Anyway, so, this is the story of my life.  I intend for this to be a true and factual accounting, a no-holds-barred and no-punches-pulled exposition of the events of my life and my reactions to those events. My publisher, who printed and distributed my other works, introduced me to several individuals who are in the business of writing biographies for those unable or unwilling to write their own.  Ghost writers they are called.  Their finished works are promoted as being written by the subject of the biography, but that’s mostly just a con to hype the sales.

After meeting with those ghost writers and reviewing some of their work, I finally decided to perform this task myself. It’s not that I had any specific objection to them or their talents, I just thought that the story of my life should be told straight out without any creative interpretations. I decided that this should be told, as they say in the courtroom, truthfully, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I should point out that I had begun keeping a journal, after a particular night’s experience that I will soon elaborate upon, with the thought of perhaps one day writing a play for the stage. The stage and theatre was in my blood, having been exposed to it from my earliest memories, but, you’re probably wondering: The Reverend Billy Williams, a playwright?

Actually, stranger things do happen, as fiction has no conceivable comparison to reality, as I’m sure you’ve witnessed. So my written words here are not merely foggy recollections but have a basis in the facts, as they evolved, as I wrote them at the end of the day on a daily basis for many years, and now refer to those pages of notes and remembrances.

Okay then, I suppose the place to start is:  In the Beginning.

At 4 AM it was a dark, windy, snowy and stormy winter night on Sunday, the fifteenth day of January, 1950 in Woodstock, New York when a man-child was born.  That newly arrived infant came kicking and screaming into this world.  That was me, little Billy, as this was many years before I became the Reverend Billy Williams.    That date, January 15, and that place, Woodstock, would both figure prominently in the rest of little Billy’s life.  The one for a good reason, the other for a not so good reason.

The infant that was born on that bitterly cold early morning in the Catskill Mountains had no inkling of what his future was to be at that moment in time, he was simply another resident among those who called the small town of Woodstock their home which included my parents and now little Billy, me.

How did my parents come to be living in Woodstock, New York in 1950, why was that the particular place where I was born?  That is another whole and interesting story in itself but in an effort to be concise I will dwell here on the facts as they relate to my autobiography.

My father and mother were both native born in New York City and were aspiring actors who had met in Manhattan in the spring of 1941 where they both had supporting roles in a Broadway play.  His name was Thomas Williams and her maiden name was Pearl Tracy.  My father supplemented his sporadic acting career by working as a carpenter building the stage sets while my mother, who was a pianist and skilled at painting would apply the finish to the scrims, flats and scenery of my fathers constructed sets.  My parents managed to find work in the theatre before the curtain went up as skilled hands, during the production as actors, and afterwards when the set was struck.  This mingling of their talents was very practical and contributed to the circumstances of their meeting.

In New York City, on the afternoon of December 7, 1941 the temperature was just above freezing.  My father and mother, who were dating but not married at the time, were cuddled together in a corner booth of a saloon that catered to the theatre crowd enjoying a meal, a drink and the convivial atmosphere.  The radio was broadcasting the New York Philharmonic Symphony.  About two thirty PM, the program was interrupted to announce the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  The news of this cold-blooded, surprise attack was dreadful and now the United States of America was at war.

Recruitment centers sprang up around the country including in New York City and my father was one of the first to sign up.  Both of my grandfathers had served as soldiers in the US Army during World War I and on both sides of my family uncles and cousins had also served in various branches of the Armed Forces and in various conflicts going back to the Revolutionary War, it was sort of a family tradition.

My father, like many other red-blooded Americans, enlisted in the Army to defend hearth and home against the Nazi and Axis threat.  Before he left, my parents were married at the courthouse.  After a weekend honeymoon my mother saw him off at the train station.  It would be four long years before they were reunited.  My father served in Europe during the war and when he was de-mobilized at the end of the conflict he and my mother finally were able to live as a married couple.

They took up where they had left off, working at the theatre.  My father had managed to parley some wartime poker winnings into a dandy little nest egg that they planned to use wisely.  In the spring of 1946 they moved lock, stock and barrel to Woodstock.  They had always been aware that Woodstock was a haven for artists of various genres and they knew that many of those residents of Woodstock were kindred spirits in the world of theatre. The history of Woodstock was filled with creative, colorful people going back to 1902 when the arts and theatre crowd in New York City discovered this tranquil farming community just a few hours train ride away and adopted it as their summer home away from home.

The village of Woodstock and the post-World War II crowd that gathered there was intent upon enjoying their hard fought peace and the lively, cultural atmosphere it spawned.

Since both were talented actors and Thomas Williams was proficient at carpentry and Pearl played the piano and was skilled at scenery, the local arts community welcomed them.  They found steady work at the various community theatres as skilled hands and actors.

Using his nest egg as a down payment, my father applied for and received a G.I. Bill mortgage and business loan to buy land and build a rooming house that welcomed the arts and theatre crowd, some of which made Woodstock their year-round home and the others who flocked there in the summertime.

They also built an adjacent structure for their theatre that my parents and the other actors rehearsed and presented plays in.  My father told me once, when I was old enough to stand at the front door and collect admission, “Make sure you give them their money’s worth, son, but make sure they pay for their seat.  No one appreciates anything that’s free.  The more they pay, the more they think its worth.”  That particular piece of advice would serve me well years later, as will be demonstrated to you shortly.

The theater and the rooming house were constantly filled with colorful personalities who were trained thespians, skilled at weaving a fiction.  That early exposure would have a profound influence on my life.

This bit of history is told to convey the point that I was raised in an environment of creativity.  Some of my earliest memories are of the theatre with me and the other children of the cast and crew sort of being the mascots of the troupe.  The theatre, the stage, the workshop, and backstage, those were my playrooms.  And then, when the house lights went down and the players on the stage convincingly portrayed characters engaged in drama, heartbreak, tears, death, and all the attendant foibles of man, balanced by the comedy and hilarity of life, their dramatic actions would serve to make me, young Billy, have an insight into what could jerk a tear or rip a laugh from the audience.

Of course at this point in my life I was much too young to realize the benefit of this exposure, but later it would serve me well.  At the time I was just a blond-haired kid with long legs who soaked up the magic of theatre like a sponge.  I assisted my father in constructing the sets and, probably, my father hoped that I would grow into a fine craftsman.  I lugged buckets of paint for my mother and read lines from plays to her while she was painting the scenery and she, probably, secretly, hoped that I would become a gifted actor.

In a way I suppose, both of their ambitions for me became somewhat of a reality. I would eventually become the builder, artistic director, writer, and actor on a stage of my own devising.  No one, including myself, could have imagined what I would eventually choose for my life’s work.

Or, what might choose me?

Life is certainly full of surprises, isn’t it?  Maybe there is a Grand Plan?  Maybe there is a Superior Being who has our life’s course mapped out?  On the other hand, maybe, as Forrest Gump said in his 1994 movie, “Shit just happens.”

Well, what’s this?  The Reverend Billy Williams is using curse words?  And confessing to drinking booze?  And being a wanton womanizer?  And snorting Cocaine and smoking Pot?

You may be asking yourself, is this truly the Reverend Billy Williams? Could this really be the story of his life?  Yep.  It sure is me, and the fact of the matter is; you ain’t seen nothing yet.

To continue:

As the years passed and little Billy, me, grew from infant to adolescent to teenager, the world revolved around his home, school, the rooming house residents, the theatre and the normal activities of a healthy, maturing young man in a rural yet culturally active small town.  In that atmosphere all things seemed to proceed along at a measured pace.  And then, during my senior year of high school, the year of our Lord, 1968, two things occurred that brought the larger world with all its bizarre connotations right down into the living room and onto the middle of the town square and into Billy’s awareness of Life, or, I guess you could call it, the Stage of the World as Billy perceived it.

The one thing was the Vietnam War being covered and broadcast by Walter Cronkite on the network news every evening on the black and white television: Dark, bloody images, body counts, bombings, death and destruction.

And the other thing was the arrival, like a blast of light from another dimension, of the Hippies into the hereto before relatively conservative hamlet of Woodstock, New York.  Those few Hippies that appeared on the town streets and in the village establishments were the scouts for the army that would arrive a year later.

It was a social phenomenon that these two things, a wildly unpopular war and the emergence of a wildly colorful segment of the population should find themselves birthed, if not simultaneously, somewhat concurrently.  Was the one, the Hippies, created by the titanic pressures of a society seeking a release, a voice, raised in protest against the grossness of War, the corruption of the political process and Man’s inhumanity to Man?  Or, were the Hippies a seed in the garden of evolution that would have eventually sprouted anyway?

Evolution?  What heresy is this?  We will continue with this thought later, meanwhile …

While this thought about the Hippies, the War and this pivotal transformation wasn’t explicitly debated at the time, it is a question that I now ponder as I remember watching those long-haired, bell-bottomed blue jeaned, tie-dyed t-shirted, free-loving, Pot-smoking personages who would one moment advocate the violent over-throw of all government, and the next, blissfully discuss the greater-good-soul of all, well, most all, of humanity.

The residents of Woodstock in the spring of 1968 were amused and somewhat shocked by the colorful minority of Hippies descending upon their town.  And this was before the deluge and hordes of hippies that came through later going to the Woodstock festival – imagine their shock then?

But now, with just the dozens of Hippies, the snowball poised at the top of the mountain so to speak, my parents, just like the other parents of the young, impressionable teenagers in Woodstock, warned me against “Hanging around those wild Hippies.”

Of course, this just made me and the other young, impressionable teenagers that much more interested in what they might discover “Hanging around those wild Hippies.”

For young Billy, me, who had about six months before, celebrated his eighteenth birthday, what I discovered was a whole new way of looking at Life.  It was another form of Theatre, except that the action was live and never ending, the stage was always full of Players, the house lights never dimmed, and instead of being make-believe, it was Real, man.  Really Real.

And like a gift from Heaven, dropped into my life, came a young woman.  Her name was Serena.

Saturday, June 1, 1968

Woodstock, NY

Serena was twenty years old and from Richmond, California.  She had Turned On, burned her bra and dropped out of college at Berkeley.  Serena was into the music, the party, the Pot, politics, and the Psychedelic Harmony and the Rage that was born in the second half of the 1960’s.  Serena was a free spirit whose travels and ramblings had brought her to Woodstock, New York.

This is how we met.

One brilliantly sunny Saturday afternoon in June, 1968 I was at the Millstream Swimming Hole, a lake fed by the Saw Kill River that was the local gathering place.  High school graduation had occurred the day before, that ordeal was finished.  I had been accepted to the State University at Albany; my future seemed to be mapped out, a future full of promise and Billy, me, was sitting and pondering this brilliant future, and I was already bored with the prospect.

Whatever your personal religious beliefs may be, whether you believe that all things are pre-ordained and that things happen for a reason, or, if you think that shit just happens, it’s certainly a mystery how occurrences do occur, isn’t it?

As you know, I’m now out of the business of attempting to interpret those particular religious and philosophical questions and out of the business of sermonizing on those interpretations but I will say this, my meeting Serena, and the circumstances of our meeting, just seem to be too particular and peculiar to be random.

On the other hand, maybe this thing known as Life is all just a random pile of cosmic shit, waiting for the winds of Chance to blow the odors of the effluence hither and yon.

But the day I met Serena, it seems, must have been a day that was written down in some big Good Book somewhere.  I mean, seriously, think about the math?  What if I’d been born and lived in some other spot on the globe, what if she hadn’t come to Woodstock, what if I hadn’t been at the swimming hole that day – what if, what if and what if?  There are too many factors in the equation, any one of which if altered in the slightest way would have changed that day and, therefore, changed the course of both of our lives.

But, I’m getting ahead of the story.