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25
Mon, May

by, Bill Reed
Phil Ober's death saddened me deeply, and I consoled myself with memories of the good times that we had spent together. Good times, and sometimes trying times, as when he and I were babysitting Richard Burton for days, trying to keep him sober enough to read a script for an upcoming film. The producer was bringing over a contract to sign after the reading. Richard was driving both of us crazy, and we left him alone for a few hours while we went for lunch. During our absence, one of Richards's many girlfriends yelled to him from the street outside Casa Kimberly, "Oh Dickie, Dickie! Let me in!" He did so, and by the time Phil and I returned, they were both completely snockered.
The reading was a disaster. The producer grinned, handed Burton the contract and said, "If you can't write your name, Richard, just make an "X." I got off easy in that round with Burton; I only dropped in from time to time, at Phil's request, to keep him company, while Phil had to put up with that sort of thing for days on end. He was driving Phil Ober bananas. Richard could do that, but he was also a very funny man when he wanted to be.
I never got to know Elizabeth Taylor Burton. Shortly after I met Richard they were divorced, and he married Susan Hunt. Richard and Susan stepped over often from Casa Kimberly to watch us play poker when it was Phil's host day. Burton didn't play poker, but he often sat near the table and regaled us with stories as we played. On those days I usually lost; it was hard to concentrate on the game and Burton at the same time.

I was embarrassed when Richard and Susan stopped by on one of these visits. There was a new song out by Kenny Rogers about poker. The poker group unanimously insisted that I sing this "ballad" to Richard and Susan. I begged off, but was finally pulled to my feet to perform, sans guitar. The song went something like this: "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money, sittin' at the table, there'll be time enough for countin', when the dealin's done ..." Instead of "count your money," I sang, "count your blessin's," just like I had been trained to do in Youth For Christ meetin's a century earlier.

I also coughed, stuttered, and put on the worst performance of my life. There was dead silence in the room when I finished. Finally Richard said, in his best stentorian-Shakespearean voice: "Billy Joe?"
"Yeah?"
"Methinks it would behoove you, William, to cleave to writing."

He got the applause.

As bad as I was, Richard still came around to our poker sessions occasionally, and day he told us about the time when he was a young actor in London, working with other young actors, mostly penniless, but some from old established aristocracy. One of these actors had inherited from his family an ancient Rolls Royce that barely ran, and also required vigorous cranking to get it started. The young actors rode to work together in the old Rolls because they couldn't afford public transportation, all pitching in for driblets of gasoline.

The car stalled one morning in front of this young aristocrat's equally run-down mansion. Richard was on the crank, since he was the strongest of the group. The car refused to start after repeated crankings, and the young man finally ran into his house, grabbed a chain whip from a rusting knight in the hallway, returned and began beating the car's bonnet, screaming all the while, "Start you swine! Start!" Richard gave it one more crank, and the Rolls obediently started and purred like a kitten.

Richard acted all this out, running back and forth to the mansion, wielding the whip, and cranking away at the Rolls. It was better acting than I've seen him do in some of his films, and one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed.

by Bill Reed
It was when I didn't receive my usual half-case of Dom Perignon champagne as a Christmas gift from John Huston back there in 1979 that I realized, with finality, that the honeymoon was over. That didn't stop us from working together, and it certainly didn't interfere with the poker games. Poker took precedence over personal brouhahas. Poker took precedence over everything. As a matter of fact, some time during 1980, the game was held in my beach house at Las Animas, and Huston attended, along with Phil Ober and the regulars.

It was a rough, windy, stormy day, and Huston left the game a bit early when his panga from Caletas came for him. That's when everybody should have left, but the others elected to wait for my boat, which was larger and could handle the waves better. I told the group that my boat was due to arrive in half an hour. An hour later we were still waiting.

I had talked with Sylvia earlier on the CB radio, and she had asked me to send Carlos to pick her up at Boca; she planned to stay overnight at Las Animas. Sylvia was a Mexican lady, always late for appointments, so I wasn't worried that she was a bit tardy. The others were, especially Phil Ober. Phil had house guests in Vallarta. He had promised Jane that he would be home on time. He just had to get to Boca. He had to get to Boca now!

Why couldn't anything happen on schedule in Mexico? When people said that they would be at a certain place at a certain time, then they should god-damn-well be at that place at that time!

He wouldn't stop. He was sardonic, cynical, petulant, demanding; I had never seen Phil Ober behave as anything other than a perfect gentleman. He and his wife, Jane, visited often in our homes, and we in theirs. They were a charming couple. Now, I was shocked at Phil's behavior.

I told him that I was sorry, and explained that he simply had to wait for Carlos; there was no other boat to take him to Boca. He said, "Yeah? What's that? Isn't that your boat also?" He was pointing at my Boston Whaler, riding at anchor offshore. I said, "Sure, Phil. That's my boat, but it can't just skip ashore like a panga and pick you up. Look at the waves! If I tried that, I might swamp her, and at the very least you would all get soaked to the skin trying to climb aboard in the surf. That's not a good idea."

"Well you've got to do something! I've simply got to get back to Vallarta, Guillermo. I've got to get back to Vallarta now! Let's try the whaler. I don't mind getting wet." He turned to the others: "Do you?" By this time he had them cowed. Whatever Phil said was fine with them. I was pissed, but I told Phil that I would swim out to the Whaler, bring her in close to shore, and try to read the waves.

The native mariners had told me that they came in fives and sevens, and I had to "read" them and pick the right one if I hoped to "skip ashore" properly. Well, no harm in at least taking a look. I told Phil that if it looked feasible, I would attempt to pick them up. If it appeared too dangerous, I would so signal them, and take the boat back out to anchor. And that's what I foolishly tried to do.

Dumb Diving
By Bill Reed

From around 1976 to 1989, SCUBA diving was an almost daily event for me. Sylvia became quite professional also, and often followed me down to depths approaching 180 feet. I usually went on down to 200, worked a minute or so looking for the big ones, then joined her for our decompression ascent. She always leveled off above me, watching carefully for any signs of distress. At those depths, diving alone is a no, no. The major cause for concern is the accidental loss of air. In that case, the diver in distress can signal for help, then "buddy breathe" with the assisting diver by taking alternate breaths of air from the same regulator.

I had lost air on many occasions, but had always managed to make it back, somehow. Sylvia, Gerardo Velasco, Javier Gutierrez, Lalo Moreno, Savoy, had all warned me repeatedly: "Billy, you're pushing it too far...." I wouldn't listen of course. I was UDT trained, and the Under-Water Demolition Team was the forerunner of the U.S. Navy SEALS. I was the best damn diver in the whole world! But even the best diver in the whole world can get into serious problems underwater if he gets too cocky, and doesn't use common sense. My turn came on a diving trip with Gerardo Velasco. My theoretical safe diving time - including a decompression stage while hunting for smaller fish in caves up the sides of the big island-rock of Los Arcos - was 32 minutes. A perfect arrangement, which wasted no time ascending by stages in open water. As I was decompressing, I was shooting fish. I did this so often, without mishap, that I became careless on occasion, pushing for just a little more than my carefully pre-computed two minutes bottom time. That's what happened on that fateful dive with Gerardo Velasco. Gerardo and I had been diving together for some time now, and he had become so professional that I trusted him completely to watch my back. He leveled off at 180 feet, and I went on down to 200, looking for that last big one.

I found nothing, clocked my ascent time, and was about to head upwards, when a monster tuna spun by me and then continued on down, beyond 200 feet. I chased him, couldn't catch him, and started my ascent. I noticed that I was at 220 feet. I had been at max and beyond for four minutes. I figured that I had just enough air to make it back by using my reserve air supply (another no, no for any diver). I switched to reserve and ... nothing! The air flow stopped completely! Undoubtedly a broken or jammed release valve, I thought. I had 220 feet to surface, with no air in my tank. I assure you that that is impossible, even for the real Superman. You couldn't hold your breath and attempt it, since the existing air, under pressure in your lungs, would expand with the decreasing pressure through ascent, and your lungs would literally explode. Ascending, one had to get that compressed air out of the lungs by exhaling slowly and steadily. If you tried to hold your breath and shoot to the surface, you would assuredly contract the bends due to the inability of your bloodstream to so quickly clear excess nitrogen bubbles. They would lodge in your joints, or elsewhere, and either cripple you for life, or lead to a possible fatal internal hemorrhage. So I had some interesting choices about the manner of my death, but die I surely would unless I got air, immediately.

I signaled to Gerardo. He saw me. He was also just about out of air, but he started down to assist me. Then he stopped. I saw his indecision. He had enough air to make it back alone, if he started upwards at that moment, otherwise Quien sabe? We stared at each other through face masks for a few seconds; a moment of truth that seemed to stretch out for an eternity. Then he pantomimed a shrug and came down for me. That seemingly careless shrug actually meant (and we both knew it) that if we were going to die, we were going to die together.

We buddy breathed on the way up. While buddy breathing, one should take no more than three short intakes of air, then pass the regulator back over. My body was so starved for air by this time, however, that my teeth locked involuntarily onto the mouthpiece, and I took more air than I should have. Finally Gerardo jerked the regulator hose away from me. He got the hose, but the mouthpiece stayed locked firmly in my teeth! When I realized what had happened, I took the mouthpiece from my mouth and tried to reattach it. Instead, I dropped it. We watched it sink slowly downwards into that deep dark void, and realized that we might well soon be following it. Now we had only the bare metal stem from which to suck air, and that permitted water to mix with the air intake.

Gerardo's eyes widened. He began to gesticulate wildly.
We still had some 90 feet to go before reaching the surface. What could I do? Then it dawned on me that before I switched to my reserve I was still getting some air from my main tank. It had been hard to suck out of there, at that depth, but it should logically be easier to do so now, since the ambient water pressure around us had decreased considerably. Was it possible? I switched my own tank back to main, and lo and behold I had air.

Not much, but at least we now had a sturdy, intact, mouhpiece to suck on. It was just enough. When we hit the surface, the tank was dead empty. So was I. I had used up every ounce of energy in my 50-year-old body.

I didn't even have the strength to dog paddle.

And of course the damned boat was nowhere in sight. I said to myself, Aw, the hell with it! I was ready to let go and sink back into the depths. It would be peaceful down there. I would be able to rest. I began to sink.

Gerardo dove down and pulled me back to the surface. He slapped me hard across the face, repeatedly, and supported me on the surface while at the same time calling for the boat. Carlos finally heard him, then located and picked us up.

It was a long time before I went SCUBA diving again (all of two weeks). I knew that I would never come closer to death than that and be able to talk about it. For some time after that close call, Gerardo and I took up safer sports, such as Beach Parties and Beach Golfing.

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