The Russian Martians Are Coming!

Thursday August 8, 1974.

A beautiful, calm, late summer, early evening day in Lake Country, Haliburton, Ontario.

My memory doesn't hold what I or my family did up at the cottage that day but there is no doubt what we did when we came in for the evening.

The adults were seated around the dining room table - it must be a farmer-thing to sit at a table - I, not having been a farm girl, always thought that habit strange when perfectly good, comfy chairs and couches were on offer in a room constructed for the purpose of living - the Living room.

With that personal logic firmly in place, then as now, I took my preferred seat in an antique rocking chair which sat opposite and catty-corner the portable TV and the picture window looking out on to Maple Lake. I remember the leaves were already turning but the grass was still very green, no real summer heat to speak of at this setting-sun hour unless one meant the white-hot heat coming from the picture tube which projected out to us all the Washington DC announcement being aired, live, on the CBC channel. We were lucky to tune in any TV station in those days, for aerials on roof-tops were the only technological innovation available to dial in a decent picture.

Luckily, or unluckily, for me, that Thursday was a clear TV viewing day and the image of a slate-blue backdrop curtain, a nondescript desk and a Brylcremed-hair man in a dark blue suit, well familiar to us all, filled the screen;