I have no idea where this is going; it begins as a notion that the intertwining of disparate lives is endless. My grandmother, while protesting often that forebears and roots make little difference, traced our family’s lineage back to Constantine. It took her years, and she went blind in the process.

Well, it did take years. I lent said document to a family member who promptly misplaced it. Or threw it away. But it existed once well before the days of the now popular ancestry DNA testing sources. (Top-rated kits include MyHeritage at 9.8, LivingDNA at 9.6, and the oft-advertised AncestryDNA with the leaf symbol at 9.3.) It might be a fascinating pursuit in these days of self-isolation. Maybe you can afford such frivolity; me, not so much, at the present moment thanks to this frigging insidious virus. But I digress.  

Somewhere in that exhaustive lineage document I was told, Howard Hughes was in a bush near the family tree as a sixth cousin. This may be heresy, certainly hearsay. But had it been fact, I may have explored that connection; he certainly was an interesting fellow. “Hi Howard, this is your cousin. What’re you doing these days, besides, you know, growing long fingernails. Let’s do lunch.”

But druthers professed, another car-racing playboy, Lance Reventlow would have been a much cooler lunch mate. Playboy, racer, buddy of James Dean, he died in a tragic plane crash near Aspen during a storm. An inveterate skier, he’d been looking at mountain property. Had his luck been better that day, he’d have probably built a breathtaking skier’s paradise. The only child of Barbara Hutton and heir to the Woolworth fortune, Lance was born in 1936. He drove Scarabs and beat Maseratis and Ferraris with the Chevy-powered specially built race cars.

I bumped into his wife in Aspen in a small clothing store—literally bumped into her (Jill. St. John) as she was trying on a big ski sweater and flailing about trying to get the thing over her head. I apologized profusely but she owned up to it being her fault and we laughed and went about our purchases. She looked familiar but half the people in Aspen were celebrities and looked like someone you thought you knew.

She was a Bond girl. So was Jacqueline Bisset. Which brings me to Nick Nolte. I was living in Omaha while working in Ashland, Nebraska, and engaged to an Omaha girl who lived a block from Nolte. One day I was with some of her male friends, and we dropped in on Nick. He was always home in those days. Under house arrest for faking and selling driver’s licenses to those under the legal age to drink. I think the FBI or some heavy duty set of initials got involved. ATF maybe. Anyway we spent time with him, while he did some at home.

I found him personable, if somewhat humorously abrasive. As in one of his many roles. Several years later I told one of the guys I’d been with that day, that Nolte was in a feature film with Bisset, “The Deep.” He was quite sure I was mistaken and that Nolte had died in Los Angeles. Well, we went to the movie and it was Nick Nolte, very much alive and on his way to a long honor-filled acting career.

I always enjoy seeing him in films and put him on a par with Tommy Lee Jones. Both these guys could just speak their lines and be quite well received by audiences, but they dump in some acting chops and give stellar performances. Both have been nominated for several oscars and Jones has won one.

Which brings me six more degrees, or full circle to Kevin Bacon and Jacqueline Bisset who were both in the 2005 movie, “Lover Boy.”

Whew. That was a workout. But it kind of makes sense. It ain’t self-isolation that makes me wacky—self-isolating is my natural state. I guess it’s the thought of dodging 100mph sneezes in the gen pop. National Geographic says they travel thirty feet and hang in the air for minutes afterward. Keep a happy thought, right? A healthy, safe passage to you to the other side of this.