A Hippy Grows in Graceland

Back in the Waybacks

           US Weather Bureau teletype msgs about the first space satellite, the Russian Sputnik

Vector 101101k958

Long before you or I were born, I lived in the future. I was a cadet in an interstellar academy dormitory. I was allowed to reincarnate here in order to gain first-hand knowledge of this set and skein that many consider a major cusp in human history. Set and skein: specifically the USA, which nearly everyone calls "America", and specifically the latter half of the twentieth century -- that is to say the twentieth century after the Christian god-man was executed by the Roman Latins. (The Christian god-man was a Jew. Their form of execution was stoning. If the Latins didn't do it, then why wasn't He stoned? Was the god-man on a natural high, or were the Habiru stoners not casting that day?)

(The Roman system of laws then became the basis of all future laws in the Western Hemisphere, and the rulers of European societies spent the next two thousand years trying to emulate Rome. It shows. In blood and money, it shows. Lookit Napoleon, lookit Hitler.)

As I said, I was a cadet aboard a nomadic interstellar city. I liked the music of twentieth century Earth, most especially the rock group known as the Beatles, and at Tutmost especially their album titled "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band".

But then suddenly I was walking down the sidewalk of the Whitehaven Plaza shopping center in Graceland subdivision in Whitehaven (not inc.), Tennessee, Earth, and it was 1958. Yes, dear fiends, and it was Graceland, Graceland, Graceland all the way! All the way from here to back again, all the way from here past alternity! Our house was off Graceland Drive. I attended Graceland Elementary School and swam on the team at Graceland Recreation Club (champion, hundred yard breaststroke, well, second or third, anyways). I'm oft praised for my breast-toking freekstyle.

Speaking of Graceland, Elvis Presley's mansion was nearby, but in 1958 I didn't know it's name was Graceland. Yeah, I realize it doesn't make a lick of sense now, but somehow I'd gotten the notion that Graceland was the house he lived in before that one. We just called this one Elvis's House -- and that's "Elvis's", three syllables, not "Elvis'", two syllables. (Hey, it was 1958 and I was eight years old! What did I know?)

It was there I encountered a boy I recognized from the school we both attended, Graceland Elementary. His name was Mike, from a hero in Irish history.

There I was walking with my new friend Mike and talking about things few people talked about back then, even children. This was before the days of video games, personal computers, satellite or cable TV (or even color TV) -- only just recently born were the days of satellites themselves, the "Space Age" -- and it was 1958 and we were talking about dinosaurs and time machines. Little did we know, as we ambled and chatted -- so like a pair of Fifties genre TV buckaroos -- little did we know that Elvis and the Negroes were in cahoots, even then initiating the scrambling of our own Cosmic Egg.