QUARANTINE BLOG # 295

January 19, 2021

We begin today with “Ten Commandments for Seniors.”

#1 – Talk to yourself. There are times you need expert advice.

#2 – “In Style” are the clothes that still fit.

#3 – Your people skills are just fine. It’s your tolerance for idiots that needs work.

#4 – The biggest lie you tell yourself is, “I don’t need to write that down. I’ll remember it.”

#5 – “On time” is when you get there.

#6 – Even duct tape can’t fix stupid – but it sure does muffle the sound.

#7 – It would be wonderful if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes, then come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller.

#8 – Lately, you’ve noticed people your age are so much older than you.

#9 – Growing old should have taken longer.

#10 – You still haven’t learned to act your age, and hope you never will.

And one more: “One for the road” means peeing before you leave the house.

👉  There is a special, and perhaps curious, type of song from the 1950s and 60s – the hot rod song, and there are many of them.  Typically they were about racing, or the preference of one brand over another, or of the equipment added on to a particular car (and yes they were fun).  Love occasionally had a theme in the song.  In only one song that I can remember was there tragedy.  For the next several days, the nickel we drop in the jukebox will play some of these hot rod tunes.

The first selection is “Beep, Beep,” the only chart song by a group known as The Playmates.  The tempo of the song gradually increases commensurate with the increasing speed of the drivers.  It is a tortoise-and-the-hare story, substituting the drivers of two unequal cars: a Nash Rambler and Cadillac, respectively.  In December 1958, Time magazine credited the popularity of “Beep, Beep” with helping Nash Motors break sales records.  Total U.S. car exports dropped16% in 1958, Rambler’s climbed 10.3%.  Accompanied by photographs and vintage advertisements of the Nash Rambler, here is “Beep, Beep.”

👉  The Nash Rambler was produced by the Nash Motors division of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation.  Nash-Kelvinator was formed by the merger in 1937 between Nash Motors and Kelvinator Appliance Company.  In 1955, Kelvinator introduced the Kelvinator Food-A-Rama Side by Side Refrigerator, one of the earliest modern side-by-side frost-free refrigerators.  During World War II, the corporation functioned as part of the Arsenal of Democracy, producing aeronautic parts. Later in the war, Nash-Kelvinator produced over half of the Sikorsky R-6 helicopters, the first military helicopter to be used in a war.  In 1954, Nash-Kelvinator acquired Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, and formed American Motors Corporation (AMC).  The Nash Rambler was then built by AMC in Kenosha, Wisconsin until 1955.

This Nash-Kelvinator ad from 1943 tells story of a woman who volunteers to be a nurse in Europe during World War II and discovers that one of her patients is her brother.  She says, “We are fighting, not for glory, but to make sure we keep on having the kind of America my brother and I grew up in.  To make sure we’ll come home to the kind of America we’ve always known, where we can make our lives what we want them to be, where we’ll be free to live them out in peace and kindness and security.”

👉  Here is a four panel series from one of my favorite comics, Baby Blues.  In it Darryl MacPherson hurts his foot and is comforted (or not) by his wife Wanda, his daughter, Zoe, and his son, Hammie.

👉  The Gospel According to Star Trek.

I wrote this piece for the Augusta Chronicle 11/19/94 edition (which will become clear as soon as you read the price of a cup of coffee, and the dates were all correct in 1994).  I share this column today because it speaks of hope and peace, both of which are currently in short supply.

* * * * *

I admit it. I am a Star Trek fan and have been since the first television episode, “Man Trap,” aired on NBC on September 8, 1966.

I’ve watched the original episodes so many times they are burned into my memory, and remain my favorites.

I have first editions of I Am Not Spock (published by Celestial Arts), Shatner: Where No Man, The Authorized Biography and a well-read copy of Spock Must Die with a 60 cent cover price.

I own all of the collectors plates, one of them autographed by James Doohan, and all twelve of the Foto Novels. Twenty-eight years of buying Star Trek memorabilia has filled boxes, drawers and walls with almost 1000 different pieces.

I wrote to President Gerald R. Ford (along with a million other fans) and asked him to name the first space shuttle, The Enterprise. He did.

We regularly hold Star Trek marathons at our house. The day starts with “Space Seed” and follows the story line through “The Wrath of Khan” and ending with “The Undiscovered Country.”

Now all of that plus a buck will get you a cup off coffee most places. I mention that so you will know I am a certified (or certifiable) Trekker (please not trekkie!!).

Star Trek works for me for one simple reason: it is fun! The interplay of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, along with Scotty’s “bairns,” Sulu’s driving skills, Uhura’s hailing frequencies, Chekov’s screams (and take it from someone who has lived in Russia – it’s one of the worst Russian accents you’ve ever heard) are immensely entertaining.

These people are family. We cried when Spock died and again when the resurrected Spock remembered, “Jim. Your name is Jim!” We all want a piece of the action.

Some things about Star Trek disturb me, however.

One of the things that troubles me the most, is the way Star Trek searches for God – in all the wrong places.

On Planet 892-IV, a modern society which resembled ancient Rome, they found slaves who were sun worshipers. Lieutenant Uhura pointed out that it was not the sun up in the sky, but “the Son of God.” She gave me cold chills, but Captain Kirk quickly dispelled them when he said, “Caesar and Christ, they had them both.” 

In another episode, a landing party wonders if it would have been such a bad idea to have given a few laurel leaves to a being who claimed to be the Greek god Apollo. 

When they first ventured “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” two of the crew were transformed into gods. 

In “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,” James Kirk spouts New Age philosophy (evidently that heresy also “will survive into the 23rd Century and beyond”): “God’s not out there, Bones. He’s right here (touch chest). Inside the human heart.”

The Bible is discarded or discounted in Star Trek. I know. I know. It’s science fiction, not a Sunday school lesson, but some of the attacks on Christianity need to be answered.

Dr. McCoy describes the Genesis version of creation as a “myth.” Interestingly, Captain Spock, the Vulcan, acknowledges “the Biblical reference” without any editorial content.

On planet Holberg 917G, they discover a Mr. Flint who claims to have been da Vinci, Brahms, Socrates as well as Solomon, Moses and Methuselah. Evidently, our man Flint also helped Jesus fake a miracle of resurrection because Flint also professed to have lived as Lazarus.

God did get one point when Kirk responded to an alien culture’s many deities, “We find the one sufficient!”

Any casual observer knows that Star Trek struggles to find immortality. McCoy was killed on Shore Leave, but the fancy computers gave him new life. When the Nomad probe killed Scotty, it easily “repaired” him because it only involved simple cellular reconstruction. And that message devalues the marvel of human life.

Star Trek did show considerable concern for the unborn Horta eggs. More so than some Earthers show for unborn humans.

Man needs his evil side, Star Trek teaches. Witness Kirk’s inability to cope when a transporter accident splits him into two people – one good but as weak as a twinkie, the other despicably evil. Without “The Enemy Within,” the good Kirk is a bumbling, indecisive joke – a total failure.

A couple of years ago I wrote a column about Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown. A woman called and threatened to blow up my house because, she said, “You and Dan Quayle are not fit to be mentioned in the same breath as Murphy Brown.”

It’s only fiction, folks. It does not exist when you leave the theater or turn off the television. And even recognizing Star Trek has faults, and committing the heresy of discussing some of them, I am still a Trekker.

Many fans preach an interesting message: Star Trek and hope.

Remember that as the decade of the 60’s ended and the 70’s began (the time when Star Trek first appeared) we were tearing our country apart. Soldiers returning from war were decorated, not with medals but with spittle. Men and women of dissimilar color were expressing their differences in violence. A world where beings of distinctive color, gender and even planetary origins lived in harmony was, and is, an idea worth seeking.

Star Trek pointed to the universe of the U.S.S. Enterprise and some people said, “We may just make it.” They just never told us how.

There is hope. There is a better world. But it will not come, as Theodore R. Cogswell and Charles A. Spano, Jr., wrote, because of Spock, Messiah! It will come through Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.

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