<\/p>\n
I was looking for something to write about without actually leaving my
\nbed when I ran into an interesting tidbit:\u00a0 May 15th was Cheeta’s
\n71st birthday.\u00a0 The chimp from all the Tarzan movies is alive and
\nwell, having outlived most of the cast and crew that he worked
\nwith.\u00a0 He’s currently housed in a Palm Springs rest home for
\nretired show biz animals and he’s tended by a full staff of nurses,
\ndieticians and vets.<\/p>\n
This news item came shortly after I discovered that the original lights
\nat railroad crossings were called Wig-Wags.\u00a0 I had a dilemma on my
\nhands:\u00a0 Two useless facts and nobody to tell.\u00a0 Sometimes I
\nwish I had a girlfriend, just so I could burst in on her while she was
\ndoing something delicate or entertaining her conservative parents or
\nsomething, breathlessly blurt out facts like this, then laugh
\nhysterically and run out the front door.<\/p>\n
It’s all about the little things.\u00a0 They give me a sense of worth
\nand I’ll be talking about Cheeta and Wig-Wags at dinner parties and on
\ndates for the next six months.\u00a0 Usually, I’m the quiet guy in the
\ncorner who occasionally screams out a sexually related word, so I’m
\nglad to have a conversation topic.\u00a0 This is good stuff to know,
\ntoo!\u00a0 It’s culturally enriching.\u00a0 The only thing I really
\nknew, when this day started, was that getting out of bed would be more
\npainful than putting clothes on.\u00a0 This is why people become
\nwriters.<\/p>\n
Cheeta is the world’s oldest chimpanzee, by the way.\u00a0 That means I always liked Cheeta because he was the real hero in the old Tarzan {mosimage}I know Cheeta was the real star because, hey, who named “Cheeta, go along with the hairless one and make sure he doesn’t fall “Oh, come on, dad!\u00a0 He’s a retard!\u00a0 I’ll spend the next 25 Cheeta doesn’t have to worry about any of that now.\u00a0 All the Get this, he loves to read National Geographic.\u00a0 He knows which Cheeta not only lives but he’s richer and more comfortable than you Now, Wig-Wags.\u00a0 I had to spend the rest of my day reading about Then you wake up and leave Ohio as fast as you can.<\/p>\n In the early 20th, that was the way all crossings were handled. {mosimage}To save money, the railroads made the Wig-Wags magnetic (they often So in came the gate and the two flashing lights we all know well. Are the modern flashing lights officially called Wig-Wags?\u00a0 No, “A…a gate, Jack?\u00a0 Are you sure you don’t want to go with the America got boring after the Eisenhower Administration.\u00a0 Since Oh, well, no use pointing out that our Humanity has been raped since
\nthat, any day now, he’ll start talking like the baby monkey in Escape from the Planet of the Apes<\/em>.\u00a0 So you’ll
\nbe glad you know about this stuff when he leads the revolution against
\nyou.\u00a0 Oppressor.<\/p>\n
\nflicks.\u00a0 Tarzan would get himself into some retarded situation and
\nit would be Cheeta who would have to swing down and knock over a
\ncauldron or something.\u00a0 Bang – monkey takes initiative, instant
\nbedlam.\u00a0 Tarzan dives into the lake, several dozen tribesmen shoot
\nat him and miss and he goes to confront the white hunters who started
\nthe whole mess because they were seeking the ivory tooth and bejeweled
\neye patch of the blue elephant of the Congo.<\/p>\n
\nhim?\u00a0 Tarzan can’t name for shit.\u00a0 It took Jane a few days to
\nmake him understand that she was Jane, and he named his son (whom he
\nkidnapped) “Boy.”\u00a0 So where’d Cheeta’s name come from?\u00a0 Not
\nTarzan, certainly.\u00a0 And he predates Jane and Boy.\u00a0 Cheeta’s
\njust there, like he stopped by for a few drinks and never left.
\nEven in the Burroughs’s books, Cheeta is the trusted companion from the
\nget go.\u00a0 I think he was part of the ape family that raised Tarzan,
\nso maybe they sent him along as a watcher.<\/p>\n
\nin love with a sexy brunette and constantly mix it up with white
\nhunters.”<\/p>\n
\nyears knocking over cauldrons and bringing him the key to the jail
\ncell!”<\/p>\n
\nactors who played Tarzan in the 1930’s-50’s have dropped.\u00a0 Jane,
\nplayed by Maureen O’Sullivan, was the most recent death in 1998.
\nActually, I think Boy is still alive.\u00a0 But, still, quit an
\naccomplishment for a little chimp.\u00a0 Cheeta’s original destiny was
\nto be euthanized, just because everyone in Hollywood is bitter.
\nHe was saved and brought to the Palm Springs animal retirement home
\nwhere he’s spent the last 20 years being entertained by hookers and
\ndoing lines of cocaine.<\/p>\n
\nday the latest issue is supposed to arrive and sits in a chair waiting
\nfor it.\u00a0 That’s not the only mail he gets, either.\u00a0 He has a
\nfew other magazine subscriptions, which he picked out from a catalog,
\nand he still gets fan letters, which his handlers read to him.
\nSeriously.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 After he deals with his mail, he spends
\nsome time playing the piano and he’s managed to learn some basic
\nsongs.\u00a0 Then it’s TV time!\u00a0 The only movies he’ll watch are
\nthe ones where he was starring, but he will take time out to watch
\nAnimal Planet and the Cartoon Network.\u00a0 He also paints, and his
\n“Ape-stract” art is being sold for big bucks.<\/p>\n
\nare.\u00a0 Not because he’s in the jungle, either.\u00a0 He’s living
\nthe life I want to lead – smoking jacket, monocle, wait for the mail
\nevery day, learn a musical instrument, watch six hours of movies, nap,
\nwake up and paint for a bit, then watch the sunset through the gigantic
\nbay window while a semi-nude nurse gives me a pedicure.
\nThings must be bad when I’m jealous of an ape.<\/p>\n
\nthem.\u00a0 The name sounded to me like some goofball pre-American
\nCentury nonsense and, well, I was right.\u00a0 Used to be, a warning
\nsign was all you needed when a railroad crossed the street.\u00a0 You
\nstill get some crossings in rural America where the only hint is the
\ncrossbuck warning sign.\u00a0 Those are always fun.\u00a0 I ran into a
\nfew in New Mexico and I’ve seen them in Ohio, as well.\u00a0 Frequently
\nused railroad tracks sitting right there waiting to kill you, and all
\nyou have to go on is the vague crossbuck warning sign sitting behind
\nthe overgrown holly tree.\u00a0 Stop, look and listen, asshole!\u00a0 I
\ngot into that habit in Ohio, when I crawled the countryside in search
\nof the world’s first traffic light (still operational) and found myself
\ntrapped on a county road, the sole function of which was to divert
\ntraffic up and down and around farmland, so getting from point A to B
\ntakes about two hours even if they’re just a few miles apart.\u00a0 At
\nnight, this is the heart of darkness.\u00a0 This is real white map
\nterritory.\u00a0 The farms are dead, the lights of civilization are
\nnowhere to be seen and you know when you missed a crossbuck because
\nyou’re stalled out on the train tracks, at which point the tripod of
\nlights suddenly appears out of the darkness and an angry whistle blows…<\/p>\n
\nUp till 1945, remember, America had no cities.\u00a0 All we had were
\nvast communist farmlands for the white people and brutally run chain
\ngangs for the black people.\u00a0 And the poor.\u00a0 And the
\nmicks.\u00a0 As our population grew and people started dying horribly
\non the train tracks, the Wig-Wag was introduced.\u00a0 Well, before
\nthat, train companies hired people at a half dollar a day to sit at the
\ncrossing and run around with a red flag whenever a train was
\ncoming.\u00a0 Then the Wig-Wag was introduced.\u00a0 The Wig-Wag was a
\nmetal post with a pendulum and\u00a0 a bell on top.\u00a0 On the
\npendulum was a little round piece of metal with a red light in the
\ncenter.\u00a0 When a train came, the bell rang and the pendulum swung
\nback and forth.<\/p>\n
\nwent off when a train wasn’t near), and put a red light that was three
\ninches in diameter in the pendulum so no one could really see it.
\nIf they were looking, that is.\u00a0 Most Wig-Wags were only four feet
\ntall.<\/p>\n
\nBut ask the old timers, and they call those two flashing lights a
\n“Wig-Wag.”\u00a0 I hear it occasionally from my grandparents and I
\nignored it, figuring it was a symptom of senility or something.
\nBut when I heard other old folks refer to the two flashing lights as
\nWig-Wags,\u00a0 I decided to look it up and – viola – it’s all over the
\ninternet.\u00a0 There are still a few in action, and fervent fan clubs
\nkeeping them alive.\u00a0 Everything has a fan club… I’d say more
\nhere, but I learned long ago not to cross swords with a train-related
\nfan club.\u00a0 Those people are violently psychotic.<\/p>\n
\nthey’re not.\u00a0 Much to my disappointment, they are officially
\ncalled “crossings.”\u00a0 While you may think that’s logical, it’s
\nactually a bit surprising to me.\u00a0 Everything has a silly
\nname\u00a0 if you look hard enough.\u00a0 The two original models that
\nled to the modern day crossings, for instance,\u00a0 were called
\nGriswold Rotating Banners and\u00a0 Automatic Flagman.\u00a0 This was
\nbefore somebody had the clever idea to keep it simple — just two
\nlights and a gate across the road.\u00a0 Judging from the 1950’s
\nmodels, gates must have been an alien idea for a while.<\/p>\n
\nshimmering curtain of titanium snakes that rise from the ground and
\nsnap at cars, because that’s what we’re budgeted for.”<\/p>\n
\nthen, we’ve become militarized in so many ways.\u00a0 Instead of
\n“Auto-Instant Flash Flagmen Numetal” we get “crossings.”\u00a0 All the
\naction words and made up futuristic words have been dropped.\u00a0 A
\nnew fast food item is called by what it is – new sourdough
\ncheeseburger.\u00a0 In 1950, they would have said: “presenting the
\ndeluxe American drive-thru cheeseburger placed on a space age
\nbun!\u00a0 It’s atomic! Bring your Radarman decoders, kids, and get a
\npenny off!”<\/p>\n
\nthe 1950’s. I’m the one lying in bed crying right now.\u00a0 So, happy
\nbirthday, Cheeta.\u00a0 I’ll see you at the family reunion.\u00a0 And
\nleave your nurse alone!\u00a0 You go through three a month and it’s
\nreally embarrassing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,352],"tags":[403,353],"class_list":["post-2441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2923,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions\/2923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}