Pernell Roberts

Boy do I get around. Only kidding. I was doing a search on EBAY for items related to Carousel (the musical, of course) and came across a photo of Pernell Roberts who played Jigger Craigin (the role that made Brett Rickaby a household name, at least, in my house) in the TV broadcast version of the show. Anyway, that reminded me of the time, a million years ago (or as David Nelson says, "Before Time Began") that my friend, Karen Bigus, and I had been shopping at Northgate Mall in Terra Linda (on a Saturday night, no less). We had my son with us - he was about a year old at the time. Anyway, her car was acting up so we pulled off the road and went into the Chevron gas station just across the freeway from the Marin County Civic Center. I got out and called my mother to come get us (we had to leave Karen's car there). While we were waiting to be rescued, I turned around and saw a man lying on a small clump of grass there on the filling station property. I stopped, looked again, and then said to Karen, "Don't look now but that man over there looks just like Pernell Roberts." Karen turned around, of course (why does everybody do that as soon as you say, "Don't look now"), turned back to me laughing and said, "That's because it IS Pernell Roberts." It was so weird, he looked just like Joe hippie dude in his birkenstocks and socks, lying there on the grass, waiting for his car to be detailed. This was during the filming of "Trapper John" and we found out later that he was living in Marin during that time.