"Targa" #3

When we showed Queens with Big Apple it was always in Cunningham Park and the show set up on the parking lot of a facility with a series of tennis courts. In 1987 while playing there the Red Show was down town in the Garden and on one Sunday a bunch of us decided to drive down to where the train was spotted, watch them load out and cut up some jackpots. I almost had Alan Slifka talked into going but he finally thought better of it. King Tusk was the feature but I was surprised to see my friend Lee Keener walking with the herd, I was told "Tommy" had already been loaded in his truck down at the Garden and Lee was just making the walk to help Gunther. After the elephants were loaded in the cars Lee called me over to one side, looked all around and whispered "Targa dropped dead this morning with the Blue Show up in Providence". My first thought was "Why are we whispering?" but despite having only been with the show a few months Lee had already mastered the art of Secret Keeping. On the same lot in Queens six years later almost to the day, I received an emergency phone call, I walked over to the phone booth by one of the tennis courts only to learn from Ted that Axel had just been killed.