Hi Reuben - This is your long lost Brother! It is nice to see you "come out" on this forum!! I don't know if you even know that I left the "Smerch". I routed out on a medical leave in 2002 and never went back.
I tell my entire story on a thread here called "The Old Days - Aboard the Apollo 1973". The first 20 pages (out of 1216 pages so far) of this thread concerns me and my personal story. You are mentioned several times in the CC section between pages 5 and 13. I have a top ten section mentioning the best people in many categories.
I name you as the best stand up comedian and also mention you as a linguist, particularly your mastery of Yiddish and Yiddish jokes. I relate stories of Jewish joke telling with you, me and Dan Linker at New York George's restaurant.
Some highligts I mention are the occasion, on the eve of Yvonne's marriage to Heber, when Yvonne thought things were too tame and made the suggestion, "Let's ring up Iris (Reaves) and ask her to come over and sing some "Pussy on the Rooftop". You started laughing so hard that you almost wet your pants and had to excuse yourself from the room. (Of course, Yvonne was serious and not trying in the least to be funny.)
There were two other very funny lines that you uttered when you were being emcee for CC shows. One time you mentioned that there were two huge celebrities who were Scientologists but wanted their identities kept secret. Who were they? Raymond MASSey and Taluhla BANKhead. This one brought down the house!!
The other occasion was when you were Emceeing for the singer Jimmy Spheeris and you introduced him as OT3 and Class 4. You then introduced a couple of other entertainers, maybe Paul Shapiro, Grade V and Class 4 or Sharon Gregg OT I and Class II or somesuch. You then signed off calling yourself Reuben Hart, PTS 3. That one brought down the house, I remember Richard Forbes rolling in the aisles with laughter!!
Speaking of Sharon Gregg, we both loved her rendition of "Son of a Preacher Man". Also, you turned me on to the hit song of that day, "Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County" down by the Green River in Paradise Cove.
Welcome to this thread! Hopefully, you and I will be able to iron out our differences and reconnect.
Love, your Brother "lkwdblds" aka "Lakey" aka Gary Hart
P.S. - Purple Haze who posted above is Candy Swanson, CC's first Celebrity auditor.