Chapter 3: On the Roof of the Peg-Leg Saloon The summer after graduation, he married a high school floosie, Nellie Murphy, on the grounds that he'd gotten her pregnant. She claimed that it happened after a rather wild graduation party, during a drive-in screening of Flood! Since he couldn't remember the plotline of the movie, he assumed that he'd also forgotten the moment of conception. Soon after, V. B. put together the fact that he hadn't done the deed with Nellie at all, due to the discovery that Flood! didn't have a plot in the first place. Under pressure, Nellie confessed that she'd been impregnated by a cowboy from Cheever's Traveling Rodeo, and had married V. B. in hopes that he'd be rich one day. A quick divorce was secured, and V. B. resumed preparing for college. He could speak so eloquently on cinema, that everyone just knew he'd go to film school. Instead, he lived up to his father's dream and went pre-med, paying his way through college by working at the Silver Screen Classic, a revival house that showed a steady schedule of old movies and art films. He breezed through with mostly A's, and bounced into a good med school in Virginia. The courses got more challenging and it meant a more difficult juggle between movies and books, but he stayed in touch, managing three or four fresh films a week. It was during this time that he found a new talent. The radio blared in his dorm room continuously, and V. B. was a shoe-in for the trivia contests of the day. Under a variety of pseudonyms, he won countless tapes and records, concert tickets, T-shirts, beach towels, and gift certificates. Some were sold to fellow students for movie money. He won a car, which he gave to his parents, and a speed boat, which he exchanged for his first new pickup truck. And on the occasion of some marginal grades in pathology, he even managed to win a Hawaii trip for an ever-so-demanding professor. Funny how the sunny climes and breezy air of Maui can lift a high D into the A minus range. He met Clara, a nursing student who fawned over V. B.'s red hair and barrel chest. V. B. enjoyed her delicious home-made pound cake, and thought he'd found a soul mate when she said her favorite movie was Lost Horizon. They tied the knot during spring break in Key West, on the roof of the Peg-Leg Saloon with a real ship's captain doing the honors. Ernest Hemingway's valet was a witness. Alas, things went downhill quickly when it turned out the pound cake was from a local bakery, and the Lost Horizon Clara was referring to was the abominable 1973 musical remake with George Kennedy and Sally Kellerman. They were divorced one dark night after seven months, when a housecleaning Clara threw out V. B.'s Fangoria magazine collection. He managed to get a pro-rated alimony schedule and will probably pay her $115.73 a month for the rest of his life. GO TO THE NEXT INSTALLMENT: Nevada Nonprofit Association of Twelve Step Programs