Kent Ballard, More Commentary

Louise, I was just sitting here wondering what part of the South
Strother Martin hailed from, so I looked him up on Wikipedia.

Strother Martin was born in Kokomo, Indiana, of all places!

Well! That explains it all. People from Kokomo are all mad as hatters
and the sane ones leave that city as soon as they can afford a car or a
bus ticket. Kokomo has more Emergency Rooms than any other city in the
United States as the citizens keep confusing themselves with folks from
Kokomo, California and are always drowning or breaking through the ice
on rivers and ponds trying to surf. They once tried to elect the Beach
Boys as city mayors. They did, too, but the Beach Boys graciously turned
them down, then refused to go anywhere near the place.

Still, it's just a little bit better than Muncie, Indiana. Muncie, as
you may recall, is where Steven Spielberg set all the UFO stunt-flying
scenes from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". It saved approximately
12 million dollars in special effects money, as he merely set up cameras
and filmed the things in Muncie skies that are there anyway almost every
night. To this day people wonder how he did all those special effects.
They weren't special effects at all. Muncie is just like that,
especially after dark.We don't talk about it much.

Also, Muncie is where I saw my first hippie. I remember that clearly. It
was 1965 and what this poor, stoned soul was doing in the Midwest is
beyond me. But he had shoulder-length hair, a gyspy blouse,
bell-bottoms, and some kind of weird-colored headband, walking down the
street in sandals. 1965. In Indiana. I hope he survived long enough to
get back out West where people were not mistaken for haunted scarecrows
and shot on the street for looking like that.

Also, you must remember that I was merely 12 years old in 1965, and got
into no end of trouble with my family as we drove along and spotted this
creature. The first words out of my young mouth were, "WHAT IN THE F--K
IS THAT?!?" True story. I had no idea my mother could move so fast. She
slapped me with her hand moving about 30% faster than the speed of
light, while my father almost wrecked the car laughing. When we got home
he told me he was wondering exactly the same thing but was afraid to say
it around Mom. Had I thought a half-second before I spoke, I certainly
would have been too. A slip of the tongue, you might say, one of many
from my strange and erratic youth.

Who knew that in just two or three years most of the kids in Indiana
would look just like him?

Kent, expert in matters in this here state here