My best Christmas gift was boxes, inside of boxes, inside of more boxes, from my Grandma Cleta.

From 1972 to 1975 my hair was colored with, sometimes as many as 18 different colors, and people often thought I had a headdress on. Even earlier than that, I began dying my hair different colors back in Jr. High (1968).

When I was 14 or 15 years old I was walking to up the Fahling farm. Their farm hand was shooting at a rabbit through the grapevines on a small ridge. He had shot through the rabbit and the exiting bullet parted the hair on the upper side of my head. I hit the dirt thinking a psycho was trying to kill me. I crawled on my belly, to the top of the ridge, and saw him, and a buddy, holding, the dead rabbit. I told them what had happened and they said I was making it all up. The Fahling’s were on a vacation. I had all that stress for nothing. Over the years my lifestyle choices led to many times I came close to being killed. I was hunted in a cornfield by a redneck psycho, with a shotgun, after climbing out of a his nieces bedroom window. Another time I was backed up against a wall, with a knife into my gut as far as it could go without entering me, by a ranting drunk in a bar in Conklin Michigan who wanted to kill himself a hippie. A close friend intervened. A couple of days later, the same drunk knifed a man and eventually went to prison. When I was 8 or 9 years old a group of apple-pickers (southerners as we used to call them) tried to kidnap me by pulling me into their car. There were 3 men and a half naked woman in the backseat with 2 of them. I dropped my bike and ran through our neighbors peat-moss trials further into their woods. As I look back at it, something sexual was happening and being planned. All of these things happened to me when I was still at home living with my parents. They never knew these things. I remember always telling them, before I went out, that I’d be careful and would take good care of myself. Yea, right! That’s why my kids were more closely watched. Especially whenever they told me that they’d be careful and would take good care of themselves!

My mother loved my artwork and at a young age encouraged me to paint murals on my bedroom walls!

Oral Roberts once announced to the public that he had spoken to the Lord and if he couldn’t raise 6 Million dollars, in a short period of time, the Lord would be calling him home. I thought it sounded like he was saying God was holding him hostage. I wrote him a letter about this hostage idea. I started thinking that I could send this phony man, fake money too. I taped the letter to a big blue piggy bank and stuffed it with 6 Million dollars in play money. I went to the post office and mailed it out. The local press covered it. Later Oral Roberts wrote me back a scolding letter and signed it. I still have it in my papers somewhere!

While filming our Dracula movie in the early 1970’s we almost witnessed a knifing in back of the restaurant we were filming at. Out of the back door came a kitchen worker chasing another man with a large knife and was threatening to kill him. The guy put the knife away when he saw us. There we were, the camera, cameraman, pretty girl and me dressed as Dracula. The restaurant employee quickly went back inside and the guy he was chasing just kept running. FYI I had a coffin donated to me, for the movie, and at some point I decided that I would try using it as a bed. I brought it home. My mother was so happy that I couldn’t get it through the door of our house. She went shopping with Dad and when they returned home they were surprised to find that I had found a way to get it in my bedroom. My poor mother and father! Coffins aren’t made to comfort the living, just the un-dead! In 1973 I was asked to illustrate the Grand Valley State College Captain Crisis Handbook.

At Breton Village Mall we filmed 3 cannibals chasing a fat man to the surprise of customers and a press photographer. This was one of the stunts for my movie, Alvin’s Journey. Of course cannibals love finding a nice fat person to eat!

I staged a school sit-in protesting the Viet Nam war. I was always having issues with the system and had petitions going. I think a lot my protesting and mockery of the school BS got me put in yearbook as class pessimist with my friend, Jane Blondin. It was all kind of strange. I was into the peace movement, but was prone to violence when it came to fighting. I could have a temper with anyone messing with me, or the people I cared about. I have noticed that some people who preach against things like violence end up becoming violent to try to reach their peaceful goals. Just like countries do! I have not been much of a violent person since having kids and coming back to God! I do bear the scars though. I was madly in love with my wife, Sara, back in High School. So now I will tell you about it. The first time I saw Sara Stewart, it was love at first sight for me. I noticed her in my art class and we soon became the best of friends. She was going with a guy so I had to practice a respectable boundary and keep a proper distance. She was kind, pretty and sweet! I sat as close to her as I could get. When I sat in back of her I tied ribbons in her hair and thus her nickname, Buckwheat was born! I loved the way she acted and looked. The way she smelled. The way the light looked on her hair. If she was anywhere near me I was happy. It was like finding the most serene place, where everything is right and you never want to leave. All my friends knew how much I cared about her, but it never got back to her much. We danced at a school dance once, but couldn’t bring myself to tell her how I felt about her. My parents had taught me to never interfere with relationships. Also, back then, I think I had self esteem issues and didn’t want to make a fool out of myself proclaiming a one way love. She, after all was so awesome and spoken for. So I just let it go. I was hoping someday I’d get an opportunity. We still had lots of fun. I would do anything for her and she would do just about anything for me. Keep in mind I am an eccentric and she did have some dignity to protect! Knowing her made me a better person, friend, and student. Sara is the reason I stopped skipping school and started having perfect attendance. I eventually even made the honor roll. She was simply the safest person I knew. We were always hanging out together and whenever her boyfriend was around, it felt like he was the third wheel. I just kept waiting for her and the boyfriend to break up. Their breakup never happened. Still there were many important good times for us to share together! Time passed. Soon she was engaged and then got married to him. I remember taking her my gift of a specially made art poster to present to her at their wedding reception. A friend drove me there and all my friends knew how difficult this was for me to attend. I put on the best fake happy face anyone ever has seen! After the dollar dance I quickly left and my friend Bruce drove me out to Hoffmaster Park where I proceeded to get smashed and cry all night. I was devastated. It hit me hard that, this was it. I went on a female binge/rampage for the next few years. I only ever ran into Sara once in a great while. I will tell you that anything we ever gave each other was kept. Over the years we carried each other’s pictures in our wallets. Between any girlfriend, or marriage I had, I tried to find Sara and see if she was finally available. It was like she had fallen off the Earth. That is, until 25 years, later. I strangely got her number from her ex-husband’s mother and was able to finally contact her. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1997, Sara Jane Tift came over to my house and it was like no time had passed at all. It was on that day I gathered the courage to tell her how I had always felt about her. In our wallets we still carried each others pictures. She had everything I ever gave her back in high school, including an special note, written with hidden feelings, that declared, “I am madly in like with you.” She didn’t read between the lines and thought that the note was cementing us as, just friends. It is displayed among many artifacts on this web-page! I played her many of the songs I had written about her over the years. Many of those songs appear on my CDs. I STILL LOVED SARA JANE STEWART! When she left to go home, we made a commitment to stay connected. We sure did,…and on January 30th 1998 we became the happiest married couple in the history of the entire world!! I LOVE SARA JANE STEWART ROUSE! My wife, my friend and the love of my life! Thank you God and Sweetlittlebuckwheatwhatneverdidnuffintonobody!

I hung out with Al Lewis, otherwise known as Grandpa Munster, for 2 days at a photography event. He had a nasty mouth on him! He was 80 years old and totally full of it!

When I was in my late twenties I wanted a Big Boy Club membership to get a pin for my large button collection. At one of their restaurants I filled out an application. I received a letter in the mail saying I was rejected for membership in the Big Boy Kid’s Club because I was too old. I contested it back and forth in mail correspondence until I got a letter from the President of Big Boy. He said they would not give me membership and that was final. Dolly, Nugget and the President of the Elias Brothers Corporation had signed the letter. I finally sent in a new application and lied about my age. I told them I was 8 years old. I got the pin! It is still in my display case. Sometimes I like the challenge!

Just out of high school I was making another movie. For a particular scene I wanted it to look like I get thrown off of the Sparta Klein Rodeo tower. I used my art skills to create a realistic looking dummy that I named, Ernie Rouse. He had a skeleton with movable parts. I used a facial likeness of an old man, thanks to my brother Jim, and gave him glass eyes. I dressed him in a similar looking suit to mine and gave him shades. The stunt was breathtaking! After the movie, I put him in the backseat passenger side of my car where he was to always ride shotgun for the longest time. Everyone in Sparta started to get a kick out of Ernie and many people talked to him like he was real. I soon began taking him to events, parties and receptions with me. He was always the hit of the party! At a wedding reception I sat him in a corner with a glass of Jim Beam and a cigarette and more people talked to him than me! When anyone asked about how Ernie was doing, I’d always say, fine, but you know that Ernie, he don’t talk much! Nobody ever messed with my car and I never had it broken into! I had done such a good job making him look so realistic, and I realized that during a date at the old Eastown Theater. After watching Blazing Saddles, Sue Longstreet and I came out to find that 2 city policemen were trying to get Ernie to wake up and move my car! I remember telling them, he is just my dummy. He is not real! Both officers were laughing so hard. I didn’t get a ticket! One day, at a party his head came off. I stored his head in a box and it eventually got lost. His body was accidentally thrown out when my Dad cleaned his shed one day. I don’t know why, but I always liked the name Ernie.

I made a secret agent movie in high school and had TV’s Bozo the Clown, play my boss. We filmed it at the Bozo’s Big Top set at TV 13. Fresh out of high school, in what I call the drug and alcohol years, all of us partied hard. Many times we put ourselves in danger. We didn’t realize how close we were coming to death. One particular night, in the winter, a friend of mine was having a birthday party at the Grange Hall in Cedar Springs. At that time I did not drive, so I went to the Sparta parking lot where everyone hung out, and hooked a ride with an acquaintance of mine named Chris. He was what we called a “gear-head.” Of course, he had a snooped-up car. He asked me where the party was. When I told him, he hit the gas, and off we went. We were instantly going considerably over the speed limit, and soon the police were behind us. I remember him laughing and hitting the gas even harder. After a couple of minutes we were running red lights and fish-tailing on the snowy, ice covered streets. For awhile we kept going in circles all around the town. Then two more squad cars joined in the chase. I looked over at the speedometer and he was going over 100 mph! At one point I told him I wanted to get out! He was just laughing, and called me a “pansy.” We slid around a turn and started heading for the Sparta Foundry Building. He told me this is where we were going to lose the police. As we approached the corner of the factory building, I though we were going to hit it head-on. He slowed, slid sideways, and made the turn down a side street. The cops did not make the turn, they slid through the stop sign, and lost pursuit. Chris zigzagged through the side streets and came to the main road out of town. He floored it again, with just one set of police lights in the distance, slowly disappearing. At that point, I kept my mouth shut, because it began to snow even harder, just like my praying! I don’t remember the exact route he took, but it seems we pretty much stayed on mostly the same road. There were times I looked over and the speedometer was as much as 110 mph. It felt like we were gliding and fish-tailing just above the road. When we got to the Grange Hall, we parked and went inside. I was shaking. The first thing I decided, was that I was going to find was someone else to hitch a ride home with! I was never in to hard drugs, but when I found the friend who was celebrating his birthday, he was shooting up heroin, on a stage, in front of his large birthday crowd. Now let me explain, my father was deputized by the Kent County Sheriff’s Department in his work with AA. The one thing that I did not want to do was, to get busted for this kind of substance abuse. I quickly spotted another acquaintance who seemed as uncomfortable to be there as I was. I had no idea of how he drove, but I decided to quickly leave with him and his friend, Jude. This seemed to be a better match, traveling at 50-55 mph! The two of them sat up in front and I sat in between their seats in the back. We were on a road by Long Lake and were approaching a sign informing us that there was a “T” in the road ahead. Just about the time I was thinking to myself, “Gee, he doesn’t seem to be slowing down,” I heard Jude say, “Wake up, Phil, wake up!” Phil drove through the sign and into a tree! We was still driving over 50 mph. Phil’s face hit the steering wheel, Jude’s face hit the dashboard, and my head came up and hit the ceiling of the car. The last thing I remember, was that their faces were all bloody and cut up, and I reached for the top of my head, not finding any blood, and then passing out. The rest of this story is what people involved told me later. I definitely had a bit of amnesia, probably shock, but because the trunk of the car had illegal substances in it, they decided to point me in the direction of Sparta, and get me walking home before the police arrived. The knew what my father would probably do to me. One of my good female friends, Suzie, slowed down, recognized me, and told me to get in her car. Once in the car, I told her a confused story, but she got enough out of me to know to return me to where I was living, with friends at a house by Riverside Park in Grand Rapids. One of my roommates, named Linda, told me that I woke her up and asked her what having a concussion was like. She advised me to stay awake. A little while later the doorbell rang, and my good friends, including Bob and Jim, had me get into their car, go to and wait in line on the streets of Chicago, for Led Zeppelin tickets, going on sale in the morning. Off I went! I don’t, to this day, remember anything, between passing out at the scene of the accident, and coming to focus in front of the Chicago Stadium. It was almost surreal, and drunken feeling, slowly emerging from the state I was in, and realizing cops were hitting the concert ticket mob with billy-clubs, and throwing them into paddy-wagons. My friends told me parts of my story, and let me know that we had tickets to Led Zeppelin! I was soon pretty much back to normal, if that’s a word I can use in my life, but I did have a cop chase me with his billy-club when I cross-walked! The next time I saw my parents, they asked me what I’d been up to lately, and as usual, I told them, “Nothing much…” Several months later I ran into Chris in the Sparta parking lot. He yelled to me, “Hey Rouse, you want to hear something funny? I know someone who was so scared to ride with me from a party, that he got a ride with someone else, and guess what? He got into a car accident and hit a tree!! I guess he wasn’t a safe driver!!” I just smiled, and kept my mouth shut… I collect things. You must have guessed that by now. I usually keep interactive mementos and the scan below is an example of that. When I was putting together the band, Barbazoonka, we put several of these up in the music stores around town. I was trying to be very painfully specific. We were putting together a progressive rock band. Of course I put a little humor and sarcasm to the ad, based on the first few, poorly matched, responses I got, to insure we wouldn't get what I called, Cro-Magnon rockers! There were a lot of these around at the time. I love what the anonymous musician wrote, in blue ink, as a response to my fat, ugly, groupie line! It must of hit the bulls-eye in his situation. His comment also showed that he thought I would have a very hard time finding someone around Grand Rapids who wasn't having those fat, ugly groupie, child support issues! It's hard to explain, but around here that was the case with many of them. I wonder if it is still that way?

Over the years I have played many different places. I was never happier than when I was playing for the great crowds at the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts. Below are the kind of wonderful things that the Grand Rapids Press does to unite readers with the artists! That Saturday night we closed the main stage with a powerful performance that kicked ass! That was the first night I premiered my playing drums standing up, while playing keyboards with my right hand. Many of the songs on our set list were originals written by our band. We ended that show with a composition that I wrote for that night. It became the title of my first CD, 2002's, Life In The Furniture City and it's the first cut appearing on that recording!

The day after John Lennon was murdered, The Grand Rapids Press spoke with me about him to get more information for their article on his life. They also printed the lyrics from the bridge of the song I'd written just the night before, when John was killed. It was entitled, MDC. (Mark David Chapman) The updated song finally appeared on my 2005 CD, Music To The Soundtrack Of My Life! It is a song honoring the man who inspired me to become a songwriter!