Ronn Perea once booked comedy shows along Route 66 in New Mexico, including Albuquerque, during the 1980s and ’90s.
Now Perea has written a historical novel about those times, titled “Smiles, Giggles & Laughs,” reports the Albuquerque Tribune.
Incidents in the novel – such as the time Greco and a Camaro full of comics get caught in a blizzard driving back from a Christmas Eve show in Tucumcari – are inspired by things that happened.
This second-chapter exchange takes place after the comics pile out of the Camaro to push the car out of an I-40 snowdrift while Greco remains at the wheel.
Jake shouted back at me in ominous tones, “Ronn! Put on the emergency brake. Get off the gas pedal. Don’t move the car.”
My foot complied in pushing down the emergency brake. “What’s wrong?”
The ventriloquist spoke calmly. “You’re six inches from sliding into a ten-foot drop.”
The author has his own Web page about the book here. You can also read excepts of the book here and here.