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Once he had taught himself the guitar, Williams quit school and formed the Wayfarers, a folk group that played the church-social and Holiday Inn circuit in Texas. Along the way, he met another struggling young guitarist named Tommy Smothers. After a tour in the Navy, Mason became a backup man for the brothers' by then successful nightclub act. He was also Tommy's roommate; the two of them used to write down ideas and gags, songs or shows and store them in a stationery box. Williams also began to record random thoughts in 500-page accounting ledgers left over from his pre-actuary days. He has filled up nine so far. Many of the jottings went into seven books he printed for friends at his own expense and into his new Doubleday collection. For example, "There are no empty Tabasco Sauce bottles." Or: "I think it would have been nice to have shared a room with Beethoven and when someone remarked, upon hearing one of his compositions, 'Isn't that great!' I could say, 'Yep, my roommate wrote it.' "
Presidential Prank. Williams wears a beard, buffalo-skin trousers, patched epauletted shirt, leather jacket and a neckerchief. But there is a lot of the actuary left in the man. He always carries a briefcase, and his workroom wall is covered with precise flow charts that plot work in progress. There are 23 projects pending. Right now, only one of them involves television. "TV," he says, "is not a medium anyone will let you work in creatively any more. People in the networks are afraid of original ideas." He does not disdain TV, however, to plug his book and a new record album in countless guest spots. Some of his merchandising and stunts are done largely for fun. He was the prankster who masterminded the parody presidential campaign of his Smothers show colleague, Pat Paulsen. He is now redecorating the guest quarters of his Los Angeles home (he is divorced) into a stereotypical motel room—"just so people will feel at home." He has already laid in a selection of travel folders, a Gideon Bible and some tackily painted landscapes.
Williams is also a virtuoso of more sublime happenings. There was the time he and a camera crew drove into the Mojave Desert just before dawn. As the sun rose over the horizon, a skywriting pilot named V. E. Noble received a radio signal and began tracing a stem, leaves and petals to form history's largest "sunflower." But the fierce glare frustrated attempts to record the $5,000 gambol on film. Explains Williams, eyes aglow: "The idea wasn't to see it, really. The idea was for people to hear about it and say, 'Yes.' " It is all a part of the philosophy of joy, hymned in his Life Song:
Isn't life beautiful Isn't life gay Isn't life the perfect thing To pass the time away.