If You Ask Me - Betty White [12]
Truth be told, I need to read these letters to discover what I’m doing right or, more important, wrong, and these writers don’t hesitate to tell you.
[Editor’s Note: My life has changed dramatically since I began writing this book.]
I used to be able to travel alone without thinking about it. I can’t do that anymore. I have to have a meet-and-greet on both ends to get me through the airport. People are just being nice, but recently I actually missed a plane because I couldn’t break away.
Between the Snickers commercial and the explosion of projects on which I worked in the past year, and a whole generation of fans who have met me through syndication, it seems like the number of people who call themselves fans just keeps growing. (There was a time when The Golden Girls was on four times a day!)
I don’t mean for this to sound self-serving, but it can be a problem, and yet these are the people responsible for your good fortune!
Please know how grateful I am. Even if I do have to rush by to catch a plane!
With Dancer.
GLOBE PHOTOS
STAGECRAFT
ASSOCIATED PRESS/CLIFF OWEN
RANGER
One of the first questions in every interview since I started in television more than sixty years ago has always been, “When you were growing up, did you always want to be in show business?”
My answer has never changed. As a kid, show business wasn’t even in the mix. As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be either a forest ranger or a zookeeper. The problem was, back then a girl wasn’t allowed to be either one.
That was a real problem for a girl who grew up the way I did. Even today, my earliest, fondest memories are of the pack trips in the High Sierras on horseback I took every summer with my mom and dad. Mules carried our camping equipment and food supplies. The first time we went, I was just four years old and rode in front of Daddy on his horse. The following year I graduated to a mount of my own.
It was a two-day trip to our destination, Rae Lakes. (Today, you may be able to drive there—I don’t want to know.) Once there, we pitched camp, put bells on the horses and mules, and turned them loose. Pros that they were, they all hung out together nearby.
I can still hear those bells.
The next day, the guide would leave us and corral the animals to take them back to the ranch. Three weeks later, he’d bring them back in to pick us up. In those days, we would never see another human during the whole three weeks—it was true wilderness. Heaven.
After those earliest years, we moved our campsite to a remote area of Yellowstone National Park. In the way a lot of kids look forward to Christmas all year, I used to count the days from one June to the next, until we could take off again.
On the last half-day of school for the summer, my folks would pick me up at Beverly Hills High School, and we were on our way. Dad always wore a forest ranger hat on vacation, and when I’d spot that hat, I would know the day had finally arrived.
So it’s no surprise that I developed a love of animals and the outdoors, but as a child I could only dream of becoming a zookeeper or a forest ranger. Today, after forty-seven years of working with the Los Angeles Zoo, I am satisfying the zookeeper part. Now, let me tell you the clincher.
Not long ago I received a letter from the United States Forest Service that thrilled me to my toes. It seems someone there must have read one of those interviews about those early dreams, because there was an invitation to Washington, D.C., where, in a special program at the Kennedy Center, the Forest Service would make me an Honorary Forest Ranger! It was all very official, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Of course, I went back for the ceremony, and it was a beautiful program. Thomas Tidwell, the Forest Service chief, made the presentation with a huge Smokey Bear standing behind him. As I stepped to the podium to accept, I got a big hug from Smokey, which almost got me, but I didn’t actually lose it until