You Never Know by Tom Selleck

Author:Tom Selleck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

A Beginning

I spent most of my last Sunday as an unemployed actor at the club. But I didn’t stay to watch the sunset. I wanted to get back to my place, the small cottage that by now I had settled into and was my home. My new home. My only home. After volleyball and hanging out with friends, the journey I was starting on simply overtook my thoughts. I lit the charcoal in my little hibachi and put on a steak. My mom used to cook me a steak before my basketball and baseball games, so . . . I put a Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese in the oven, cracked open a Coors Light in a longneck bottle, sat down in my beach chair out on my small deck, and enjoyed the ahi tuna sashimi I had picked up at the Diamond Head Market.

This was hardly my first rodeo starting a new job. I knew sleep never came easy at these moments in time . . . too many thoughts. Some were already waiting, and some would come out of the blue and surprise me. I kinda said to myself, “Bring ’em on.”

I had done a lot of unsold pilots. I was the young sidekick, a fourth or fifth banana, and the rest were buddy shows. But nobody had ever paid me to play the guy, the lead actor in a network television series, until now. I stared out at the vast Pacific Ocean. What a wonderful place to be . . . if you can earn it!

Jack Lord had said I was in a position to make the crew a family. I was well aware of that, thanks to my friend and mentor James Garner. Each of them had made that point in his own way, but it was a reminder of my obligation as the guy to provide the leadership to help make that happen. There was no school for that, but I’d had Jim Garner as my teacher. I also remembered how many times I had worked on a set where I was walking on eggshells and how many times I had said to myself, “Boy, if I ever have my own show, that is never going to happen.”

Time to step up, Tom . . . if you can.

By now, I was upstairs in my small bedroom, staring at the ceiling. I had opened the windows so I could hear the ocean and feel the gentle trade winds.

I have no idea why, but my thoughts brought me to my mom and dad and my big brother, Bob, and me getting in the family car and leaving Detroit for the unknown. My family was leaving to start a new life in California. You don’t remember a whole lot when you are almost four. Most of what I remember was arguing with Bob about who got to sleep on the backseat and who had to sleep on the floor. That was an argument I would always lose, so I was doomed to navigate the hump in the middle of the floor.

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