Once I had the neatest conversation with Chuck Norris. You know. Karate guy? Movie and TV star? One of Earth’s toughest people? I was sports editor then and it couldn’t have been a summer 50 years ago because, frankly, I’m still cute and personable. We were a small town in the mid-1970s and there was zero-nada of anything to cover. Local athletics were so dead in the dog days of August, Editor Ruth Newhall allowed me to run a full-page photo spread of empty tennis courts, vacant gyms, swimming pools with nary a ripple and softball fields collecting spider webs.

Collecting Spider Webs.

I believe that’s this month’s three-hour luncheon slide presentation at Live Nude Zonta.

Anywho. Ruth enforced a strict edict that all Signal Sports must carry a Santa Clarita angle. I convinced the formidable and deadly Mrs. Newhall that Chuck Norris was local because I was from Newhall and would have to drive to L.A. to his dojo to chat with him. Either that, or we could rerun the previous week’s photo spread of the dead fields of jockstraps, which, I pointed out, would help me immensely because it’d only take seconds to change the date at the top of the page.

Ruth gave me one of her fatigued and practiced, You’re So Young, Tedious And Unfunny stares. But, she gave me the go-ahead.

I had the most enjoyable interview and conversation with Chuck. He was between lessons and sat comfortably in his thick, off-white cotton karategi, or, the commonly accepted, “gi.” I’d say he’s more like his Walker, Texas Ranger TV........

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