Tom Smothers Talking About A Revolution... and it sounded like laughter

We always liked him best.

It was literally a stomach punch when I found out Tom Smothers died.

I'd been having gas bubbles worrying about stuff I couldn't control, then when Dick Smothers announced his older brother died of cancer, I felt a piercing pain in my stomach that made me kneel down. Why? Never met the man. But like Norman Lear's death three weeks ago, I'm so sad Tom Smothers isn't with us anymore because he kept going, even when the government was against him.

I was in El Cerrito, house/dog-sitting twenty years ago on Christmas Eve. Tired of Christmas stuff, I flipped through the channels and saw Tom Smothers talking with a beautiful pigtailed brown-haired girl named Leigh French, who played Goldie O'Keefe on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. I knew about the Smothers Brothers; Tom lived in Napa and often performed as the Yo-Yo Man in local clubs.