In 1982 I worked the suburban Pittsburgh comedy club the same week Ollie Joe Prater worked the "main, in town" club. Ollie Joe was a club favorite, he got the laughs but more importantly got the audiences to drink more liquor than anyone on the circuit. Back then the sold-out audience was a given, so selling drinks bought a club owner's love. His deal with each club required each club to provide x amount of quaaludes and blow before his first show of the week. He was one of those guys when it came time to settle his two thousand dollar contract; the club owed him a nickel. Ollie Joe drank through his entire set, constantly encouraging the crowd to match him swig for swig, shot for shot. Ollie Joe was five feet-five and three hundred pounds and costumed as a cowboy. He wore a beard, cowboy boots, buckle and hat. He was the fastest joke tellin', joke stealin', beer guzzlin', drug snortin' comic there was.

I finished my second show Saturday night and went to see Ollie Joe's third show. He was wasted. He had both hands gripping the mike stand, trying to keep the room from tilting over. Finally he did a shot and fell straight back, still holding the mike and doing jokes. The little fat man probably didn't realize that the audience was now facing the soles of his boots and he was working to the ceiling. One of the owners, Bruno, ran to me; "We got to get Ollie Joe. You finish the show."

Four guys dragged Ollie Joe's carcass from the stage, while I pried the mike from his hand. The audience went right with me. They probably looked at it like a professional wrestling tag team match.

After the show we squeezed the near dead Ollie Joe into the front seat of a Trans Am. Our plan was to toss Ollie Joe into his bed at the Viking Inn and go to a post show party. We get as far as the hotel parking lot when someone must have said the word, "party." The word is processed somewhere deep in Ollie Joe's frog brain. He went from passed out to a windshield-kicking tantrum in 2.3 seconds. We took him to the party, where he passed out a minute after we walked in the door. That night we dragged the snoring water buffalo to two parties and an after hour club and a diner. The next day Ollie Joe took me to lunch and told me everything that happened. No matter how many chemicals he ingested, whether he was unconscious or unconscious, Ollie Joe never forgot a party or one of your funny jokes.