From the moment I began telling friends and co-workers that I was writing this novel, I have been met with resistance.
People have told me this isn’t a subject that most Ozarkers would be interested in.
They do not understand that if you write a book, it will probably be read by people all over the United States and in other countries, not just by people in your county or hometown.
I also face the looming fact that some of our politicians in Jefferson City may have the book banned because of some mild sex (heavy petting as it was called then) and the discussion of the issues of that time (Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the rise of the John Birch Society).
However, one incident has made me realize that the Ozarks and state of Missouri may really get hostile toward my novel over subject matter that you wouldn’t think would raise and eyebrow.
The Batmania of 1966.
Already friends and co-workers have scoffed at the idea of a novel that has the 1966 Batmania at the center of its plot, even though it was inspired by a true story that happened in the Ozarks, but I realized things could get really ugly two years ago, when someone with the Missouri State Highway Patrol hit the wrong button.
Here is what happened: The Highway Patrol was testing a system called the Blue Alert System, which is sends phone text messages, only seen by law enforcement, to alert other law enforcement members that backup is needed because a law officer has been injured or killed.
The system will only work if there is a description of the suspect, the suspect’s vehicle, and a location of the incident.
Sending the word “Test” or “Testing” will not work.
The Highway Patrol felt it was best to use something “fictional” or easy to distinguish from a legitimate bulletin about a dangerous criminal, even though nobody outside of law enforcement would see this message.
Or so they thought.
Someone at the Highway Patrol hit the wrong button and this message went out as an Emergency Alert on the phones of Missouri residents.
Apparently, the Highway Patrol was swamped with complaints from irate people who didn’t want the Patrol to warn them, via their phones, that the Jokermobile might be headed to Missouri.
I’m almost certain about 75-percent of the complaints came from the Ozarks region, because they don’t have a sense of humor.
Most of the complaints had to do with just that very thing, the use of the Joker and Gotham City, even though the Highway Patrol explained that they Blue Alert System would not send a message of ‘Testing’ or “Test Test.’
I realized that this novel will cause Missouri to have a catastrophic meltdown.
For the past year or more, we have heard people taking about the pros & cons of A I creator programs. We are hearing how they will be the end of humanity and lead to horrible consequences. I’m not convinced.
I have tried various online A I programs to try to create “photos” of the characters from my novel, Dynamic Duo of the Ozarks. The first time I tried this technology, I typed in “photo of a pretty blonde college girl from 1966.” I was hoping for a photo of what I saw Sherry Ridenhour looking like in my mind. These A I generators gave me the same pictures each time. They were paintings of fat, ugly women in their 50s & 60s, with bad complexions and crazy looking hairdos. Not what I wanted.
Last night I tried it again. This time I was half way successful with one “free” program, but, unfortunately, I did not save the results. On another one, it had a place to upload photos that could be “combined” to make A I creations. I uploaded a found photo from Tumblr of a snapshot of a young lady with the hairstyle and clothing that Sherry would wear (the photo has a date of 1969, but it was the right look). I also uploaded a photo of friend from college, who I modeled Sherry after.
This is what I got.
A pretty blond girl with a bouffant hairdo…ON BOTH OF HER HEADS! SHE HAS ANOTHER HEAD ON HER RIGHT BREAST & A BACKWARD ARM!
The other one looks pregnant. She also has a leg sticking out of her chest & three hands. UGH!
I don’t think A I is quite the threat some of our politicians are making it out to be.
(This is an short, upcoming chapter for your enjoyment, as Mykel goes toe-to-toe with a snooty lady at a bank.)
Mykel had not been home in two weeks. He had told his mother he would come home often, since Lemming was only 50 miles away. His roommate last semester, Ralph Jenkins, was hung over most of the time and not very chummy, when he was sober, so Mykel went home quite often on weekends. This semester was different. He was rooming with a basketball player, so he planned to go to more games. There was also Sherry. This was the closest thing Mykel had ever had to a girlfriend. Just hanging out with her in the TV lounge and eating popcorn was more fun than Mykel had ever had in his life.
He still talked to his mother on the phone. Since she worked for the phone company, she could call him every day. She had told him not to come home this weekend, because Route 66 would be slick due to the “Big Blizzard of 1966.” His mother called him, on Tuesday night, and asked the question every college kid loves to hear come from the parent’s mouths.
“Do you need money? I can have Grandpa send you a check, if you need it.”
“Yeah, that would be great! I’m starting to run low on money.”
On Friday, the check arrived in the mail. The problem was the bursar’s office closed on Friday at noon and Mykel’s grandfather had made the check out for $50, which was over the amount the bursar’s office would cash a check for.
“What bank does it come from?” Clint asked. “If it is one with a branch here in Spring Valley, they will cash it.”
“We use State Bank of Missouri. Are they in Springville?” Mykel asked.
“Look in the Yellow Pages,” Clint suggested. “I’m sure they do. Just show them your account number…”
“I don’t have an account number and I’m not on the family’s account.”
“I have an account with State Bank, because that is the bank we use in Hermes,” Clint explained. “Me, Dad and Uncle Earl, go all over Missouri to buy and sell cattle and hay. I have an account for when I get places alone to buy and sell. I’ll go with you, and they will let you cash the check.”
Mykel found the address of the bank in the phone book and the Clint drove him, in his Mustang, there through the dirty slush, which was all was left of what the big blizzard that had dumped on the Ozarks, while cartoon hillbillies sang the praises of Mountain Dew, before a K-I-L-L jingle and the Dave Clark Five singing “Over and Over” on the radio. The bank was across from the large shopping center, where Mode-O-Day, Newberry’s and Otasco were located, and next door to Katz.
Mykel and Clint walked into the black, marble, bank building with white colonnade in front of green glass windows and with aluminum louvers. Clint stopped and looked at the time and temperature sign, sticking out from the corner of the building, then looked at his watch.
“Their clock is slow,” Clint said. “I guess I should tell them. I’m not sure the temperature is right either.”
“This is Missouri,” Mykel groused. “It probably is forty-five degrees, even though it was twenty degrees when we went to class this morning.” They continued into the bank building. The bank had that musty money and ink smell. The floor was tiled, in black and white squares, with the teller windows and counters made with finished wood. Mykel walked over to a small island counter and pulled the check and a pen from his pocket, so that he could endorse it.
“I was going to ask if you had a pen of your own,” Clint said. “The pens at the bank never work.”
“It’s because they put them on chains,” Mykel joked. “When you chain something up, it loses it will to live.”
“I’ve always thought they were getting ready to calve,” Clint chuckled.
Mykel and Clint got in the shortest line and began the wait until they were able to cash the check from Mykel’s grandfather. There was a man, in a pair of Dickies hickory-striped overalls, at the window, cashing a check, that was probably from Frisco Railroad. When he finished, the line moved forward and the elderly woman, in front of them, moved forward to the window.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Killinsworth!” the teller greeted the elderly woman with cheerful smile. “How are you today?” The teller cheerfully talked to the pensioner about her grandchildren and what she did earlier in the week during the bad snowstorm. Mrs. Killinsworth put her money in her handbag and began to leave. The teller said, “Always nice to help you, Mrs. Killinsworth! Come and see us anytime!”
Mykel and Clint stepped forward and the teller’s expression immediately went from cheerful to an annoyed scowl. “What do you two characters want?” she snapped.
“I need to cash a check,” Mykel said.
“You can only cash a check if you have an account here,” the teller informed Mykel in the loudest voice possible.
“Mam, I have an account with State Bank of Missouri,” Clint said, quickly showing the teller his bank book with his account number on it.
“I came here because the account is with State Bank of Missouri,” Mykel explained. “My family does their banking with the branch in Lemming. I also have a driver’s license and Social Security card, if you need it.” Mykel showed the teller his driver’s license, which caused her to scowl it.
“What in the world is this name?” the teller squalled.
“It’s Mykel.”
“That is not the way folks in the Ozarks spell Michael. We spell it the way it is spelled in the Bible.” the teller informed Mykel and Clint of the superiority of Ozarkers. “Is this a Soviet Union spelling?”
“No, it’s Greek!” Mykel answered with his teeth clenched.
“Calm down, Mykel,” Clint said, realizing this might get quite ugly before it was over.
The teller then jerked the check from Mykel’s hand and looked at it. She began to scowl more and blurted out, “The name on this says Major and Mrs. Harrison Taylor! Did you steal this from a member of the military and put your name on?”
“No. My grandfather is Major Harrison Taylor and he sent me the check because I haven’t been back home. My mom thought you would be more likely to cash one of his checks,” Mykel began talking louder and frowning harder at the scowling teller. “Now cash the check and fork over my money, Lady!”
Clint tried to extinguish the fire, “Calm down, Mykel. People are staring at us.”
“I’m going to have to report this to one of our managers.” The teller said, as she pushed a button on an intercom. “Mr. Diffenderfer, could you come to Window 6, please? I have some troublemakers at my window. I believe they are probably college students.” She looked at Mykel and Clint, as launched into lecture. “You college kids come into town and want us to give you special treatment! Springville isn’t going to allow that garbage that is going on in Berkely, California to happen here! This is a decent God-fearing, conservative, community! I will have you know that in the 1960 election, 95 percent of Browne County voted for Richard Nixon, and in the 1964 election, 95 percent of Browne County voted for Barry Goldwater.”
“It didn’t do either one of them any good, they both lost. I can’t believe you people bragging about voting for the losers,” Mykel said with a smirk, as a well-dressed man with gray, thinning hair walked up behind the teller.
“Is there a problem, Myrtle?” the man asked.
“These hooligans are trying to cash this check,” the teller said. “I believe they stole it from a military man and the short one with the Beatle hair forged his name to it.”
The man looked at the check and then told the boys meet him a small office at the other end of the teller windows. They went inside and the man closed the door. He told them to sit down. He sat down at his desk.
“So, what is the problem?”
“My mom had my grandpa send me a check for some spending money. They have an account with State Bank of Missouri. I don’t, but my roommate, Clint here, has one with your bank in Hermes…”
“Hermes! My aunt and uncle live in Hermes. Do you no Furd and Henrietta Kaffenburger?”
“Yes, they go to the same church as me,” Clint answered. “She makes really good chicken and dumplings and fudge brownies.”
“Yes, I need to get up that way and visit them,” Mr. Diffenderfer said.
“My dad bought some sheep from them and I raised a lamb and got a blue ribbon for it at the fair,” Clint continued on, while Mykel was getting anxious wanting his check cashed.
“That’s good,” he then looked at Mykel. “Now…is that pronounced Me-keel?”
“It’s pronounced Michael!”
“Okay, is this your maternal grandfather?”
“Yes, he is retired from Fort Leonard Wood,” Mykel answered. “Do you want to call him and ask him if he wrote the check to me? The phone number is Keystone2-2866.”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Mr. Diffenderfer said, as he reached in a strong box on his desk and pulled two twenty and ten one-dollar bills, then handed them to Mykel. “You don’t look like a check forger to me.”
“My mother thought that the bank would cash a check from my grandpa easier than if she wrote a check,” Mykel explained.
“You should get your name put on your mother’s account,” Mr. Diffenderfer suggested. “Transactions will be easier for her if a man’s name is on her account. It would appear there was a man in charge of the household. Also, with your name on the account, she can write you a check and you can get it cashed faster. Your grandpa will probably need to go with you and your mother to get it changed over.”
He paused, then Mr. Diffenderfer continued. “Oh, I also want to apologize for Myrtle’s behavior. She is rules crazy. She is also from a pioneering Springville family. She doesn’t like college students or anyone from outside of Browne County for that matter. She oversteps her authority quite a bit.” He opened the door to his office, shook their hands and showed them out.
Clint and Mykel began walking through the lobby, past people waiting in line, and Mykel stopped at the back of the line at Myrtle’s window. When she looked up, from counting a customers money, Mykel said, in a raised voice, “I got my money!” He then stuck out his tongue, “Nyaaa!” He and Clint then ran out of the bank.
I decided that since I was writing about two characters from Knob Noster, Missouri, that I should drive around the town and see what it was like. Most importantly, can people see the missiles at Whiteman Air Force Base. I Googled how long it would take to get there from where I live in Lebanon, Missouri. Google said 2 hours and it looked like a straight shot up there and back. Here is what I learned:
You cannot see the missiles from the road or any other building, such as the elementary school.
That said, Whiteman is a HUGE presence in the town. It pretty much is the town.
The town is very small. I thought it might be the size of Lebanon. It is much smaller. There is a old town square and a shopping center.
It’s other focus is farming, which was the main industry before the Air Force came.
Now for my big rant. I GOT LOST IN KNOB NOSTER & JOHNSON COUNTY BECAUSE OF GOOGLE MAPS!
It kept going to something called “bicycle trip” mode. It took me down every country and farm road in Johnson County when I started home. Suddenly, Google was telling me that it would take “11 hours to get to Lebanon, Missouri from Knob Noster, Missouri.” Once I found a way to get to MO HWY 50 and head for Sedalia, I was making better time. Although, what I thought was going to be a trip that would have me back home in Lebanon at 6:30 p.m, had me arriving back in Lebanon at 10 p.m. I also saw most of the cornfields of Johnson County and the backwoods of Camden and Morgan County.
This was a learning experience and, to say these least, and interesting trip seeing the state of Missouri.
UPDATE: I’ve added a Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page featuring these songs & a few extras from the summer of 1966.
I wanted to make a quick point that when people compile list of great summer hits, at least 3 come from 1966.
Among them is Billy Stewart’s blistering, hyper version of Gershwin’s “Summertime.” The idea to do this wild, fast arrangement of this, usually, slow song came to him in a dream. He played it on a piano & performed to vocalese parts for the session men. After that, they then recorded it in one take.
The Loving Spoonful gave us probably one of the all-time great summer hits, “Summer In the City.” Before ‘Summer In the City’, they had another hit with a summertime vibe, ‘Daydream’.
The Kinks “Sunny Afternoon” is another hit from the summer of 1966 & in typical later Kinks fashion, it mixes social satire into a summer song. Ray Davies sings the song from the point of view of a rich, Preppy douche bag, complaining that he may have to sell his yacht to pay his taxes & his girlfriend left him because he abused her. By the end of the song, he is going to just hook up with a ‘big, fat mama’ and continue ‘living a life of luxury’ ‘in the summertime.’
Although not exactly a summer song, “Sunshine Superman” by Donovan has always been placed on the list of summer songs. This song helped Donovan escape the “next Dylan” tag and kicked off his psychedelic minstrel phase of his career. The guitarist on this track is future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny” is also frequently listed as a summer song & it was a hit in the summer of 1966, but it was originally a tribute to his late brother, whose name was Sonny. The record company thought it would sell better as “Sunny.”
It actually came along after the summer was over, one that has to be included is by Old Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra. “Summer Wind” was more of a hit on the new radio format called Adult Contemporary or Easy Listening. Sinatra & his pal, Dean Martin, had a resurgence in the mid-60s. Their music became popular again in the 90s with hipsters. “Summer Wind” was even featured in an episode of The Simpsons where Martin sang it.
I was going to say that the least remembered of the summer hits from that year is “Happy Summer Days” by Ronnie Dove. While it hasn’t turned up on any major list or CD compilations of summer hits over the years, I found out on his Wikipedia page that Amazon used it in a commercial campaign called ‘Summer Delivered’ in 2019. Dove was not a major star, but got a lot of airplay while being on a small label. His style is kind of a pop country that sounded dated even in 1966. In my novel Mykel makes fun of Alice for liking Ronnie Dove.
Other songs that are summer songs from that year (these include the word ‘summer’ in the lyrics): ‘Red Rubber Ball’ & “Turn Down Day” by the Cyrkle, “Bus Stop” by the Hollies, “Green Grass” by Gary Lewis & the Playboys, & ‘See You In September’ by the Happenings.
I will also mention the song, ‘I Lost My Heart at the Fairgrounds’ by Glenda Collins, because most fairs take place in the summer.
WIP: DYNAMIC DUO OF THE OZARKS 