My Gall Bladder and Neil Diamond

Peanut butter would trigger agita, apples indigestion, bacon 'n' beans fuggedaboudit! My gall bladder leapt at every opportunity to say no trespassing. Time to say goodbye.

1979

June

In June of 1979, Jamie and I crossed the border in a plum colored Fiat Spider from Beverly Hills into Montana heading for home in a place we'd seen only once before - a shack on sixty acres bordered by 2.5 million acres of the Bitterroot-Selway Wilderness - 620 South West Gold Creek Loop - smack in the middle of the Bitterroot Valley, some would say in the middle of nowhere. I'd say in the middle of my best dream. There's so much to tell about this part of our lives, but I'm bound, for now, to keep it to my gall bladder.

I'd just finished writing The Jazz Singer for Neil Diamond and was anxious to gedouda town. The Eagles and Desperado came next. At this point in my career I could do no wrong.When Jamie came on board as my writing partner my stipulation was that we stay in one place and that place be Montana. For better or for worse, J chose Montana, and here we are 45 years later. Just now, let me digress. Something I've always wanted to say in public...

That scene in The Jazz Singer where Neil impersonates a Black singer in a Black night club by playing the scene in blackface? That one? I did not write that! I did not write that! I did not write that! In fact, I refused to write that. Do not blame me!

Now, that's out of my system. Here's the rest of it.

We're doing our Little House On The Prairie routine with gusto, Jamie and I, when it turns out I need to have my gall bladder removed. In the middle of nowhere! Jamie nicknamed the local hospital the Thrifty Six 'cause that's what it looked - one story, perfunctory, efficient. Women from Utah came there to have their tubes tied. My gall bladder was the most exciting thing my surgeon had seen since Viet-nam. 

So, I'm wheeled into the operating room and placed on the table all to the music of, wait a minute, Neil? Neil Diamond? Song Sung Blue here?  In Montana? Sweet Caroline up next? What's going on here? I'd had enough Neil Diamond to last a lifetime. Great guy. Good to work with. But my gall bladder? Here? In an operating room? In a damn near deserted corner of the earth? No way! Not this time. However, turns out that the surgeon loves to operate to Neil's music. It relaxes him. Well, I don't know how relaxed he was because I bear a scar the size of a bayonet wound. 

So they wheel me back to my room where Jamie is, basically, the attendant nurse, and where I croak out, "Call my mother." Back story. My mother was a very difficult woman. Formidable. She did not back down. Nor did she audit herself. Nor could she. She asked me to call her right after the operation, but I patiently explained how she'd have to talk to Jamie because I'd've just had my gut opened, and, if she didn't want to talk to Jamie, then she wouldn't have a clue, would she?

The first time she met Jamie I put her in the front seat, and Jamie got in the back. By the time I was behind the wheel again my mother had said, "Out with the old. In with the new. The only reason Jewish men like gentile girls is because of the sex." To which Jamie replied, "I know that's important to Stephen."

My mother's eyes narrowed to the slits of a panther. Elizabeth Hermanson Foreman had met her match.

So. "Call my mother," I croaked. And, Jamie, reluctantly, does. "Elizabeth," she says when my mother answers the phone, "I'm calling to tell you the two things you've been waiting to hear: the operation was a success, and Stephen's in a lot of pain."