I was at my mom's and talking with her and a preview came on the telly for some TV docudrama about Jackie Gleason.

Mom said she'd seen some reviews of the show out that the docudrama was going to show how nobody liked Jackie and he was mean and bad to work with. She said that's a total lie and I asked how she knew about it and got a great story!

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One of her best friends was Sonny Helmer, who was a famous Jazz Trombonist. He ended up getting a gig at Disneyland in the New Orleans quarter to play Dixieland-style Jazz. He was a really funny and great guy and genius and part of his act was putting on a dress and playing the trombone in a virtuoso style with his feet while walking around the audience on his hands.

He had a swimming pool that was in the shape of a trombone and I remember loving to visit his house when I was small since he had a working pinball machine and a cigar store indian and all kinds of other kitchy stuff everywhere.

In his bathroom, he had a statue of a nude greek god placed in front of the toilet and it has a fig leaf over his crotch. Women would go to the bathroom to go pee and if they lifted the fig leaf, there was a circuit that turned on a red flashing emergency light that was installed above the outside of the bathroom door so everyone at parties at his house would play the game of waiting to see if the light would go off whenever a first-timer went into his bathroom.

Anyway, when Epcot Center first opened in Florida, Disneyland moved all their best people out there, including Sonny. While he was there, he ran into his old friend Jackie Gleason who had a band in Florida and asked Sonny to come and play for it when he wasn't working at Epcot. So Sonny did that.

Jackie showed up one day with this brand new huge custom made white Cadillac convertible -- totally unique. Sonny thought it was the coolest car and talked about it for hours that night between sets before retiring to a hotel for the night.

The next morning, around 10 o'clock, the bell hop came to his room and announced that there was a delivery -- he went out and there was the white Cadillac, with the keys and a ribbon, all for him!! He was ecstatic! He called Jackie to thank him and say it was too much to give him his special custom car. Jackie said, "I've still got my car -- that one I just got you is newer than mine." Sonny asked him how could this be since it was a unique car. Jackie said, "I called the president of General Motors last night at 3AM and told him I wanted another one just like it for a friend and I wanted it by this morning before he got out of bed. He called in the workers and started up the assembly line last night, and they made that car just for you while you were sleeping!"

So Sonny was totally thrilled. Now he still had some things out in California he needed to get so he took this young guy who was playing in the band and conscripted him to drive on a road trip to California to pick up Sonny's old little MGB (those small British convertibles) -- they'd drive out together in the Cadillac and each bring back one car.

As they were passing through New Mexico at some point, Sonny was asleep in the back seat and the young guy was driving and stopped to get gas in a small town. While he was inside paying, Sonny woke up and saw that there was a Dairy Queen across the street and he went over there to get a Vanilla Softie Cone. By the time he came out with the cone -- the car was gone!! His friend didn't notice that Sonny had left the car and took off.

When the young man arrived at the Arizona border, there was an agricultural checkpoint and he was stopped by the state trooper there. The trooper took a long look at him and said, "Young man, is this your car?" And he said, "No sir, it belongs to him," gesturing towards the back seat. The trooper said, "I'm sorry it belongs to who?" looking back in the back seat confused. He repeated and looked into the back seat and then realized Sonny was not there! He said "Uh oh." The trooper gave him a long look, silent for several seconds, then said "You in a heap a trouble, son. A heap a trouble." The young man didn't know what to do but he was terrified. The trooper had him get out of the car and handcuffed him and talked about how long he was going to spend in jail and just what Arizona jails were like "They ain't all pretty like the jails you mamma's boys got out there in Florida -- these are real prisons, boy," while he was "Just checking the trunk to see if the body of the owner is back there," and kicking the tires and by this time the poor guy was about to pee his pants. Then the trooper started laughing suddenly and said "Aw gee, I can't keep this up any longer -- your friend Sonny called ahead to the border. You left him at the last gas station."