civilization on to the dawn of a new era. The next moment a squadron of jet bombers started roaring through my skull.

Dr. MacCluett was waving a bottle of spirits of ammonia under my nose when I finally opened my eyes.

"You all right, Freddy?" he asked in a quavering voice.

I staggered to my feet. I had a headache that would have dropped an elephant in its tracks. A team of rough maulers couldn't have done a better job on me with claw holds.

"I'm fine," I groaned, matching him quaver for quaver. "The only reason I look this way is merely because I am dying."

By dint of much heaving and tugging he managed to haul me out to my car and boost me into it.

He appeared as nervous as a neophyte murderer trying to get his first corpse under cover.

"Drive carefully, Freddy," he said, stepping back. He pulled out a white handkerchief and waved it gently. "Look both ways when you cross Wilshire. Please watch out for dangerous pedestrians."

Leo was waiting for me in my dressing room that evening. He gave me an anxious scrutiny. "You feel all right, Freddy?" he inquired solicitously. "You want I should get you an aspirin? You want I should hold a cold cloth on your head?"

I had to look twice to be sure this was Leo talking to me. Any other time I could be lying flat on my face. I could be bleeding out of all my arteries and Leo would probably try to boot me to my feet. "Freddy," he would probably say, "what are you, a hypochondriac?" But here he was, clucking over me like a hen over a newborn egg.

The rest of the evening was strictly a nightmare out of 3-D by Technicolor. I walked down the aisle and there wasn't a single, solitary boo in the place. So help me! There was only this soft, pulsing sigh. Like a steel guitar stuck on Blue Hawaii.

The pulsing sigh faded to a breathless hush when I climbed through the ropes. Then, suddenly, this kid redhead in shorts and store curves leaped to her feet.

"Oh, you great big beautiful doll, you!" she yipped, waving her popcorn at me.

From then on things got real pitiful. I was supposed to be wrestling a guy named Arnie Kapowsky. Arnie never wrestled any way but hero-style, and the crowd broke his heart that 

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