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A few nights later, I stared at the ceiling while Margie slept. I didn’t know if we could make it. I wondered if we should go back to Danville, where we had family to help us through tough times.

“Guess what?”

It was Phil, calling a week or so later with good news. We met at a nearby coffee shop and over breakfast he broke the good news. We had a job in San Diego. Not only did we have work, but the club was putting us up as well. We had free lodging. Hallelujah, I thought. My prayers had been answered.

Margie and I were so broke, though, that my father-in-law, who worked at a Chevrolet dealership outside of Chicago, brought a 1941 Chevy to L.A. and handed me the keys so we would be able to get to San Diego. I can’t imagine how events might have played out if we hadn’t been able to get there.

Our weeklong gig at Tops was a big, much-needed success. It turned into a total of four weeks, long enough for Margie and me to regroup, and then we headed to another job, a club in Pocatello, Idaho.

In penny-pinching mode, I thought I could make the 1,200-mile trip, without stopping, in one twenty-four-hour swoop. I was wrong—a fact I was made aware of somewhere outside of Salt Lake City when Margie punched my arm and screamed at me to “wake up!”

I was asleep with my eyes open and headed into oncoming traffic.

“Oh Jesus, I’m on the wrong side of the road!” I shouted as I swerved back onto the right side.

“Yeah, because you were asleep!” she said, alarmed and angry that I had stubbornly insisted on driving straight through.

In Pocatello, we met up with Phil, and the two of us performed on the same bill with the folksinger Burl Ives. At the end of the week, the club owner skipped town and we never got paid. While we were driving back to L.A., the timing gear blew and our car broke down in the mountains outside of Reno. It was about one A.M., cold, and we were in the middle of nowhere. We got out to look around and heard coyotes howling. I thought we were done.

After a while, a big old truck came along and stopped. The driver got out a long, thick chain, tied our car to the back of his truck, and pulled us down the hill. When we hit the curves, we were whipped to the very edge and several times thought we were going over the cliff. We made it to Reno, though, and checked into a hotel after dropping the car off at a mechanic.

Then we had another problem. I had no idea how we were going to pay for the car repairs or our hotel. We were broke.

I stepped into a phone booth outside the hotel and called my father and father-in-law, hoping one of them could wire us money. But neither had any extra funds. I slid the phone booth door open and lit a cigarette, wondering what I was going to do.

As soon as I walked into the hotel room, Margie saw the worried expression on my face. I told her the facts. We had thirty dollars—that was it. I put the cash on the dressing table and took off my coat and collapsed on the bed. I had been driving all the way from Pocatello, then fretting about our fate. I could barely keep my eyes open.

The next thing I knew, I heard Margie coming back into the room. She turned on the lights and I saw that her eyes were as wide as saucers.

“You aren’t going to believe it,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

She opened her hands and showed me a fistful of money.

“I took the thirty dollars to the blackjack table,” she said, “and won!”

It was not a lot of money. But it paid for the hotel, got the car fixed, and allowed us to get home.

After we regrouped, Phil and I went back on the road, starting at the Chi Chi Club in Palm Springs. We were onstage, pantomiming to the Bing Crosby–Mary Martin hit “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie,” when an earthquake struck and shook the ground beneath us, as well as the walls and ceiling, the tables and glasses, and everything else in the club, including our record. It skipped from one song to another. Rather than stop, Phil and I tried to keep up—changing lyrics every couple seconds and exchanging panicked looks