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Gene Nash

Join Date 12/2003

+24

My Brush With Don Adams

passed him by that much

I guess you could call me a Don Adams fan.

Even though it left the airwaves about the time I was born, I always loved the television show Get Smart as a child, watching every re-ran episode that came on, no matter how many times I'd previously seen it. I'm sure I was sadder than he was when the mid-90's revival got canceled. He claimed to have done it strictly for the money. I felt it was getting progressively better, with the last aired episode being not only the best, but worthy of the original.

I just as devotedly watched a short-lived game show Don hosted called Don Adams' Screen Test, in which contestants from the audience would perform a classic film scene for a chance to win "a screen test in a major motion picture!" It was funny, entertaining, and stirred my fledgling thespian juices into thinking, "I could do that."

To this day, I'll still occasionally say, "Missed it by that much," or, "Would you believe..." while chastising myself for the age of my reference.

And, would you believe, I actually saw The Nude Bomb in theaters when it was first released?

I even had a quintessentially So Cal "brush with greatness moment" involving Mr. Adams.

On the outer edge of Ventura, the 101 freeway turns right and the Pacific Ocean drifts up into view, glinting majestically beyond the Ventura County fairgrounds. One day while driving toward Santa Barbara, not long after the Pacific came into view, I turned my eyes from the gently rolling waves' white foam, and looked to the traffic ahead. Coming up on the right was a convertible red Jaguar with personalized plates. "Smart 86" they read.

I laughed. "Hey, look! It's Don Adams!" I joked.

Laughter turned to shock as we passed the red Jag. It really was Don Adams. He had a grey mustache, sunglasses, and a baseball cap, but there was no mistaking the man who'd entertained me for years.

I later learned he lived north of Ventura in the community of Ojai, the exit to which is not far beyond where we saw him driving.

While his death brings the sadness of one more person I'll never get to meet or work with, at least I did get to see him. And now I can tell the story I've held back so as not to reveal a celebrity's (surprisingly obvious) license plate.

Don Adams April 13, 1923 - September 25, 2005

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