CHAPTER 36

WHO IS TOM RAY?

          Maybe I should tell you a little about how I became the “World’s Greatest Mind Scientist.”  I think it is very important to start in the beginning. However, in my case, I don’t believe it is necessary to go as far back as Alex Haley did with Roots, so I will just say a few words about my Dad. In 1928, he was 18 years old and had been in an automobile wreck.  As he lay on the emergency room table, the doctors felt there was no hope for him.   I would not be here if he had not had the will to live after the doctors told his family that he would be dead by morning and it would be a waste of time to take the piece of glass out of his neck. But when he was still alive by the next morning, they decided to operate.  I learned of this story in my early teens.  I didn’t realize that half of his face was paralyzed.  He always looked normal to me.

          I was born in Joshua, Texas. Joshua is a little south of Ft. Worth. I have been there only twice; once to be born and once to see where it was. There is not a lot in Joshua, Texas. If you blink your eyes as you go through, you will miss it.  Soon after my birth, we moved to Paris, Texas.  My dad taught high school chemistry and also delivered ice to the German Prisoner of War camp in Paris.

          They say every little rose needs fertilizing so it will grow beautiful and healthy.  That’s what happened to me when I was about two years old!  I don’t recall anything about it. Maybe my Subconscious has blocked it out.  Mother said that I fell through one of the holes in the outhouse in our backyard.  She said that I didn’t come out smelling like a rose!  I don’t know if that incident changed my life any, but many different things have happened to me.

          I remember going to school barefoot in the snow. I didn’t like to wear shoes and it was the first snow of the winter.  Before leaving the house, I took off my shoes.  When I got there, the teacher noticed that I had a great big coat on, but no shoes. They wanted to take up a collection to buy poor little Tommy Ray some shoes.  At that time, I was not poor and I was not rich.  My shoes were home under the bed.

          My first grade teacher was also my father’s first grade teacher.  Her name was Mrs. Roundtree She must have taught school for about 50 years.

          We moved from Paris, Texas to Magnolia, Arkansas, where my father taught at what was then known as Arkansas A&M College.  Later, it became Southern State University and now I think it has another name. 

          The next major event in my life included one of the College faculty wives.  She was supervising a swimming party at the water tank (pond) in the field behind the faculty homes.  When it was time to go home, I was on an inner tube and didn’t want to leave.  I was about 7 years old and didn’t know how to swim.  That is why I had the inner tube. The lady called for everybody to get out of the water.  Everybody got out, but me.  She started toward the houses and I was still on the inner tube in the water.  Somehow, I fell off of it.  The water was about 5 feet deep and I was only 4 feet tall.  And obviously, that was too much water for such a little boy.  I went under for the last time and I think I drank about half of the pond.  Appearing on the bank was a young man that lived across the railroad tracks.  He waded into the water.  On him, it was only chest high. He took me by the hand and dragged me out of the water.

          The next time I accidentally attempted to do myself in, was on a bicycle.  I was riding down the middle of the street with my feet up on the handlebars.  I must have been about 9 years old. They tell me my head made a very large dent in the front fender of a truck. It knocked me out completely and I woke up on the x-ray table in Dr. Wilson’s clinic.

          Dad taught us that if we started working at an early age, we would be more independent, we would have more spending money and would learn more about life.  And like many young people, I thought my father was the smartest man alive.

          There were many opportunities to find work. When I was 9 or 10 years old, I sold peanuts at the College football and basketball games.  I got a cardboard box, put a rope on the box, strung the rope over my shoulders, so it would be easy to carry and I was in business. I bought the peanuts from Mr. and Mrs. Peace who were in charge of the College bookstore and concession stands.  I paid 8 cents for a sack of peanuts and sold it for 10 cents. There were some games where I could make $10.00 a night, which is 500 sacks of peanuts!  That is a lot of peanuts and a lot of money for a 10 year-old boy around 1949. When I was 11, I started delivering papers to the dormitories at the College.  Our house was across the street from the College. The first paper I ever delivered was the Arkansas Democrat.  The Democrat was the afternoon paper, so I delivered the papers after school.  Then, I started delivering the Daily Banner News, which was the local daily paper in Magnolia, Arkansas.  The Daily Banner News had to be delivered in the afternoon also, so I gave up delivering the Arkansas Democrat. I knew that I could make more money delivering the local paper.

          A morning janitorial job came open at the local department store.  The working hours were from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. and involved sweeping out the store, before I went to school.  I received a dollar for that hour’s work, which was a lot of money, at that time.  I had the morning job at the store and I delivered the papers for the Daily Banner in the afternoon.

 I decided I could make even more money if I took a job selling tickets at the movies at night. Mr. W. P. Florence gave me a job at the Rocket Drive-In Theater. I would take the money from the person in the car, deliver it to the ticket counter, and return to the car, which was a distance of about 5 feet. It cost 45 cents for an adult to get into the movie and, generally, there were two people in the car.  Most people paid with a dollar bill, so their change would be 10 cents.  A box of popcorn cost 10 cents, so I convinced Mr. Florence to put a popcorn machine at the ticket counter. That way, when people gave me a dollar, resulting in a dime in change, I would ask them if they would like a box of popcorn, instead of their change.  I sold about five times more popcorn than the boys at the concession stand did.

          We moved from Magnolia, Arkansas to Odessa, Texas and it’s probably a good thing.  If I had stayed in Magnolia, I would probably been married at an early age, to a beautiful young lady named Peggy Jean.  Not only was she the first girl I ever kissed, but she was the only girl I dated while in high school in Magnolia.  She will always remain a special person to me.  I wonder where she is today.  I hope she is happy and healthy.

          We moved to Odessa, Texas, where my father got a teaching position at Odessa College. That was back when Odessa had only one high school.   Shortly after I enrolled in Odessa High School, a student from the school’s newspaper came to my homeroom and asked to speak with me.  She said I was the 2000th student to enroll at that school and she wanted to write an article about me.  At the end of the interview, she asked me, “Well, how do you feel?” and for some strange reason, I responded, “I don’t feel any different than I did an hour ago.”  She printed that exact answer.

          All throughout high school, I worked at different kinds of jobs.  I also played drums in the band.  My father would not allow me to play contact sports, because he had been a coach in his early days of teaching and he did not want me to get hurt.  So, I was in the band. I always had pocket money, because I always worked.  I think I had charge accounts at every store in town by the time I was 15 years old.

          While in high school, I went swimming in an alum pond. Alum is the same stuff that is in a green persimmon.  It makes your mouth pucker up. I went with a friend, Joe Walthall, and the reason we went to this particular pond to swim was because it was crystal clear.  Apparently, vegetation and plant life do not grow in alum water.  Joe and I swam across the pond.  I was not the best swimmer in the world.  We made it over, but I had trouble making it back.  Joe was an excellent swimmer and he had gotten all the way back across the pond and I was in the middle, trying to drown again.  Well, the Good Lord decided he did not want to take me at that time and Joe dragged me out of the pond.  By this time, it was my third attempt to accidentally do myself in and I figured I was being kept alive for some good reason.

          As time went by, my father took the position as head of the chemistry department at Sul Ross State College in Alpine, Texas.  I was a senior in high school. When it came time to select a Queen for the Fall Festival, I was dating a young lady who wanted to be Queen.  Her name was Janith and, I think, bless ol’ Janith’s heart, that I helped get her elected.  I had lots of friends in that small high school.  She got elected and then she decided not to select me as her escort.  She told me that I had not lived in Alpine all my life and it would be against tradition to select me.  In the weeks before the coronation, she delayed her decision as to whom she would select. As a result of her delay, all the other boys were chosen for other positions.  And guess who was the only boy left?  Good ol’ Tom Ray, and she had to select me.  Boy, did I bask in my glory!

          When I graduated from Alpine High School, I left Alpine, and went to college in New Mexico at the State University in Las Cruces.  At the time I enrolled, it was called New Mexico A&M.  Being an industrious young man, my room in the dorm was not on the average.  I made trips around to all the junkyards and used furniture stores and with my ability to trade, buy, and sell, I had wall-to-wall carpeting, which was unusual for dorm rooms in those days.  My room also had indirect lighting, a full-length dressing mirror, a hanging-ivy plant and a framed picture of a beautiful, yet tasteful nude. When it came time to have our rooms inspected, the Dorm Proctor did not even walk into my room.  He just stood at the door, in amazement, and gave me an automatic AA+.  The room next door always got an FF-!

Probably one of the reasons that my room looked so good was because the majority of the rooms looked so bad. The room next door that received the double F always was a disaster. One of the students was from Tennessee and the other was from Odessa. Between the two of them, they had about four clotheslines, a saddle, boxes of clothes, automobile parts, books, and a whiskey still!  The whiskey still was the chemistry lab type, very compact, made from parts they had stolen from the chemistry lab. It was designed so that they could take a cardboard box and put over the still and no one would know the difference, especially with the rest of the junk in the room. The still sat right on the desk; that is how small it was, and they used it to make “white lightning.”

 There was a cage that housed their pet tarantula, beside the still. There were many times we had to go on fly-catching trips to feed their tarantula.  Then, there would be the times they would catch black widow spiders and put them in with the tarantula to see who would win.  I don’t think I was ever around to see one of those fights take place.

          Probably one of the more memorable events of that year was the time the dead horse’s head, with a little meat and a little hair still on it, floated from room to room.  A group of us from my dorm had gone into the hills one weekend to camp. We brought back the horse’s head.  We had it on a piece of wire and we would hang it on someone’s doorknob, hoping they would dispose of it.  For some reason, it always wound up back in the junk room next door.

 Before the spring break, the guys next door decided to box up the horse’s head and sent it through the mail to another student’s home. The best I can recall, that student’s name was Chuck, from San Antonio, Texas.  They supposedly marked the box, “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL EASTER.” So, his mother did not open the box until Chuck got home.  And, there was the horse head, stinky smelling, with a little less hair and a little less meat on it.  After Chuck opened the box and saw that horse head, obviously he chose to bring it all the way back to New Mexico, and that horse head started around again.  For a horse that had no body or legs, that was the fastest horse I ever saw!

          The next time the Good Lord was looking out for me was in the same year, when we all went out to the abandoned airport behind the college to watch fireworks.  Some of the co-op students who worked at White Sands Missile Range had stolen some solid jet propulsion rocket fuel. This fuel looked like pressed cow feed in the form of small bricks.  These bricks came in varying lengths.  One of the students found a metal box approximately one-foot square.  He made a one inch thick steel plate lid for the box and bolted the lid on the box with about fifty bolts all around the lid. The lid had about a three-inch hole that you could stick the jet fuel into. The object was to stick the rocket fuel into the box, light the fuel and watch the fire come out of the hole.

           There were about 50 students there that night to watch the fireworks. The lighting was to take place about midnight.  The students stood on a hill about 50 yards from the box and one student went forward to light the fuel.  As I recall, flames shot in the air about 30 feet! The box turned over on its side, with flames blowing straight toward the students. There was such a thrust, the box dug a one foot deep and ten feet long trench in the dirt.  At that point, a piece of fuel inside the box blocked the hole and the box exploded!  Those fifty bolts sheared off like they were made of Silly Putty and that one-inch thick steel lid went flying through the air and landed in the middle of the students.  Miraculously, it did not hit a single person.  If that steel lid had hit anyone, it would have cut him in half. So, if you are reading this and you work at White Sands Missile Range and you are a student, not trained to work with rocket fuel, you had better leave that rocket fuel alone.

          I continued through college, finishing my education with a degree in general business and minors in chemistry and art.  The only reason I had so much chemistry was that my father insisted on it. Remember, he was a chemistry professor.  I took a couple of chemistry courses from him.  To show you what type of fellow he was, he was looking out for me, so he gave me a D in chemistry and told me to try something else!

          After I got out of college, I did not want to go to work.  My Dad had programmed my Subconscious Mind. He used to say, “Son, go to college and get yourself a degree, so you don’t have to work for a living.”  So, sure enough, like many other students who heard that message, I got my degree and I did not want to work.  Again, you can see that you must be very careful of the words you use and the way you think, because the Subconscious Mind takes the words literally.

          After I got my degree, I could not keep a job, because I really did not want one. I decided I would be better off if I had an advanced degree.  So, I worked on an advanced degree.  At this point in time, I could have been classified as a professional student.  I had all this information and I did not want to work.  I figured I was too smart to work.

          Back in the ‘60’s, after graduation from college, Uncle Sam was breathing down my neck. I decided rather than getting drafted and being a foot soldier, I had better try to get a commission in the Air Force.  I applied to Officer Training School.

At that time, I was living in Odessa, Texas and driving a Halliburton Cement Truck. (It’s great to be a college graduate and be qualified to drive a truck.) We would drive out to the oil rigs where they were drilling and when the well was ready, I used my truck pumping equipment to pump cement down around the tubing to cement the pipe in the hole.

          Probably one of the most unusual sights I have ever seen appeared one morning as I was driving my pump truck through the sand hills out from Crane, Texas.  It was about 7 a.m. and the sun was just coming up.  It was misting and raining just a little bit.  Off in the distance sat a pump jack that was pumping oil out of the ground, right on top of a sand hill. A pump jack looks like a big, long-necked bird with its beak down in the ground.  The sun broke through the clouds and there appeared a beautiful rainbow across the sky.  The rainbow touched down exactly on top of the pump jack.  Now there’s proof that there is gold at the end of the rainbow.  In this case, it was black gold.

When I got the call from the Air Force, I was still living in Odessa, Texas.  I was going to have to give up my house, so I traded the equity in my house for the equity in a house trailer. It’s important to tell you the size of the trailer. The trailer I traded for was 45 feet long by 8 feet wide.  I decided it could cost too much money to have that house trailer moved to San Antonio by tow truck, so I bought myself a two-door Ford Fairlane 500 sedan to pull the trailer myself and save all that money.  I went to a pawnshop and bought a set of overload springs that looked as if they had been made for a tank.  I put them on that Ford and devised a mirror that stuck out about four feet on the driver’s side of the car.  I also purchased an electric brake switch that would engage the trailer brakes.  I hooked up the Ford to the trailer and off I went to San Antonio. 

Things were going pretty well, until I got to Junction, Texas.  On the east side of Junction, there is a hill bigger than you would ever believe.  This hill had to be at least a good 80 degrees incline over a space of about three miles.  The only problem was that the hill started right at a bridge and the bridge was right at the edge of the town.  So, in order to get over that hill, I had to take a running start at the bridge and hopefully, make it all the way to the top.  That Ford had an automatic transmission and I figured that with a good running start, I could go halfway up the hill in drive. Then, I could go over the top in low drive.  Actually, it didn’t work that way.  I took a running start at the hill. About one-third of the way up, it appeared as though I would have to drop into low drive sooner than I had planned. As I began to slow down, I dropped into low, made it two-thirds of the way up the hill, and that’s where I thought I was out of gears.  The car pulling that big house trailer started going slower and slower. I swear I don’t know what happened, but that Ford automatically dropped into a lower gear on its own and pulled that trailer over that hill, like a tank.  To this day, I have not figured out what happened that caused the car to drop into a lower gear, especially when I had no more lower gears showing on the steering column.  I made it all the way to San Antonio without one incident.  And that was unusual for me.

          After arriving in San Antonio and locating a nice trailer park, it was time to find a job.  I was not scheduled to go into the service for a few more months.  I convinced a small grocery store chain to hire me as an assistant accountant.  I knew absolutely nothing about accounting, even though I had two accounting courses in college.  If I remember correctly, my grades were C and D in accounting.  However, I convinced a company to hire me as an assistant accountant.  I worked for them for about four months, until it was time to go into Officer Training School at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. 

For anyone applying for OTS in Uncle Sam’s Air Force, it is not what it is cracked up to be.  About all you will get from OTS is your commission. Actually OTS might be considered to be an overgrown Boy Scout camp.  I spent some time in the Scouts.  I also grew up in an environment where we got to do all the things the Boy Scouts did and more.  So, OTS was quite a breeze.

          I remember one time when we went through the obstacle course.  We had to climb on a rope that slanted down and across the river. (River? A glorified mud hole.)  Almost every cadet fell in the river.  Most of them had never been on a rope, especially going downhill backwards and about twenty feet over water.  This rope reminded me of the rope we used to have running from one tree house to another tree house.  So, I got on the rope, started down it backwards, and having flashbacks of younger days, I decided to go down using my legs only.  I turned loose of the rope with my hands and hooked my legs on the rope, so there was no way I could fall.  Then, I proceeded to walk down the rope upside down!

          I knew that getting through OTS was going to be a snap, especially if I could keep my mouth shut.  I found it difficult, however, to bite my tongue when I saw some of the things that happened while I was in OTS. 

We were supposed to keep our rooms spotless, our shoes shined and our beds made.  That was pretty simple, because I did not live in my room.  I shined my shoes once and put them under my bed where they belonged.  I bought an extra pair of shoes and kept them in the empty room next door. In fact, I lived in the empty room next door and I don’t think I made my bed twice the whole three months that I was there.  It seemed foolish to go through the routine of making a perfect bed every morning and then messing it up to sleep in at night.  I decided it would be much simpler to live next door in the empty room and to hide a complete set of everything I needed.

          When I got up each morning, I would take my extra gear and put it under the drawer of the cabinet and close the drawer.  If anyone came in and pulled out the drawer, all they would see was an empty drawer.

          While I was at OTS, I had to learn to shoot a pistol.  I had never held a .45 automatic in my hand before.  My Dad always said to listen and do exactly what I was told.  When I went to the pistol range, I listened and did exactly what I was told and I soon realized that I was a better shot than anybody was in my class.  In fact, they made me the captain of the pistol team.  To this day, I can shoot the eye out of a fly at 50 yards with a .45 automatic.

          I received my commission at the end of my 90 days and volunteered for duty there at Lackland AFB.  The only reason I volunteered for duty at Lackland was because I had that 45-foot house trailer and I did not want to move it again.  All of the guys who didn’t volunteer for Lackland got really nice overseas assignments.

          While at Lackland, I had several jobs.  I was a training officer for a time, at a Basic Training Squadron and another time, I was an administration officer.  I worked in the Legal Office and at Wilford Hall Hospital, finally progressing to Assistant Chief Administrative Services at the Base Headquarters.  I found, as a young Lt. in the Air Force, that if you acted as though you did not know anything and you couldn’t scratch your backside with a handful of fishhooks, the Air Force would take care of you.  But I felt the need to actually do something.  That often created problems for me. While working at the headquarters office as the Assistant Chief of Administration of the Base, the Colonel  I worked for wanted me to do a staff study on who should take the USAF Effective Writing Course.  The Air Force came out with a regulation on who should and who should not take this course.  The Colonel wanted the names of every Senior NCO and every officer on Lackland who was supposed to take the Effective Writing Course, according to the specs in the regulation.  The particular Colonel I worked for  must have thought if the Air Force could upgrade the ability of its senior officers to write and use Air Force terms properly, the paperwork would flow more smoothly.  I can tell you now that staff study was the finest staff study ever written.  There was only one problem.  The very first name on the list, according to the regulations that I had researched, was the Base General.  Following the Base General was a list of about 80% of the General’s staff and then about 75% of the Basic Training Squadron’s officers.  Obviously, the Colonel did not want to walk into the General’s office and tell him that he did not know how to write effectively.  The Colonel became very upset upon reading my study. I gave it to him and told him that, according to regulations, the Base General needed to learn to write more effectively.  Probably some Senior NCO who had been in the service for thirty years worked up that regulation and that was his way of getting back at the hierarchy of the Air Force.  Obviously, soon after that, the effective writing course died a horrible death at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.

          The Colonel that I worked for was not at all happy with me.  The final straw, as far as he was concerned, came one day when I really bucked the ol’ Colonel and said, “NO!” Well, you can guess what happened from there.  He proceeded to invite me to leave the Air Force.  I left the USAF on a letter that was written under the regulation: “Convenience to the Air Force with an Honorable Discharge.”  What they did not realize was that it was more of a convenience for me to be out of the Air Force than it was for me to be in.  Even though I had done probably five times more for Lackland AFB than any other First Lieutenant, I was simply asked to leave.  During my time there, I met several nice officers.  Unfortunately, a lot of officers felt they had to hold themselves to the system and I guess we can be thankful that the system does work.  I felt that the whole Air Force could be run with about one-third of the people they had on duty. The finest officer I met was the Base Executive Officer and his name was Col. James Gunn. In fact Col. Gunn should have been the Base General. He would have made a good General.

          I think you will remember in the television serial, “Black Sheep Squadron,” the tough guy that is hard to control is the guy who generally outperforms the average man 3 to 1.  So, if you have a person who is hard to control in your organization, find the key to that person and you will have an employee who will give you the work of three men.

          After getting out of the Air Force, I went to work in a small meat packing company. While working for the company, I realized how really inefficient it was.  I worked there for about three weeks and I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer, so I decided to make a proposal to refine the system. Obviously, even with four years of college and three years of the military, I was still eager to change the world.  I made my proposal to the owner of the meat packing company and he made me a proposal. He proposed that I look for another job.

          The next job I stumbled onto was that of a medical supply salesman.  I sold medical supplies to hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics.  I spent eight years of my life going from hospital to hospital and during that eight years, I learned absolutely nothing about the game of selling. After eight years of suggesting to the hospital supply firm I worked for how inefficient they were, they decided that it was not necessary that I work for them any longer.  Even though, during the eight years that I worked for this company, I designed several new products, received one medical patent, won one sales contest to the Bahamas, and received a cash award for the best salesmanship “Article of the Year” in the Medical Supply Salesman Magazine.  In spite of all this, I was asked to leave!

 The basic problem I had in those days was that I passed on my ideas to others and they did not want to listen until I proved to them that I was the #1 Salesman.  I am going to say to all of you Sales Managers in the world today: “If you only listen to your senior salesmen and you only listen to your #1 salesman, you are making a serious mistake. You don’t have to implement the ideas, but you should listen to all suggestions.”

          I went from selling medical supplies to selling burglar alarms.  I convinced the president of a small burglar alarm company that I should be the Director of Marketing.  With three employees in the company, it was foolish to have a Director of Marketing, but I visualized this small company turning into an IBM overnight, and, believe me, that is not the way it works. I met one of the best friends I ever had while I worked for this company. I left the burglar alarm company when the president made me a proposal to find another job.

          I next went to work for a while selling industrial chemicals.  That is a fancy name for janitor supplies.  I am going to say now to all the sales managers, if you want a good salesman, hire yourself a good ex-chemical salesman.  I spent three years selling chemicals and I learned more about selling in those three years than in anything else I have ever done. I learned more about how to maneuver the buyer than I thought was ever possible.  I believe that was the most interesting job in selling I ever had. 

Before the chemical company asked me to look for another job, I suggested one day to the president how to increase his sales by about three quarters of a million dollars a year.  By simply a small expenditure of $7.00 per salesman, he could have increased his sales enormously.  Again, I was told that I was not the #1 salesman of the company and when I became #1, they would consider my suggestions.  I think, at this point, there is a story that is applicable.

Once upon a time, there was a truck driver who drove under a bridge and his truck was too tall to get through the underpass.  All the engineers from the trucking company and the highway department came out and tried to figure out how to get the truck unstuck.  They could not solve the problem.  Then, a small boy riding his bicycle came by and said to the driver, “I know how to get your truck out from under the bridge.”  The truck driver, not being one burdened with a management complex, asked the boy how to do it.  The young boy said, “Let a little of the air out of the tires.”  They did and it worked. 

          About five years ago, this same incident happened to me in San Marcos, Texas.  I wasn’t a young boy, but I told the truck driver to let some air out of the tires.  He did, and he drove it right out.

          While selling for the chemical company, I found it quite easy to go to work on Thursday at noon and work all afternoon and half a day on Friday, and I was able to sell enough chemicals to stay up with the rest of the fellows.  During that time, the friend from the burglar alarm company suggested that we go into the nightclub business.

          I had visions of being like Hugh Hefner, starting my own chain of nightclubs, with beautiful women working for me.  Even though I was a non-drinker, and had not drunk more than a half dozen drinks my entire life, I decided to go into the nightclub business with my friend.

          San Antonio is not as big a city as some are, so I figured that if I copied the Playboy Bunny uniform and changed it a little, Hugh Hefner would not be on my case.  I changed the ears and used a maid’s cap- kind of a little lace affair.  Instead of white cuffs and a bow tie, I used a velvet choker and lace cuffs.  I designed a lace apron, to complete the outfit.

          With the uniforms designed, we were ready to interview for positions.  Our first mistake was not following up on references after we interviewed the girls and made our selections.  The second mistake was that we paid them too much money to wear those fancy uniforms.  But when we opened the doors for business, we looked as though we knew what we were doing.  In those uniforms, our waitresses were some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.  However, we learned (after I got out of the nightclub business, three months and $10,000 in debt later), that the young ladies we had hired were not what they seemed to be.  Even though each looked like the girl next door, one had spent six years in a federal pen; one was an 18 year old that got pregnant; one was so good-looking that all the men would not leave her alone and she quit the second day; and the last one was your average girl next door, wife and mother, who decided, after a couple of months of working in the club, that she would leave her family and go on the nightclub circuit!

          One of the reasons I didn’t make it in the nightclub business is that my business partner and I didn’t agree on how to run the club.  We would sit in the back room and, while the jukebox was playing, we would scream and argue.  When the jukebox stopped to change records, we would stop arguing.  I hope the people in the club never heard us, but it doesn’t matter now.

          I relinquished my half of the business to him and took the blood bath for $10,000.  I know, to a lot of people, this amount of money is not a lot, but to a small town boy without a lot of money, that was a goodly sum.  I was still selling chemicals, while I owned the nightclub and, basically, what I was trying to do was to be an absentee owner.  That does not work in the nightclub business.

          About the time I was losing all my money, I lived in a trailer house behind the club.  I was divorced at the time and I had gotten very short of money.  I had failed to pay the mortgage payment for the house trailer for several months.  One day, I came home from a road trip of selling chemicals and when I drove up to the lot where my home was supposed to be, there was nothing there; just the steps leading up to nothing.  Somebody had stolen my trailer.  Later, I found out that the banker had my trailer and he wanted his money for the back payments.  I had known this banker for about 15 years and I considered him to be a good friend.  On that day, I think he taught me a lesson.  To this day, he is still a good friend.  His name is Jim Law, one of the finest, toughest men I know.  I really respect the man.  I had always had A-1 credit before the nightclub business.  Things changed drastically in my credit department.  And, believe me, once you ever lose your credit, it takes years and years to get it back.

          Soon after I lost $10,000 in the night club business, I decided to do something with my inventions.  I have always been the inventive type.  I was trained to look for a better way of doing things.  I decided to take a puzzle that my friend, Tom Posey, and I designed and have some finished prototypes made.  I designed a box and a display case and off I went to the New York Toy Fair. 

          I went to the New York Toy Show to see how the big boys did it. There I was, a small town boy in New York City, learning how to present a product at a toy convention.  I already was an expert on conventions because of attending all those medical supplies conventions in the past. (I guess I did learn a little something while I was selling those medical supplies.)  I believe all conventions are probably about the same.  The only difference between one convention and another is the products that are being presented. I went to New York and learned a lot; came home and made preparations to display our new product at the Dallas Toy Fair.  I designed the booth and made all the display materials by hand.  When I finished and had the booth all set up, I looked as suave and professional as Parker Brothers or Mattel.  I was just a young man with stars in my eyes and a lot of guts! 

          I took my product to the Toy Fair and there was only one problem: I got so many orders that I closed my company and never delivered one unit.  A banker had told me that if I went to the show and brought back orders, his bank would loan me the money to float my project and my company. After I went through all this creativity, the designs, the conventions and the orders, the banker told me that he could not get the board to approve the loan.  I would just have to wait until I had the money to produce the product myself. To this day, the product is still in the closet.

          While at the Toy Fair, I was able to set up lines of distribution, so that I had all markets available to me.  I had support in all quadrants of the U.S., ready to sell whenever the product was ready. But, surprise, surprise, no money.  I hope to take part of the money that you paid for this book and float the many projects that I have. There are several unique products that I have designed.  Some of them are in the field of surgery, general medical supplies, wearing apparel, such as jewelry, and some in the energy field. One, obviously, is that secret puzzle in the closet.

          It is very easy to be creative. But just being creative is not enough.  You must create and follow through. I will use the money from this book to promote other things I want to do.  So, be sure to tell your friends to buy a copy of this book.  We are extremely fortunate that in America, free enterprise still exists; but because of some of our politicians, it may not exist for long.  We must take care of ourselves today and plan for the future.  If you are sitting around doing nothing with that really exciting product you have designed, get it out of the closet and start pushing.  Keep pushing and pushing until somebody, somewhere, buys your idea. 

          If you say to yourself, “I can’t make it,” the Subconscious Mind says, “You are right. You cannot.” And, if you say to yourself over and over again, “I can make it. Do something today. Do it right now,” the Subconscious Mind says, “You are right. You can do it now.” Then the Subconscious will make you produce. So, never say die. When you get knocked down, get up.  When you get shoved down, get up. When you get stomped on, get up.  You always have the ability to get up.  If you do not get up, it is purely your choice.  You control your own destiny.  You control your own feelings, thoughts and words.  You simply say to yourself, “I never give up. I always make it because I am #1.” You use all the positives that you can think of.  By just saying the words, the Subconscious Mind will make you produce.  You are designed that way.

          Throughout my life, at least for the last twenty years, I have collected, bought and sold just about everything you can think of. One day, I got very interested in buying, selling and collecting books.  Strangely enough, I made it through college and through graduate school without reading one book in its entirety. I would read parts of books, but I never read one book from cover to cover until after I got out of graduate school.  I am not proud of the fact, but growing up, I was taught to be a poor reader, even though both of my parents were fine teachers.  They always said, “Tommy is a poor reader,” so I did what I was told.

          One day, while I was buying and selling, I decided to specialize in fine and rare books.  All of a sudden, books became very fascinating to me.  A book is a representation of an individual’s thoughts. I have always been interested in the way people think and why they do the things they do.  When I hold a book in my hand, it gives me permission to possibly see inside the author’s mind.  It helps me to understand how he may have thought.  So, as I look at my collection of rare books, I do not look at the books as books.  I look at the books as real people who have feelings, hopes, dreams, disappointments, happy times, etc. I now read books and I treasure each and every book that I have, because I know with that book, I can be very close to the person who wrote it. I am human like everyone else and I enjoy being with people.

          One day, I picked up a hypnosis book.  The title was Hypnotism and its Application of Practical Medicine by Otto Georg Wetterstrand, M.D. The book was dated 1902. Dr. Wetterstrand was a German physician who had used hypnosis in connection with his medicine.  After I read through that book, I became fascinated with his work and with the science of the mind.

 I started collecting everything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with hypnosis.  Very few people knew this and very few people knew that I thought there was a lot to be gained in the field.  After about ten years of study and observing everything that had anything to do with hypnosis, I became a self-taught hypnotist. 

Now, I am the world’s best mind scientist.  The reason I am the world’s best is because I have programmed myself to be the world’s best.  As a result, I have developed techniques and procedures that the world of mind science  thought never could be done.  It is unimportant that you believe that I am the world’s best.  It is only important to me.

          I think of myself as the world’s best; I produce like the world’s best; and I get results like the world’s best.  As a result, I AM the world’s best. You must plant the good information in the Subconscious Mind first.  If you do not command the mind, others will command it for you and you may become that brainwashed human being who does as he is told. Use what I teach as a guide.  Understand the consequences, but control your own thoughts.  Do not allow the world around you to control your life.  Do your own conditioning. Why should you be like Pavlov’s dogs? When the bell rings, you were taught to automatically react. By understanding your Subconscious and using it in your everyday life, you become 100% happy, 100% healthy and 100% positive, regardless of how other people think or act.  If you will use the ability that God or your Creator gave you, then you can be the person that you choose to be. If you choose anything other than being happy, being healthy, and being #1 with yourself, you must understand, it is simply your choice. You will get the rewards of your choice.

          At this point in time, I have been a student of hypnosis for more than twenty years.  I had an office in the South Texas Medical Center from 1977 to 1990.

          I have lectured at different places around the world.  I have worked with almost every major physical and psychological problem man can have, and I have seen changes take place that are almost unbelievable.

          I have coached movie stars; professional singers; athletes, from grade school to the pro ranks; janitors to bank presidents; doctors; lawyers; and one guy that claimed to be an Indian chief!

          The payoff was not the money I made. The payoff was the healthy changes I saw in the people I worked with.  You, too, can be changed if you read, re-read, and use what I teach you in this book.

          Since the first draft of this book, I am no longer a practicing professional hypnotist. You won’t believe what I am up to these days. Stay tuned for Book #2!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 37..What Happened To Tom Ray?