entertainment HAPPENINGS Portland Observer October 16. I960 Page 9 SEE SPORTS ON GIANT SCREEN T V «- JOE’S PLACE ENTERTAINMENT MERLE HAGGARD MAKE BIG If there’ s ever been a successful entertainer who took the long road to fame and fortune, its Merle Haggard. Haggard’ s •’overnight success” involved more than twenty years o f hardship. He was placed in and out o f reform schools, stole cars, hopped freights and wrote bogus checks. Born in 1937 in a converted boxcar to a southwestern dustbowl family Haggard grew up in Bakerfield, California, “ Hoover Camps” where unem­ ployed and migrant workers lived in cardboard shacks on dirt farms. His lather and grandfather were honky-tonk fiddlers back in Oklahoma and he used to spend hours listening to Jimmy Rogers, Bob Wills and Lefty Frizzell • on the radio. At age nine his father died; and as Haggard recalls in "Mamma Tried ,, The fir s t think / remember k n o w in ' was a lonesome whistle blowin ‘/O n afrieght train leavin ’ town not know in' where I'm bound. " Haggard’ s early resentment o f authority caught up with him in 1957 when he and two friends were caught trying to rob a cafe. During the police search, a check machine was recovered from a previous safe job and Haggard landed in San Quentin prison for two years and nine month. He admits, " I am a bet­ ter man because o f it. I wouldn’ t trade the experience.” During this time served in San Quentin, Haggard received the equivelancy 1801 N.E. Alberta COMMODORES ENTEKTAINMEM 4u CONCER TS WLSI PR E S IM •THE e a tric e (J u lia n n e Jo h n s o n ) s tru g g le s u n s u c c e s s fu lly against ’ M u rh A rt0 B®nedick