Afternoon Delight - The Storyteller

Mrs. Yasgur reached up and pulled the chain on the lone ceiling light fixture, the 40-watt bulb dimly illuminating the shack's interior. Slowly lowering herself into the wooden chair at my desk, she scowled. "Is this more of your bullshit, Winslow? You promising my daughter you'd marry her just to get her into your bed before you turn tail and run out?"

Now that her fury was abating, I'd calmed down myself and quietly stated, "No. It's not bullshit, Mrs. Yasgur. I truly want to marry Billie Jo. I can't stomach the thought of being without her. Not even for a day." Saying that, I flashed back to hearing Grandma Danhof's advice when she gave me those rings. She'd called it, right enough. At that moment, if even one ounce of doubt about my marrying Billie Jo remained, it was completely snuffed.

Mrs. Yasgur snapped, "But you ain't got a damn dime to your name, Ray Winslow! Once you marry my daughter, how will you take care of her? Are you two gonna go live in a cave somewhere?" OK, now we were having a discussion instead of yelling. This was progress.

"I'm not in nearly as bad off now as I was when I got here," I reassured her, "in fact, I haven't really needed this job for over a month now. I was able to hire an attorney in Mexico as my proxy, and he arranged for the money in my Mexico City bank account to be wired to a bank here in Brownsville. There was only one reason I kept working here -- to be with Billie Jo every day."

Billie Jo began crying -- happy tears, I assumed -- while Mrs. Yasgur only muttered four words. "Well, I'll be damned."

I pulled an envelope out of the desk drawer and waved it. "I was saving this up as a wedding gift, but I'll give it to you now. I just got this letter from my agent. He was able to sell three of the scripts I've written since Mexico, so I have money coming from that. But that's not the big news." I looked at Billie Jo, grinning. "A major film studio just bought my latest script. They green-lighted The Girl With The Goat into production! It looks like I'm back in the movie scriptwriting game again."

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September 1976

I married Billie Jo at small chapel in Brownsville two weeks later. We had a small ceremony, just Billie Jo's mother, her brother Desmond, her sister Linda who'd flown in with their spouses; also a few of Mrs. Yasgur's church friends. Afterwards, we went back to the farmhouse for punch and cake. Desmond had moved the furniture out of the living room while Linda ran to Kmart to buy the Starland Vocal band album and put it on the record player, so Mrs. Billie Jo Winslow and I had our first official dance as husband and wife to our song, Afternoon Delight.

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EPILOGUE

"The Girl With The Goat" got made into a major motion picture, (retitled by the Executive Producer as 'The Bride In The Barnyard') and the film did very well at the box office. Kids loved the talking animals, while teenagers and older women loved the romance. The movie had 'good legs' domestically and did even better internationally, so my percentage points put me in a good enough place financially that I could leave Texas and relocate us to a house I'd leased in Los Angeles.

Our baby Tyler was born in Los Angeles four months after we'd relocated, so he was on hand when The Bride In The Barnyard was nominated for a Best Screenplay award. (Chinatown ended up winning that year. Oh, well!) After the nomination, though, the infamy of ¡José, No Way! was forgotten and the scriptwriting offers started rolling in. I was now working steadily, enough to buy a house in the Hollywood Hills with a small mother-in-law unit where Mrs. Yasgur could live when she visited. Of course, once Tyler was on the scene, Grandma Yasgur visited a lot!

As far as I was concerned, my mother-in-law could sell the damned farm and live with us forever if she wanted to. After all, it was her 'no men at night-time' rule I had to thank for my happiness. Without the inspiration of all that afternoon delight, I might still be in Texas, patching the roof on Sally's chicken coop...