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EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:
MOST PEOPLE TALK BULLSHIT
- One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
CHAPTER SIX
1959 – The Year I Turned
Three
This
year my bio-computer developed the ability to communicate and
exchange information with my parents. This ability was still
basically primitive but effective for my simple needs. It is
amazing that compared to the previous two years my ability to
navigate around my environment had increased a thousand fold and
much to the dismay of my mother my new found proficiency had me
getting into everything that I shouldn’t have.
Also,
this year unbeknownst to me, we as a nation, celebrated the
admission of Hawaii into the union.
In Cuba Batista flees Havana because Castro was kicking ass
while becoming premier of Cuba and then he took over the Mafia’s
casinos and executed over seventy supporters of Batista.
More efforts on the Arms Race and the first successful test
firing of the Titan Intercontinental ballistic missile occurs at
Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Communism spread it’s evil tentacles and this year an
uprising in Tibet erupted when the local Tibetans revolted
against the Chinese Communist rule. The Chinese stripped away
the government of Tibet and sent the Dali Lama into exile. Many
people in the U.S. spoke of how the ‘horrors’ of communism was
continuing to spread; fear was a major contagion.
This was the year that the leaders of democracy and communism
argued. Vice President Nixon went to the American National
Exposition in Moscow where he and Soviet Premier Khrushchev
engaged in a so-called, ‘Kitchen debate’ on the merits of
Capitalism and Communism. Many people felt that this debate
further widened the schism between our countries.
Lee Harvey Oswald had defected to Moscow and he announced to the
world that he won’t ever return to the U.S. (Where would we be
today if only he made good on his promise?)
In Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania –Louis and his wife Mary Leakey
discovered the first Australopithecus skull. Years later, one of
my future fiancés’ would work in Tanzania for their son and I
would see evidence for the living relative of the
Australopithecus called the
Australopatheticus (Postal Managers).
Barbie Dolls make their appearance and much to the dismay of the
American public the U.S. Steel industry went on strike. In the
Congo, the first known human dies from HIV.
A Great Cultural Loss happened during February of this
year, the chartered plane containing musicians Buddy Holly
Richie Valens and the Big Bopper goes down in a snowstorm,
killing all on the plane. The tragedy is later called “The Day
the Music Died”, made popular in Don McLeans’s song,, “American
Pie.
The Space Race incites Competition and Optimism and NASA
chooses the seven military pilots who had “The Right Stuff” to
become the first U.S. Astronauts. The X-15 makes its first
Flight from a B-52 bomber. It set many speed records, obtaining
a top speed of Mach 6. I think the Pilot was Chuck Yeager and he
felt that the men with the right stuff were going to be so much
“Spam in a Can”
This year Nobel prizes
was awarded to Emilio Gino Segre’ and Owen Chamberlain for
physics; Jaroslav Heyrosky’ for chemistry; Severo Ochoa and
Arthur Kornberg for Physiology or Medicine; Salvatore Quasimodo
for literature and Philip John Noel-Baker for Peace.
Some of the new music of this year were:
Frankie Avalon, Come Softly to Me, by The Fleetwoods,
The Happy Organ by Dave “Baby Cortex, Kansas City by
Wilbert Harrison, The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny
Horton, Lonely Boy by Paul Anka, A Big Hunk O’ Love
by Elvis Presley, The Three Bells by the Browns, Mack
the Knife by Bobby Darin, Come Dance with Me, Frank
Sinatra and But Not for Me by Ella Fitzgerald.
Some of the movies came out were:
Auntie Mame, Shaggy Dog, Some Like it Hot, Imitation of Life,
The Nun’s Story, Anatomy of a Murder, North by Northwest, Rio
Bravo, Sleeping Beauty, Some Came Running.
New
TV Shows
such as the Red Skeleton Show, Father Knows Best, The Price is
Right and Wanted: Dead or Alive; now filled in more slots,
Bonanza, Dennis the Menace, Fibber McGee and Molly, Johnny Ringo,
Laramie, Manhunt, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Phillip
Marlowe, Rawhide, The Rebel, Riverboat, Shirley Temple’s
Storybook, The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables.
Other Starship Primates Launched in 1959
This year along with me other notable people came on the scene
and they would prove to be crucial to our culture or become my
potential mate… also crucial to our culture. They are: Tom
Arnold - American actor and comedian, Kevin Spacey - American
actor, Koichi Tanaka - Japanese scientist, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Rosanna Arquette - American
actress and a potential mate, Magic Johnson - American
basketball player, “Weird Al” Yankovic - American singer
and parodist, Val Kilmer - American actor.
Vas dis Jeopardy
My next memory was of me standing next to my mother holding her
hand.
We were standing at the front door of a strange house, my head
knee level to my mother. My mother persistently knocked at the
door until suddenly a wild haired, wild-eyed looking woman
ripped opened the door. The frightening woman just stood there…
not saying anything. Her face was a puffy oatmeal ruin with a
long nose set in the center. Her crazy looking eyes were bright
blue with hideously painted eyebrows above the eyes. Her
eyebrows had been painted because she had plucked every last
follicle out. She had a wild messy red slash of lipstick over
her gapping ruinous mouth.
Many years later as I was watching Saturday Night Live, the
comedian Dave Hartman was doing a skit called “Vas dis Jeopardy”
and in this skit he was wearing a blond wig with pig-tails and a
messy red slash of lipstick. Seeing this skit brought both
laughter and chills. He was playing the part of a very mannish
looking he-she. He looked much like the woman who had tore
opened the door the frightful day. Anyway, my mother made it
apparent that she wanted to leave me with this witchy looking
woman. I was terrified.
I felt that for some reason unknown to me my mother wanted to
get rid of me. (Those damn abandonment issues again!). I went
into a fit of screaming and hugging my mother’s leg for dear
life. She struggled hard to pull me off her leg;
I was
like a leach on a hapless swimmer; the effort brought her to
anger.
She
promptly gave me a generous spanking before leaving me with the
woman. My memory fades….
Many years later, I asked my mother about the incident and she
told me that this incident happen during the first week we had
moved into the neighborhood. Mom decided that it would be best
to introduce her self to all of the neighbors in the immediate
vicinity. These neighbors suggested a picnic. Apparently, Mrs.
Huggins was the only one available to watch me, so that my
mother could go shopping for the picnic stuff.
I sure was terrified! What will life bring next?
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