Velociworld

At the Races

When we moved to the farm in 1966 we effectively went from two television channels (three when you were lucky and could pick up ABC from Charleston) to zero. Signals were weak. What you could get, even with an antenna, were fuzzy ghost images, a bit of audio. Black and white, of course.

Then the Senator came home with a fancy antenna with remote direction. You could turn the antenna hither and thus, via remote control, and hone in on a signal. This was huge bidness. It was only connected to his television upstairs in the master bedroom, of course, where resided, by the way, the only color television in the house. In his magnaminity the Senator had decided that the family deserved color TV, and a state-of-the-art rotating antenna. But only in his room. We scrubs could settle for the black and white ghost images downstairs. He was generous like that.

It didn't work out that way, of course. As the parents had a king-size bed, we would all get our baths and sprawl all over my parents' bed, and watch TV up there. With 3 channel options we were pretty much in accord most of the time, too. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Time Tunnel. The Invaders. Seven people in that bed, and my mother was probably in hoggie heaven.

The Senator was there, of course, but whether he was awake or not was a throw of the die. He generally dined early, and burrowed himself into a mountain of blanketed, snoring content. He thought television was bullshit. Personally I think he was disgusted by the fact there was no pornography. He was an avid aficionado of the naked female form, and likely thought TV was a brilliant medium, wasted. Just a theory.

So anyway, here's how I remember this story. I believe we were all ensconced on the bed, watching The Smothers Brothers or some such. Recollection and legend are uncomfortable roommates, to say the least, but legend wins out, usually. Seems at the climactic point of a show the Senator roused from the fever swamps of his slumbers, addlepated from an earlier bout with John Barleycorn. He stared blankly around, attempting to focus, and blurted out

"Well, Little Miss Earlymouth! What pig are you riding?!?!"

I've tried, over the years, through suasion and necromancy, to enter that dream. It still exists somewhere, a bit of subconscious ephemera, floating like gossamer in the space-time continuum, but to no avail. For that had to be one kinghell dream. Parse it as I might, it could only have been pig races of some sort. Was the Senator racing a pig? Little Miss Earlymouth certainly was. Were the pigs saddled? Who won?

The Senator professed no recollection of that dream later, of course. Naifs that we were, we thought nothing of querying him incessantly over the thing, and precisely who Little Miss Earlymouth was. But the Senator hadn't fallen off a turnip truck. He wasn't budging, especially in front of our mother.

The old man had probably been flogging Miss Earlymouth with a riding crop in his dreams for years, for all I know. But if one of us was indelicate enough to broach the subject, he would merely stare down the dinner table and aver "I have no idea what you're talking about". With threats of retribution both express and implied in that statement. We eventually let it drop.

So there's a Senator story for you. Triple-X dream sequences, busted. Racing swine. A young lass with (apparently favorable) oral issues. I just may try to channel that dream again tonight.