The movie Fantastic Voyage came out staring Raquel Welch in which a group of scientists along with their submarine get shrunken to microscopic size and injected into the body of a man to save him by traveling though his blood vessels to get to his brain to repair it. It all seemed quite realistic to me from what I had learned in science classes, even them getting attached by white blood cells.  When they got to the brain, they used laser rifles to cut away the bad spot.  How cool was that I had just read about LASERs in Popular Science and how they could be used in the future for weapons, science fiction once again becoming reality.   Raquel Welch replaced Ursula Andress as the most beautiful woman in my eye and in the eyes of many boys after she played in One Million B.C.

Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. was another movie I liked, a comedy based loosely on the book Robinson Crusoe, which Lieutenant Robin "Rob" Crusoe’s (played by Dick Van Dyke) plane crashes into the sea where he makes it to an uninhabited island, where like the book, he builds a shelter, fashions new clothing out of available materials and so on then and begins to scout the island but instead of the man named Friday in the book, he finds a beautiful island girl whom he names Wednesday and a NASA chimpanzee astronaut he named Floyd.

On TV we would as a family watch Bonanza most every week, it was like Dad was Ben Cartwright the wise and decision making father, I was Hoss, awkward and clumsy, David was Little Joe, well because he was little.  The show Mission Impossible started with the IMF, the Impossible Mission Force always starting with “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” followed by the mission statement then, “As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape/disc will self-destruct in five/ten seconds.”  It became one of my favorite shows with all the gadgetry and cleverness they used to complete the impossible mission.  Then there was The Monkees, a TV show that about four boys in a rock’n roll that looked like a family version of the Beatles. 

Braded Rug Another show which I really liked so much I got into a fight with my brother over it and that was That Girl with Marlo Thomas as Ann Marie with a kind of goofy charm, I really liked her. The incident occurred one afternoon after school. Mom and Dad had not come home from work yet so David and I turned on the TV, I wanting to watch That Girl, while David wanting to watch Davey Crocket. Not agreeing on which one to watch, each of us would go over to the TV (remotes didn’t exist yet) and change the channel. Back and forth it went until we started wrestling, I was a bit bigger, but David was a quick and squirrely, one of us almost reaching the TV just to be pulled back by the other until, WHAM!, my elbow went though the five gallon fish tank that was on the shelve next to the TV.  We immediately both stopped wrestling and stood there in shock watching as the water gushed out onto the rug, fish flopping around, it was a disaster.  I didn’t say things like “Oh Shit” at that age but I sure thought it.  I took action, first priority, save the fish, I ran to the kitchen getting I large bowl, filled it with water and then going back and catching the fish.  Next, pick up the pieces of glass. Next, roll up the carpet, which was an oval, braded cloth rug that that were popular at the time [photo] and David and I dragged it outside. It wasn’t easy, the rug was longer than David and I together were tall, rolled up bigger around then me and weighing more than both of us. But we managed, dragging out onto the driveway into the sun to help it dry then returned to the family room and using some old towels, cleaned up the remaining water.  With the hot Florida sun, the rug  soon dried fairly well, and we lugged it back into the family room putting it back in place.  It was still a little damp, but we hoped that Mom and Dad wouldn’t notice.  I worked out a story to tell Mom and Dad about how I accidentally bumped into the aquarium cracking the glass which then started leaking so we took it outback and put the fish in the bowl.  No mention the rug getting wet or about us fighting over a TV show.  On the good side we got a new bigger 10 gallon aquarium to put the fish in.

Thanksgiving came with the usual family turkey dinner and the visiting of relatives followed by my birthday December 22nd  which was uneventful, Mom made a cake, and I got a few presents but everyone, including me, was more focused on Christmas three days away.  We spent Christmas at home, opening our presents on Christmas morning.  David and I got a surprise, underwear from Grandma Junior. I think I liked socks better.

Updated: 09-13-2022

1967