He had headlined shows with a young opening act named Elvis Presley and had inspired John Lennon to pick up the guitar. He had sold tens of millions of records. In fact, for a period of time in the mid-fifties, he had been the most popular entertainer on the planet. Twenty-five years before, just about everyone in the Western world had known his face.
It was a perfect place for a guy who wanted to get away from it all. He had moved there with his family five years before, in 1976. Soon he was lost in thought, looking like any other 55-year-old man passing the time in a Sambo’s on Tyler Street in downtown Harlingen.
Then he’d light up a Pall Mall and look out the window or stare off into space. He’d order coffee-black-and sometimes a sandwich, maybe turkey with mayo. “Just fine,” he’d say, and they would chat about the traffic and the weather, which was always warm in South Texas, even in January. Barbara Billnitzer, one of the waitresses, would bring him a menu and ask how he was doing. He wore a scruffy ball cap, and behind his large, square glasses there was something odd about his eyes. In the last desperate months of his life, he would come into the restaurant at all hours of the day and take a seat, sometimes at the counter and other times in one of the back booths. This is a little off-topic, but I had no idea that Bill Haley of Rock Around the Clock fame met such a depressing end.
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