How many times have you come across someone who has said that phrase…”You can’t make this up!” If you have been there, chances are you were having a good time at the moment.  Or maybe the circumstance was so dire that you thought the situation was so bad you could not believe it.

I have been there…on all counts.

I got beat beat up one night by three thirty-somethings when I was eight years old.  You can’t make that up.

What happened was that after my dear friend Jim Brown hit the shot heard round Jackson County in December 1975 and Brownstown Central beat Seymour 61-60…if memory serves…a great deal of Brownstown showed up behind Zabel’s Furniture where there was an empty lot of asphalt.  We had a bon-fire there to celebrate that night’s victory over the county rival.  A piece of wayward fire met my “eskimo-fur lined coat” that was fashionable in the day.  The fur was around the hood.  You remember those things.  Well, some of you do.  This piece of wayward fire landed around my face and took off.  My Dad, Bill Sweeney, and Dick Burrell all took to beating the fire out and beating on me at the same time.  I lived to tell the story.  No one went to jail and all was good.  It was a simpler time.

You can’t make that up.

I once asked Karl Malone if he played basketball.  True story.  To make things even more dumbfounding, I was in the football locker room in 1986 and Karl was sitting next to me.  He struck up a conversation with me because he heard I was from Indiana.  Karl Malone coming to sit next to me…not the other way around.  You can’t make that up.  I sized him up and told him he looked like to me like he could play basketball.  He laughed. He only was playing for the Utah Jazz after a stellar college career at Louisiana Tech.  He is only the second leading scorer in NBA history behind Kareem….and I asked if he played basketball.

You can’t make that up.

I was in a recording studio in 2004 and my friend, the late great Tim Krekel, was pinching at his scruffy beard telling how he had heard from Billy Swan the night before.  Billy was living in Los Angeles and according to Tim he was ready to move back to Nashville.  The backstory….Billy Swan’s 1974 hit “I Can Help” was the first song outside of church that got my attention when I was six years old.  He I am in a studio with Tim Krekel.  He toured as Billy Swan’s guitar player in 1974.  They opened for Willie Nelson during a European Tour…and Tim was there talking about Billy Swan while we were in the middle of recording songs I had written.

You can’t make that up.

You know what I am talking about.  You have been there.  I got more, believe me.

I had a baby-sitter kill over on me when I was five.

Don’t want to get into that.

You can’t make that up.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson