February 1987 brought about my first Monkees convention in New Jersey. No Monkees appeared but we had a wonderful time. I got to know Alan Green (David’s then friend) and even won a kiss from him as a door prize, which we hammed up for cameras.
At some point that summer the girls came to me and told me they had registered our “fan club,” Not quite knowing what they meant, I was a bit surprised when I received notice from the National Association of Fan Clubs. I decided we had to do this right if we were going to do it at all so I called David Fishoff’s office and soon had permission to be an official fan club. The PFG was born!
We managed to attend a number of concerts that summer in Chicago, Merrillville, Milwaukee, and Des Moines to name a few.
At the concert in Chicago we wore PFG tee shirts and a woman wearing a green wool hat came up and asked if she could take our photo so we posed gladly. The next day on my trip back to Muscatine I stopped in the Quad Cities to have my photos developed. As I stood in line to pick the finished photos I was approached by a slightly familiar looking woman who said, “Weren’t you in Chicago yesterday? I have a photo of you!” Amazingly, I met my dearest Monkee friend. Bonnie Borgh in Chicago, 200 miles from home, although she only lived 30 miles from me. We became friends immediately and soon were inseparable.
The 1987 tour was to end with a week in Lake Tahoe so we decided to
make a two-week trek across country following the Monkees. We drove
through burning dans and seserts and visited the Painted Desert and
The Grand Canyon along the way not to mention surviving an earthquake.
We attended a convention in LA and a concert at the Greek Theatre
before going to Tahoe for a week’s worth of show, 2 shows a night.
It was heaven.
There was a contest on a local radio station to win backstage passes for the final show to meet David. Perseverance paid off and our group won two sets of tickets. There were five us but David graciously allowed us to include our fifth member. In November, in preparation for the release of David’s book, "They Made A Monkee Out Of Me", Alan Green contacted us and asked if we would like to help. Thanksgiving weekend we drove to Chicago to stand outside of Marshall Field’s and hand out fliers announcing David’s book signing there the next weekend.
We returned to help with that book signing and then went on to help with other signings in Wauwatosa, WI, Nashville, TN, LA, and a number of others.