 by Dr. Jeffrey Lant. Author's program note. In 1962, my father Donald Marshall Lant was invited to accept a better job in West Los Angeles... and as a result, having removed ourselves from Downers Grove, Illinois, where we either knew or were related to absolutely everyone, we found ourselves in the City of Angels where the only people we knew were my father's boss and his numerous progeny. Thus, for the first time, but no where near the last, I entered a place where I knew no one and no one knew me. It was do or die... sink or swim... up or out. It was University High School.... and here, in due course, I discovered some very useful things about who I was and what I could do, not the least of which being a certain talent for mastering communications media and influencing people, skills I am putting to work right here, right now. Telstar. On October 4, 1957, the Great Republic and its comfortable verities were challenged by a device called "Sputnik". In it we saw the end of civilization as we understood it, "Leave It To Beaver" and all. Yes, we saw the future (or surely thought we did) , and it was ominous, threatening, and Red. This hysterical vision of living hell, more lurid than Dante, got more insistent, likely and proximate when just a few weeks later in November 1957 the Russkies launched a dog named Laika. If they could launch a pooch, surely they could -- and lickety-split, too -- launch a man with The Bomb. This vision developed further when the infernal Soviets put cosmonaut Yuri Gagaran into orbit. From that date, April 12, 1961, we were sure, absolutely, positively that Armageddon was nigh... but it wasn't... not by a long shot. One big reason why was the first active, direct relay communications satellite Telstar 1, launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It successfully provided the first television pictures, telephone calls, fax images and the first live transatlantic television feed. Unwittingly it was the most effective weapon the Great Republic could have lobbed at Moscow and company... for it enticingly showed its oppressive regimes and oppressed millions what awaited them if only they had the good sense to surrender and stop spooking us. Of how sweet life could be with... Coca Cola...Skippy Peanut Butter... Swanson TV Dinners ... Kraft Mac and Cheese... Chevrolet (with Dinah Shore's sweet down-home invite) ... Kool Aid ...Lux Liquid... and, of course, Mr. Ah-Wunnnerful, Ah-Wunnerful himself, Lawrence Welk and his irresistible "Champagne Music Makers" and their impossibly immaculate lives. Those Commies with their grim KGB realities and gelid gulags never had a chance despite the stolid attributes of Laika, Juri, and a commissar named Kruschchev whose abiding dream was to bury us. Kinky. None of it worked against the verdant lawns and anti-BO aerosols of "American Graffiti". They were omnipotent. And thus for the music accompanying this article I give you "Telstar" the 1962 novelty instrumental record performed by The Tornados. It was the first single by a British band to reach number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. Written and produced by Joe Meek, it worked because its over 5 million purchasers heard in its eerie space-like sound effects a future that was sure to be good for them and the world. Sadly, that wasn't true for Meek who killed himself just three weeks before a court awarded him the whopping royalties from this very popular hit. It was all about the money... as it always is. Go to any search engine now and listen to Meek's signal contribution to culture... its distortions and background noises the authentic music of the spheres. Telstar satellite up. Telstar song up. Me on the launching pad. I knew very early in life that I wanted a career with words, a career which would pay me for thinking, writing, talking, influencing not just mankind but the galaxy and beyond. In short I wanted to put the universe under my microscope and report on what I saw, good, bad, absurd, painful, whatever, just so I got it right, got it first, got it the most beautifully written, no holds barred. As such I naturally gravitated to the journalism department where being new and friendless didn't matter at all; all that counted was being able to use words properly and meet deadlines. Everything else would follow. Mr. Germain. I think I understand Mr. Germain now; I'm much older after all than he was when I knew him. I suspect he wanted to be a journalist... wanted to move multitudes and influence the course of human events with words, powerful, motivating, challenging, demanding words. But he had bills to pay, perhaps a family to support, and he couldn't just give up a good job cold turkey... yet the evenings and week-ends that he had didn't seem enough time to write. And so he became the most unhappy of people... the writer who could not write... and perhaps it was this which accounted for the whiff of sadness and resignation about him for otherwise he was likable indeed. We got along at once. I saw in him what I needed... a place where I could write, find supportive criticism and rewrite to perfection. He found what every teacher wants... a bright student who will listen and justify their career choice. And so on this basis I became a cub reporter and in short order I requested and was given what every commentator must have -- a designated space in the newspaper (called "the Warrior") that was mine, all mine. It was my launching pad... and so the boy who entered University High School knowing absolutely no one, quite literally without pal or buddy, was shortly known by all. In hot pursuit of the story. I could be found roaming the expansive campus that "Uni" provided talking to people, taking notes, always scribbling. One aspect of my column concerned favorite tunes and who was listening to what. "Telstar" popped up again and again on the most popular list. So did my interviews with Hollywood stars, reviews, etc.. One of the great perquisites of my office was access to an unending stream of "comp" tickets sent to "The Warrior" by every movie and television studio. I didn't drive then and so I bribed my friends like Norman Leavitt with a free pass if he'd chauffeur me and generally be my good gofer. It was a system that worked. I particularly liked events that took place during school hours. We had a pre-authorized pass available to hand to the teachers whose classes we would miss... I loved using it with the gym teachers whose petty brutalities affronted me. I knew where I needed to be and sweating profusely with adolescent boys wasn't it. Cruising down Sunset Boulevard in Norman's bright red sports car en route to one studio or another was. Editor-in-Chief. In due course, I rose to the position which might have been created just for me... Editor-in- Chief. I was, I think, still a Junior when I was elevated. I had no precise agenda, certainly no list of abuses to expose with the power of the press. Still, newspapers have editorials for a reason, and therefore I must have editorials, too. And thus came trouble... its name was Hugh Foley, Principal. He might have come straight from central casting, tailor-made for the roll of petty bureaucrat, porcine, tyrant, prig. You know the type. We hated each other on sight. And so we both bided our time, wary, guarded, certain something would happen . The editorial, the reaction, just the bare facts. Let me be clear with you. I was not an editorial fire brand like, say, William Lloyd Garrison and "The Liberator". I liked my life as it was, perks and all, and didn't mean to rock too many boats. Still, I thought then what I continue to think today; that each of us has the duty to improve matters where we can do so. And on this basis, I typed an editorial that urged certain positive (in my opinion) changes, including changes in Principal Foley's administration. He learned of this (mild) editorial from his snitch, the print shop teacher. He alerted Foley who left his throne long enough to march to the print shop, rip the editorial off the printing press and order the paper printed with a blank space where my article had been. A sensation. Of course, the entire school, administrators, teachers, staff, students, were immediately a buzz. My name was on everyone's lips... and, to many, I became an instant celebrity, the truthful man oppressed by wanton authority. This opinion surged when Foley cashiered me as editor, thereby establishing me as akin to Joan of Arc or Martin Luther. This was Big... and I would have savored the story except for the fact that it was about me. It was at this point that my mother Shirley Mae Lant (nee Lauing) intervened in the matter. Parents in those days were, it seems to me, much more actively involved with their children's education and school in general. My parents surely were and in no case more than this one. And so she went to see Mr. Foley. The matter was about me, but I was largely an onlooker, almost the fly on the wall every commentator wishes to be. Adamant mother, adamant principal. My mother was a formidable woman, a fact Principal Foley was about to discover. She also had the better case, buttressed as it was by the Constitution of the Great Republic and its sacred First Amendment. For she had been a cub reporter once upon a time and for her the Amendment meant exactly as stated... "Congress shall make no law...." And so Hugh Foley, to his acute chagrin, found himself defending the indefensible against a practiced foe who wasn't about to let him get away with a grave injustice that besmirched my name and record. I never admired her more than then. And so Hugh Foley, the most petty of tyrants, backed down, reinstating the culprit, but vowing revenge in his heart, all done with the most ill grace possible. But here he was wrong. I was no revolutionary, no trouble maker. He would have done far better to make a friend, an ally. My mother and I would have welcomed such an amiable solution, and it is that which shows that 1963, its manners, its mores, are those of the old regime, about to be swept away, collateral casualties of Vietnam and all its consequences, including pictures of carnage, napalm and death transmitted worldwide by Telstar, a revolutionary machine which in every aspect changed the world, one eerie beep at a time. |
