The 4 Corners Café has a jukebox that only plays Patsy Cline and Led Zeppelin. I asked Betty Jo the waitress about this. She was standing behind the counter appraising me like a bug. She doesn’t know how to take me. I don’t know how to take her. She’s a mystery. I suspect she is younger than me, but a lifetime of Pall Malls and Miller High Life’s have aged her beyond her years. Or at least that's what I think.
Betty Jo shrugged; a subtle upturning of the shoulders that said the question wasn’t worth answering. Then she went out back for a smoke. I gave up on the question. The jukeox like Betty Jo and the café itself remains a mystery to me, and as a result I suspect it will be to you.
At the time I was sitting at the ancient Formica counter eating a slice of cherry pie and drinking a cup of hot joe when it dawned on me that Rod Serling had changed the world. For those of you too young to remember, Rod was the creator of “The Twilight Zone” the early 60’s anthology series that introduced my generation to the possibility that reality as we knew it was not necessary what it seemed.
I swear I remember the night it premiered in October 1959. I was nine years old. My father and I watched it on our humble black-and-white in the little house on Lark Street. The story was about a man who found himself in an unfamiliar town all by himself. There were signs of life everywhere but not a soul to be seen. Panic ensued. In the end it turned out he was slowing going crazy in an isolation booth that was training astronauts to go to Mars.
Dad didn’t say much about it. Then again, dad was not a talkative guy. He just sat in his easy chair considering what he had just seen, rubbing his thumb over smooth surface of his silver Zippo cigarette lighter. I was quiet too, but inside I was trembling with excitement. What had I just seen? It sure as hell wasn’t “I Love Lucy” or “Wagon Train”. No sir, this show rocked!
I was already suspecting that something was up reality-wise. There were those bomb drills we were having every other week or so. “Duck and cover” it was called. Unseen by the students, George, the ancient school janitor, would bring out an old WWII hand-cranked siren. There was a painted metal v-mount for it, screwed into the wooden railing in the open hall between the rows of classrooms. Suddenly, in the middle of a math lesson, the siren would wail the call of impending death. The sound scared the crap out of me.
(Don’t look at the flash! the defense films we watched advised. If you’re out on your bike, throw it to the ground and yank your jacket over your head!)
The teacher would close the curtains and turn off the lights to heighten the paranoia effect while we scrambled under out desks. We were instructed to turn our faces to the floor with our foreheads resting on back of one hand while the other hand protected the back of our necks.
Somewhere around this time, “The Twilight Zone” came to my mind, and I began to suspect that this was all bullshit. Somewhere I had heard that a strategically aimed H-Bomb exploding in the nearby San Francisco Bay would vaporize us all instantly, “duck and cover” be damned. Our fourth grade teacher would have been better off handing out beers than feeding us the illusion we could escape a nuclear attack.
And Rod Serling confirmed it all, infiltrating my mind with the notion that the universe was a dangerous and mysterious place, and the mystery could spill into my life at any moment. There were space aliens who thought we were the ugly ones. There was a fourth dimension in the wall behind my bed that would grab me if I wasn’t careful. Somewhere down a train track there was a town called Willaoughby where life was simple and perfect. Yes, there were other worlds out there, independent from the humdrum reality of my post Eisenhower life. There were things out there that were wonderful, but there were also things out there that might bite me.
As the 60’s progressed, my generation was invaded by the Beatles not the Russians. Fueled by the lessons of “The Twilight Zone” and the naive notion that we could change the world, we went forward to rediscover life on our own. Rod Serling was the father of a revolution of sorts. And though things didn’t go as we planned, he helped open our minds to the endless possibilities of life.
Damn him.
Betty Jo shrugged; a subtle upturning of the shoulders that said the question wasn’t worth answering. Then she went out back for a smoke. I gave up on the question. The jukeox like Betty Jo and the café itself remains a mystery to me, and as a result I suspect it will be to you.
At the time I was sitting at the ancient Formica counter eating a slice of cherry pie and drinking a cup of hot joe when it dawned on me that Rod Serling had changed the world. For those of you too young to remember, Rod was the creator of “The Twilight Zone” the early 60’s anthology series that introduced my generation to the possibility that reality as we knew it was not necessary what it seemed.
I swear I remember the night it premiered in October 1959. I was nine years old. My father and I watched it on our humble black-and-white in the little house on Lark Street. The story was about a man who found himself in an unfamiliar town all by himself. There were signs of life everywhere but not a soul to be seen. Panic ensued. In the end it turned out he was slowing going crazy in an isolation booth that was training astronauts to go to Mars.
Dad didn’t say much about it. Then again, dad was not a talkative guy. He just sat in his easy chair considering what he had just seen, rubbing his thumb over smooth surface of his silver Zippo cigarette lighter. I was quiet too, but inside I was trembling with excitement. What had I just seen? It sure as hell wasn’t “I Love Lucy” or “Wagon Train”. No sir, this show rocked!
I was already suspecting that something was up reality-wise. There were those bomb drills we were having every other week or so. “Duck and cover” it was called. Unseen by the students, George, the ancient school janitor, would bring out an old WWII hand-cranked siren. There was a painted metal v-mount for it, screwed into the wooden railing in the open hall between the rows of classrooms. Suddenly, in the middle of a math lesson, the siren would wail the call of impending death. The sound scared the crap out of me.
(Don’t look at the flash! the defense films we watched advised. If you’re out on your bike, throw it to the ground and yank your jacket over your head!)
The teacher would close the curtains and turn off the lights to heighten the paranoia effect while we scrambled under out desks. We were instructed to turn our faces to the floor with our foreheads resting on back of one hand while the other hand protected the back of our necks.
Somewhere around this time, “The Twilight Zone” came to my mind, and I began to suspect that this was all bullshit. Somewhere I had heard that a strategically aimed H-Bomb exploding in the nearby San Francisco Bay would vaporize us all instantly, “duck and cover” be damned. Our fourth grade teacher would have been better off handing out beers than feeding us the illusion we could escape a nuclear attack.
And Rod Serling confirmed it all, infiltrating my mind with the notion that the universe was a dangerous and mysterious place, and the mystery could spill into my life at any moment. There were space aliens who thought we were the ugly ones. There was a fourth dimension in the wall behind my bed that would grab me if I wasn’t careful. Somewhere down a train track there was a town called Willaoughby where life was simple and perfect. Yes, there were other worlds out there, independent from the humdrum reality of my post Eisenhower life. There were things out there that were wonderful, but there were also things out there that might bite me.
As the 60’s progressed, my generation was invaded by the Beatles not the Russians. Fueled by the lessons of “The Twilight Zone” and the naive notion that we could change the world, we went forward to rediscover life on our own. Rod Serling was the father of a revolution of sorts. And though things didn’t go as we planned, he helped open our minds to the endless possibilities of life.
Damn him.
Yes, good old Rod Serling. And how about that Duck and Cover stuff? What a joke. Funny stuff.
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