not walk or crawl. There was no telephone, so I couldn't call. I had only the sound of my voice or banging on the wall as a means of getting someone's attention.

It had been some 6 hours since I jumped off the tower, and my feet were purple and enlarged from swelling. The left one appeared to be much worse, but they both looked bad. The pain had now become intolerable, and I cried out, begging for help.

With no way to get off the bed, I was stranded there trying to get someone to hear me. It wasn't as if no one knew I was there, the whole building knew what had happened to me. After some time, and because of the increasing volume of sounds coming from my room, there was a knock on my door.

"Hey are you OK in there?" No!" I moaned, "I need help, I need some help." A few minutes later I heard someone at the door again and it opened slightly. A face peered in and asked how I was doing. "Not so good," I sobbed, "I think I gotta go to the hospital, I can't walk."

I broke down at that point crying openly. A very large guy I didn't know, but had seen around the building days before, rushed in saying, "It's OK man, it's OK! We'll get you to the hospital." He reached down and picked me up in his arms and carried me out of the room.


* * *


My body hangs suspended in air. Like a tiny leaf nestled on the wind. I float against the sun and blue of the sky. My eyes see everything and nothing as I linger with infinity. Human forms below stand motionless. Like steel statues pinned to the earth. No sound do I hear. Not a thing do I feel, but peace.

Faces reach out to me with their eyes. Guiding me, caressing me. The world stops in a gasp....breathless and still. "Where Oh Lord is this place?" I mutter....
no answer... The hills stand in awe of the moment. Moaning in unison at the spectacle before them... Birds watch with tears frozen in their eyes....

I drift slightly in the breeze and feel myself lose the air. I grab as it speeds away. The green of the earth shifts on the horizon and I slip into free fall. My mind races against the wind now pelting my face. The black steel of my home whispering as I careen downward.

Gone is the safety of my perch. Gone now my weightless body on the breeze. The human forms below in a frenzy as they jerk themselves awake. "Where is ground zero?"

I feel cold heavy air crashing against me as I race toward the dark bottom. Sadness fills my eyes. The gasp of an illogical conclusion. The calamity of it. The utter necessity of it..... "Why am I here? Why have I come to this?"

My thoughts end as I hit hard against the roof. My legs twist like paperclips beneath the weight of my body. My teeth shatter in my mouth along with my feet inside my boots. I cannot breath. I am alive... I fight to remain conscious. Struggle to gauge the extent of the damage...

Bobby Jameson Mar 25, 2010

(part 129) THE DECISION

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A discussion of sorts, between me and those down on the roof, had begun. Obviously the big question was, "Are you coming down?" In response to that question, I yelled back, "I don't know yet." "Well what's the problem Bobby?" someone hollered up at me.

I looked down at the faces of the firemen, police, and others, gathered on the roof, studying their expressions. They looked weary, angry, and to some degree concerned, as they stared back up at me. "Why are you doing this?" shouted another voice. "I wanted to make a point," I answered. "About what?" came the response.

Before I could answer, another voice boomed upward, "Are you going to kill yourself?" "No!" I fired back, "I just wanted to get paid for my work. I just wanted someone to know what happened to me. I never got paid, so I can't even pay my rent."

"Well how's this going to help you get paid?" someone shouted. My eyes angrily searched for that questioner in the crowd. "Well I got your goddamn attention, didn't I?"

A long moment of semi-silence filled the vacant space between us, until another voice shot up at me saying, "Well come on down so we can talk about it." "Not yet," I snapped back, "not just yet."

The faces below began showing their displeasure and frustration. It was clear at that point that getting me off the tower was their only concern, as opposed to giving a shit about any reasons I had for going up there in the first place.

Believe me when I say that I understood this point, but I was not going to meekly climb down without making them understand mine as well.

The secondary issue of getting arrested, if and when I did come down, was also front and center in my thinking. "Anyway," I yelled, "You're just going to arrest me if I come down, so what's the point? If I stay up here you can't arrest me."

The absolute logic of my statement sent the faces below into a suppressed frenzy. They turned towards each other, and the faint sound of their heated conversations floated up to me. My remark had pointed out the futility of the situation, leaving all of us stumped and handcuffed to this pathetic standoff.

Here we all were. Them down there, waiting to corral me, and me up here, refusing to get corralled. Like a game of Texas Hold-em, we had bluffed our way to a stand still.

About then, a lone fireman stepped forward shouting, "You know there's 10,000 volts running through that tower." I peered down at him and shouted back, "I don't care, man." Looking dismayed, he countered with, "You're lucky you didn't get electrocuted." I stared back in silence as he added, "It's off now, we cut the power." He lingered for a moment looking up at me, then shook his head in disgust and melted back into the crowd.

The growing restlessness from those below in acknowledging they were hog-tied by my refusal to cooperate, was only enhanced by their sheer inability to do anything about it to this point. It wasn't as though they could run up and grab me by force, so they were ham-strung and knew it.

Unfortunately for them, I knew it too. I was also aware that they were none too happy down there, but I'd made up my mind not to get arrested, so I held my position.

After some more discussions below, another person stepped forward with a different approach. "Hey Bobby, he yelled, "Yeah?" I yelled back. "Dr. Ferguson is here somewhere, will you talk to him?"

Dr. Ferguson was my psychiatrist at Edgemont Hospital, and I liked him. I also knew I could trust him, from experience. "Yeah," I shouted down, "Get him up here, I'll talk to him."

After about five minutes, Dr. Ferguson appeared on the roof below me. In his late 60's, he looked somewhat rattled but friendly as always. "Hi Bobby," he shouted up at me. "Hi Dr. Ferguson, how you doin?" "I'm fine," he said, "Now what's it going to take to get you down from there?" "They're just going to arrest me if I come down, Doc," I yelled.

"If I can guarantee that won't happen, you'll come down?" he yelled. "Yeah," I shouted back, "I'll come down." As I watched the goings on from above, I saw Dr. Ferguson turn back in my direction and position himself directly below me again. He gave me his personal assurance that I would not be arrested or taken anywhere by anyone.

That moment is burned into my mind forever. It was that moment when I made a decision that would forever change my life. As long as the ordeal had lasted, my decision to end it took only seconds, the same number of seconds it had taken for me to decide to climb the tower in the first place.

I remember clearly, as I'm writing this, what my thinking was as I readied myself to leave the tower. I was suddenly faced with an insane dilemma created by my exhausted mind. It flashed in my thoughts that, after all that had happened, I could not just simply climb down and end it.

I felt too connected to the tower itself, and to all the people who had witnessed this insanity, and had stayed for hours to see what would happen to me. I felt strongly that I owed them something more than to merely climb down at this point; we had shared too much.

This diabolical concept and misplaced sense of loyalty towards absolute strangers, for me, was the powerful and destructive force in full control of my actions. I languished there on the dull steel, which had been my home for nearly 4 hours, thinking, "I can probably jump from here to the roof, it isn't that far."

The distance was misleading, after viewing things from much higher. I had wrongly measured the distance with my eyes concluding it was safe. "I can do it," I decided, "I can do this." I moved my body into a position directly above where Dr. Ferguson had stood minutes earlier.

As I stared down at my chosen landing spot, the faces on the roof stared back at me. Their expressions soured as they quickly saw what was happening.

They began waving their arms, making gestures with their hands, as if they were trying, by some invisible force, to stop me and hold me where I was on the tower. With eyes wide they started yelling, "No! No! Don't Do That! No! No!" as my body left the safety of its home.

(part 128) THE END OF A HOLLYWOOD DREAM

I was completely exhausted. My tired eyes searched the terrain for a starting point down, as I struggled to readjust my thinking to fit the task before me. It wasn't that climbing down presented impossible problems; it was a crisis, I suppose, because of the condition of my body, mind, and the wind.

I'd expended a lot of energy getting up there and performing for the crowd, so the lack of sleep and being loaded presented me with new and challenging parts of the puzzle left to solve.

Above, multiple helicopters continued their endless circles, and the crowds had swollen to enormous sizes on three different sides of the Pacific Theater. I could see faces peering out of windows in adjacent buildings, and from decks of houses scattered throughout the hills behind me.

It had become a full fledged event, I thought, as I stood there scanning the surrounding area. Because of the shape of the steel beams that made up the tower's construction, there had not been any place to sit down really. The best I'd been able to do was to lean against anything vertical while standing on anything horizontal.

To make matters worse, I was now paying strict attention to electrical lines that ran from top to bottom on the tower. Far more visible than I'd noticed coming up, they were quite pronounced while continually looking down. They loomed before me as a main consideration for my journey downward.

I popped another chloral hydrate and took another drink in anticipation of the dizzying trip down through the non-stop wind. I surmised that the lower I went on the tower, the less trouble I'd have fighting it. This in itself gave rise to the thought of "let's get going."

Moving downward and sideways, I began getting used to the different foot and hand angles as I crisscrossed the face of the tower. My mind was adjusting to the different pattern of beams I encountered, and a new system of how to approach these patterns quickly developed.

The acute angles, which are angles somewhere between vertical and horizontal, presented the greatest problem. On the way up, these angles were points of leverage; on the way down they were more like slides.

Climbing up on them, I had to pull my weight; going down on them, I found myself fighting to hold my weight back. Not so much at the smaller top of the tower, but becoming more and more so as the tower widened at lower levels. I was getting the hang of it though, but it still proved to be tough going.

As mentioned, the electrical lines were more of an issue now than they had been before. I was continually having to maneuver my way around them, being careful of where I put my hands and feet, which only added to my growing list of difficulties.

Looking back now, it is somewhat amazing to me how careful I was climbing down, and how completely reckless I was going up. The fact that the lines were far more visible looking down on them, coupled with the level of my exhaustion, would explain this to some extent.

Below me on the roof was an ever growing crowd of officials, firemen and police preparing for my anticipated arrival. Staring down at them, it occurred to me that they would probably arrest me, if in fact, I safely reached their location.

I continued dwelling on this thought, and decided it was not an acceptable outcome, after enduring over three hours on the tower. Because of what I'd gone through, and the condition I was in, I didn't want it to end like that. I slowed my descent to give due consideration to this unwelcome concern.

As I thought about this very possible outcome, a rush of anger and adrenaline surged through me, instantly clearing my mind and energizing my body. I began bouncing around again on the tower as my weariness all but vanished. By switching the psychology of my thinking, I now felt in control again, having made the decision to refuse being arrested as the final outcome.

Now I was alert, and my tired limbs were once again my trusted friends. Gone was the fear and trepidation which had perviously engulfed me.

I'd been in jail too many times to accept without a fight going there now, as the final outcome of my struggle to be heard. My decision was made. I would refuse to come down merely to face that form of final humiliation.

My anger, rising out of my fear of getting arrested, was like speed, and had the magical power to heal me in times of crisis such as this. On that particular day on the tower, it brought welcome relief in the form of new-found strength to my deteriorated condition.

I continued my way down, but in a much less deliberate fashion. Somewhere around 60 feet or so above the rooftop, I peered down into the pool of gawking faces looking up at me. I yelled down at them, but between the continuing drone of the helicopters, the wind, and the distance, it was impossible to hear.

I moved even closer to them, having decided I wanted to pow wow with the authorities. Stopping my descent at around 40 feet, or four stories above the roof, I made the critical error of believing I was closer to them than I actually was.

I'd been up very high for a longtime, so it was easy to misjudge the distance to the roof at this point. Simply stated, it looked a lot closer than it was. This critical mistake in judgement would prove to be my undoing.

(part 127) HIGH IN THE HOLLYWOOD SKY AND NOWHERE TO GO BUT DOWN

click

I continued to rage on at Mr. Red-suit, as I watched him being dragged away through the crowd by police on the ground. I stood at the top of the tower holding on to the steel pin, and rocked back and forth in triumph.

The tower began moving with me as my wild gyrations continued. I found the tower more limber than I'd expected, learning that it would sway one way and then the other with my weight atop it's slender upper structure.

Once the motion started, it picked up speed as I continued leaning back and forth against the steel's movement. The crowd below sounded again, and their collective murmur grew in intensity as the tower wildly leaned first in one direction and then the other, possibly four to five feet with each pass.

As they watched, from various points on the ground, their voices rose up to me in a roar at each successive lurch of the steel finger now swaying in the Hollywood sky. Forward and back, over and over, I rode it like a cowboy on a bucking bull, until I heard the tower groaning under me, complaining at the excessive motion and strain it now endured.

As the sounds grew louder, I came to my senses, halting my antics for fear of breaking the tower and sending it, along with me, crashing downward to the roof below. This clear recognition of what could happen, tended to quickly dull my enthusiasm for pleasing the crowd. As the tower settled back into it's original stance, I clung to it in silence as the cold wind slammed against my exhausted body.

As quickly as the show had begun, it now came to an equally abrupt end. I looked down at the silent crowd below and they seemed to sense the problem of the moving tower. "No more of that shit," I said to myself, but now what? Now that I was here, what was I to do?

In the haste of my one-dimensional thinking to scale mount tower, I had not planned whatsoever anything in the way of a retreat. I had had no other goal but reaching the top, when I started, and now stood there alone without a plan.

Like a frozen bird, high atop a pole, I now gripped my steel perch, motionless and confused. There was no more adrenaline rush to aid me, no more wild ride to focus me, and there was nowhere left to climb but down.

The utter sense of disillusionment for me at that moment had sprung up like a demon out of nowhere. I was not there to hurl myself into the air, as I'm sure most had expected, but to reach the top of the tower to signify my despondency over the record business.

The achievement, having now been accomplished, became my arch enemy, in that it had transformed itself into a bleak and frightening dilemma. My sure-footed psyche had begun to crumble in the face of my now precarious and insane location, both in physical and psychological terms.

As I looked downward through the seeming maze of steel pieces to the roof below; it appeared an impossible task that now lay before me. I was gripped by a sense of fear that I had not expected or planned for. With my body now rigid and spent, I moved more cautiously than before.

As some animals have found to their dismay, once having climbed high into a tree or up a pole, their ability to descend presents an entirely new problem to them and they freeze, staying put. I too, was suddenly aware that climbing down would be completely different than climbing up.

All the angles were reversed and all the leverage points were backwards. Without the aid of adrenaline pumping through my body, I found myself hopelessly lost and terrified. I stopped and began yelling at myself to snap out of it, demanding clearer thinking from my now panicked and tortured brain, lest this become my last day on earth.

As I stood in place, motionless, I reached into my inside coat pocket for the second of two pints of scotch I'd carried with me on my ill-conceived voyage to nowhere. At that point, it was all I could do to calm myself, and reorganize my thoughts, in preparation for the demoralizing challenge of the descent.

I gazed out again at Hollywood's familiar streets, and L.A. beyond, longing to be anywhere but where I was at that moment. Through weary eyes and a veil of fragmented emotions, I stared longingly at terra firma and the green backdrop of the Hollywood hills.