In case of social emergency

 

Emotions are not tools of cognition. (Ayn Rand)

Carpet sweepers and sock hops

 

 

Have you used a carpet sweeper? 

 

A machine for addition, subtraction, and multiplication?

 

Surely you have seen a computer before.

 

RCA video recorder 

 

 

Not strange relics of ancient history, these are the things of my youth, state of the art technology in the 1950s. I watched Leave It To Beaver in prime time. TV was black and white, three channels received by a big aluminum antenna on the roof. My grandparents lived in a town that was too far away to receive TV broadcasts, so they used CATV cable, a community antenna on a tower that was amplified and wired to a couple thousand homes — the forerunner of modern cable TV with hundreds of channels distributed by satellite. In the 1950s, there were two satellites in orbit, Sputnik (audio beeps) and Telstar (capable of relaying scratchy phone calls). Our knowledge of geography consisted of maps drawn by artists, based on land surveys and naval observations. Civil Defense volunteers scanned the skies for Russian bombers, listening for the drone of props and using binoculars in a lookout post on the roof of a tall building.

 

I'm speaking of it to say that some things haven't changed. Roof shingles and frame houses. Big storm drains. Sanitary sewers and filtration plants. Asphalt streets, concrete curbs, sidewalks, schools and universities. Dish soap. Thermostats and central heat from furnaces and boilers. Dairy and beef. Wheat, yeast, sweet corn, fresh fish, chicken, eggs. Rail and truck transport. Scheduled airlines, UPS, highways, snow plows, state parks, Coca Cola and 7-Up. Most of the world has not changed since I was a child. Computers are faster and cheaper, cars and aircraft infinitely more complicated. But bankers are still bankers. X-rays are still x-rays. We had vaccines and vitamins in the 50s. Brainy kids studied physics and calculus, engineered jet engines, power plants, shatterproof polymers, and smoke alarms. Skyscrapers, suspension bridges, and hydroelectric turbines were built before I was born.

 

The world did not begin with Facebook or fentanyl, binge viewing Netflix bullshit. When I was a kid, we had thick daily newspapers, two or three in every city, delivered by boys on bicycles, rain or shine. I did it and got a Social Security number, had to buy the papers and collect from customers. Sunday editions weighed two pounds each, a good day to knock on doors to get paid. We had home delivery of milk in glass bottles. My uncle had a milk route. His job started at 4 a.m., two hours later than his pal the town baker who made fresh fat jelly donuts and kaiser rolls five nights a week.

 

Whatever you think is cool about the modern world, forget it. Nobody had to lock their houses or cars in the 1950s. Nothing was made in China. VHF cop radios, ship to shore, and shortwave ham stations were built by Motorola and Hallicrafters. All toys were U.S. made, crystal clear 100x kid microscopes, Erector sets with hundreds of girders, nuts, bolts, pulleys, and cranks, multistage Estes model rockets, and Lionel railroad layouts with electric switches and car couplings detached by magnets. Girls had huge chemistry sets with acids, reagents, litmus paper, and test tubes. Many families had a set of encyclopedias. Men  wore stylish hats and waved to their neighbors. There were bridge parties, bowling alleys, golf courses, and fraternal organizations. Families went to church every week, dressed in their best outfits. Teens had cafeteria sock hops and Saturday night movie dates. A teenage kiss was a big deal, petting illegal.

 

I'm glad I started life innocently, my first 14 years anyway. Those of you who know my work as a novelist and unabashed chick magnet understand that I had a bizarre path of adult experience, but Walt Disney made a deep permanent impression, no matter what else was superimposed. My fictional heroes are confident, honest and courageous, like Spin and Marty, Davy Crockett, Mike Fink and, out of the night when the full moon is bright, the horseman known as Zorro.

 

Parenthetically, I'd like to clear up the mystery that baffled Fox News. Andrew Cuomo wasn't innocent as a kid. He grew up with a gold spoon in his mouth. He sent infectious covid patients to nursing homes, instead of the USN Comfort hospital ship or the Javitz Center field hospital, to screw Trump, avoid giving him any public credit. He lied about how many died in congregate nursing homes, lied about why, lied in daily press conferences, and lied to legislators to cover up his incompetence. Cuomo got a book deal, an Emmy, and fawning CNN air time joking around with his corrupt brother, because he was next in line to be crowned with glory, in case Lunch Bucket Joe had another brain aneurism. Cuomo was considered "safe" because he was just as dirty and devious as Biden.

 

That's the difference between me and (take your pick) Cuomo, Biden, Clinton, Obama. They have to hide who they are. Hillary confessed the purpose of lying: "What difference at this point does it make?"

 

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Fatherhood

My daughter drew these cartoons in 2012 when I was an active member of Zoetrope. The animal characters are Pokemon "Nine Tails." Contrary to the imputation presented above, I actually am her father. I held her and fed her and read stories to her at bedtime and walked her to school hand in hand, until she became a teenager and concluded that she knew more than I did, which might be true. My Latin is sketchy, and I can't do algebra or calculus.

Wrongdoing

I've done a great deal of wrong. Some of it was the relatively innocent wrong of folly, but in the main I committed deliberate high crimes and misdemeanors, including treason, thereby disqualifying myself from public office. It worries me that men like Mitt Romney are public officials, less worried about Donald Trump who I believe crossed the line numerous times. The weakest of men never do wrong, never sweat discovery, never get their souls dirty. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were rascals, and John Hancock was a rum runner. Without their personal experience of serious naughtiness, there'd be no United States. The founder of Mormonism was a lunatic, liar, and bigamist, without whom there'd be no Utah to elect a squeaky clean poodle like Mittens.

It's very difficult to create anything new unless you skate all over the landscape, slide into filthy swamps occasionally and encounter monsters, look evil in the eye, as warriors do. You have to be willing to be wounded grievously, price no object, and quick enough to get away with sin. I wished I was braver, killed in action or executed, yet grateful to have escaped it. Danger gave me license to stand apart from other men and think for myself.

There's a brief, important introduction to The Constitution of Government In Galt's Gulch. "Children stand in the fire hose of good evidence and philosophically well formed formulas, unable to resist, unless someone takes a hatchet to the damn thing and says: Wait a minute, let me think for myself." Doing wrong is a fearsome, shameful gateway to original firsthand knowledge of liberty. Can you see Mitt Romney promoting liberty like Thomas Paine did?

Women naturally despise crime. That's why I freely agreed with Mark Twain's assessment, that there's only one good sex, the female one, and I openly advocated that women should judge men, make and enforce law in defense of innocents, mindful of the rights and best interests of children. Hopefully, women can be persuaded to honor due process, which is slightly unnatural to them. Their crimes consist of snap judgments in anger.

Men and women are not inherently law abiding and morally tame like Mitt Romney, groomed to perfection. I understand that many of my brothers are too timid to risk the adventure of crime. Very few consign their lives to the loaded gamble of treason. Without treason, there would have been no Boston Tea Party, no American Revolutionary War of Independence, no Civil War and its aftermath of an opportunistic, supremely libertine Gilded Age that lifted millions of immigrant paupers into modest prosperity, a nascent middle class. It pays to read history. In corruption and chaos and crime, America became a beacon to the oppressed, a dynamic society with opportunity for all to ignore the rules and thrive, like Carnegie, Edison, and Gould, penniless ragamuffins who became fabulously productive rascals.

Edison summed up the spirit of the Gilded Age: "All religion is bunk."

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Classic TV

This morning at the general store, five of us sat around a pot belly woodstove, folks like me, in their late 60s and early 70s, talking about old shows that were playing on cable and digital subchannels. I was embarrassed when they asked me which shows I liked to watch. I said that I didn't use television, worked in TV and had enough of it. I didn't want to explain that I saw every camera angle, every lighting set-up, every dolly move, cut, continuity error and stunt double, and knew that the voices were looped in post, mixed with sound effects, music, and idiotic laugh tracks on unfunny punchlines.

Surprisingly, plain folks in Missouri had excellent taste in classic TV. They talked about Perry Mason, Rockford, Rawhide, and Have Gun Will Travel -- shows and characters that influenced me deeply. It was generally agreed that the Waltons were cloying and unreal, Bonanza best when they gave Hoss a comic encounter with leprechans. I explained that the entire series including the Cartwright house exteriors and gunfights were filmed on sound stages, but the fire chief was convinced that a real log house existed. He had seen a newspaper report that said it had been sold. I shrugged politely, knew that it was a replica Bonanza tourist trap in Lake Tahoe that went out of business.

They remembered Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room, Gunsmoke, The Wonderful World of Disney in color. I thought of Sherri North and Lamb Chop (Kukla, Fran and Ollie) and a Chicago series that was carried in Milwaukee when I was very small, Ding Dong School. Miss Frances rang a big brass bell in her hand and taught us about baking cookies, cleaning up the bowl. I was a sucker for The Muppets as a young adult, preferred it to Monty Python's Flying Circus. Brits made horrible television, except for astoundingly gorgeous Diana Rigg in The Avengers and oddly realistic mechanical special effects in Thunderbirds.

TV was a shared culture that transcended time and space, never forgotten, and they were glad that much of it is still being broadcast on channels called Cosy TV and others that I forgot on my way back to the barn with a little sack of balogna and bread, an onion and cigarettes. Not a very healthy diet, but it might be a long while before I get another royalty check. The last time I watched TV in a hotel room, I burst into tears because BYU-TV played Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and I saw it first frame to last. There are no such films today. Wholesomeness and innocence have been discarded.

My friends at the general store were worried about what would happen when the Democrats took over -- not just the House, but the Senate and President in 2020 or 2024, which seemed inevitable, angry people with an agenda to destroy the peaceful, prosperous simple life that everyone cherished. John Kennedy was mentioned as an example of a conservative leader who cut taxes and forced the Russians to remove their missiles from Cuba, the last time that a Democrat did something right and good and paid for it with his life. All of us remembered as schoolchildren the day John Kennedy was killed, merged in time with happy memories of Lassie, McCloud and Columbo.

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