Even if you know us pretty well there are a couple of things about Jill that you might not know.
Thing 1 : The border crossing
Jill was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Her father was there building a hydrochloric acid plant for an oil company.
Once Jill and Ray took a ceramics shopping excursion to Juarez. They were crossing from Mexico back into the United States and the border guard calmly leaned in and asked Jill, "Where were you born?" At this point in time Ray expected her to say, "Monahans, Texas" which is where she was from. Jill stammered and stuttered (and I mean that) for about 6 seconds and then blurted out (at least twice the normal speaking volume, "M-A-R-A-C-A-I-B-O-!-M-A-R-A-C-A-I-B-O-V-E-N-E-Z-U-E-L-A!" Ray could feel the border guard starting to wonder which part of our car they would tear apart first. He calmly waved us through.
Thing 2 : Wriggle to the left, wriggle to the right
When Jill was pre-elementary-school young (see photo at the top), her family lived in a duplex. And in the other half of the duplex lived Roy Orbison and his band at the time, The Wink Westerners. Here are 2 photos of Roy from back in the early days.
Roy is second from the left
Roy is in the middle
Jill wasn't quite in first grade, but she remembers that they had a shiny drum set in the living room. Even when you are just 5 years old, that is pretty impressive. Jill's mother still has the 45 rpm of "Ooby Dooby" the band gave them in the early days.
Hey baby, jump over here when you do the ooby dooby
I want to be near
Ooby dooby, ooby dooby
Ooby dooby, dooby dooby
Dooby dooby do wah do wah do wah
Well ya wriggle to the left, you wriggle to the right
Do the ooby dooby with all of your might
Well ya wriggle and ya shake, like a big rattlesnake
Ya do the ooby dooby 'till ya think her heart'll break
Well you won't be a struttin' 'cause now ya know
How to do the ooby dooby now baby let's go
They just don't write them like that any more.
Creedence Clearwater Revival covered the song in 1970.