I loved movies when I was a kid. I started going to town on my own when I was only six. I took the bus and I usually had fifty cents to spend.
My friends and I liked Tarzan movies and were always pleased when one was playing. They were so exotic
compared to Gastonia. They had big snakes. Alligators. Elephants. Quicksand.
It seemed that Tarzan would step in quicksand in every single movie he made. We would yell out,
"Oh, no. Not again." Today people would call him mentally challenged. We called him stupid.
The quicksand was like a magnet that drew Tarzan to it. Thank goodness he had a monkey, Cheetah,
who was always handily nearby.
"Get the vine, Cheetah," Tarazan would yell. "Get the vine!" Cheetah would run off and soon come back
with a glass of chardonnay.
"I said get the VINE, stupid, not the wine you dumb cluck."
Meanwhile Tarzan was sinking deepeer and deeper into the quicksand. He should have known that flapping his arms only made him sink faster. Here's a tip from the book THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE GOING TO
THE JUNGLE...if you are in quicksand, you try to float. And try to get a human to help you instead of calling a monkey. Even a Hollywood monkey.
We liked to play Tarzan after we had seen a movie of his. We would play in the high grass behind my house.
That's as close as we could come to simulate a jungle. We had to hand out parts. Almost everyone wanted
to be Tarzan. (We called him TAR-ZAN...it made him sound more like an action hero.) I wasn't personally crazy
about being Tarzan because you had to wear a loincloth. If it had been made of tiger skin I might have liked it.
But we usually used a piece of oil cloth from a castaway tablecloth. Plus I didn't like the idea of wearing a homemade loin cloth without my underwear, and especially if I had to climb a tree. Some boys didn't care.
Just like Hollywood today.
Cheetah was a popular choice. If you got to be Cheetah, you could jump around and roll around like a fool....pick your nose and flick the boogers...show your genitals inappropriately. You know how monkies
are.
Sadly nobody really wanted to be Jane, not even the girls. She was very pretty in the movies and she was often an highly trained scientist of some sort and it made you wonder why she would take up with an Ape
Man. But put her in some kind of animal skin and she reveerted to a ditsy housewife every time. Even in
a treehouse without a gas stove. She tried to make Tarzan and Boy eat oatmeal for breakfast every day
and pick up around the treehouse after breakfast. And she kicked poor Cheetah out. She said monkies didn't belong indoors. And that they were very smelly, and I'm sure she was right about that.
If we had no girl to play Jane, we would try to make a Sissy Boy play the part. Preferably a blonde boy.
The main thing we did was hack through the high grass whicH was filled with man-eating snakes (so we
said). Well, maybe not man-eating but certainly ones that could eat a monkey which, of course, made the
role of Cheetah slightly less desirable.
Remember in Tarzan movies how a big snake would swallow another living thing and you could see the
form of it in the snake's body. Scary, huh?
If we whacked through enough grass, we would come out at a little store where they sold penny candy.
The storekeeper would usually say to Tarzan, "Why you got that tablecloth on you, boy?"
And Tarzan would say, "I am not Boy. I am TAR-ZAN, King of the Jungle. And this is a loin cloth."
Neither one of them knew what a loin cloth was.
We would conduct our business as quickly as possible before the storekeeper looked under Tarzan's
loincloth.
Back home we would run into cannibals. My grandmother washed clothes in two big black kettles
over open fires. My friends thought she was a witch when she would be outside punching and stirring
the clothes. But she didn't wash on the weekends, so the big black pots were perfect for cooking a
cannibal meal.
We always wanted to cook Jane figuring she would be the most tender. Our other choice was the
Sissy Boy playing her part. We certainly didn't want to cook the monkey, and Tarzan was the star.
So we would pick Jane up and put her in the pot. We really didn't cook her although I am sorry now
that we didn't try at least once. Of course I would be writing this from Juvenile Jail.
We pretended to cook her and Tarzan would beat his bony chest and proclaim, "Sweet ribs tonight."
Oh, those were glorious days before electronic toys and computers. And that, dear readers, is why
we grew up with FAMILY VALUES.
Just like Hollywood today.
Cheetah was a popular choice. If you got to be Cheetah, you could jump around and roll around like a fool....pick your nose and flick the boogers...show your genitals inappropriately. You know how monkies
are.
Sadly nobody really wanted to be Jane, not even the girls. She was very pretty in the movies and she was often an highly trained scientist of some sort and it made you wonder why she would take up with an Ape
Man. But put her in some kind of animal skin and she reveerted to a ditsy housewife every time. Even in
a treehouse without a gas stove. She tried to make Tarzan and Boy eat oatmeal for breakfast every day
and pick up around the treehouse after breakfast. And she kicked poor Cheetah out. She said monkies didn't belong indoors. And that they were very smelly, and I'm sure she was right about that.
If we had no girl to play Jane, we would try to make a Sissy Boy play the part. Preferably a blonde boy.
The main thing we did was hack through the high grass whicH was filled with man-eating snakes (so we
said). Well, maybe not man-eating but certainly ones that could eat a monkey which, of course, made the
role of Cheetah slightly less desirable.
Remember in Tarzan movies how a big snake would swallow another living thing and you could see the
form of it in the snake's body. Scary, huh?
If we whacked through enough grass, we would come out at a little store where they sold penny candy.
The storekeeper would usually say to Tarzan, "Why you got that tablecloth on you, boy?"
And Tarzan would say, "I am not Boy. I am TAR-ZAN, King of the Jungle. And this is a loin cloth."
Neither one of them knew what a loin cloth was.
We would conduct our business as quickly as possible before the storekeeper looked under Tarzan's
loincloth.
Back home we would run into cannibals. My grandmother washed clothes in two big black kettles
over open fires. My friends thought she was a witch when she would be outside punching and stirring
the clothes. But she didn't wash on the weekends, so the big black pots were perfect for cooking a
cannibal meal.
We always wanted to cook Jane figuring she would be the most tender. Our other choice was the
Sissy Boy playing her part. We certainly didn't want to cook the monkey, and Tarzan was the star.
So we would pick Jane up and put her in the pot. We really didn't cook her although I am sorry now
that we didn't try at least once. Of course I would be writing this from Juvenile Jail.
We pretended to cook her and Tarzan would beat his bony chest and proclaim, "Sweet ribs tonight."
Oh, those were glorious days before electronic toys and computers. And that, dear readers, is why
we grew up with FAMILY VALUES.
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