President Eisenhower

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This was one of the more indelible images from my childhood: Nikita Khrushchev, head honcho of the Soviet Union, banging his shoe on his desk at a United Nations meeting and saying things like “We will bury you” and “Your grandchildren will live under communism!” At that time we all understood that “communism” meant labor camps, the secret police breaking down your door in the middle of the night, “teachers” encouraging your kids to snitch on you–

Hey, wait a minute! Maybe old Nikita could foretell the future, after all.

But at least you knew exactly where he was coming from, and he wasn’t going to scare President Eisenhower–and besides, we all knew that Mrs. Khrushchev, Nina, would never let Nikita start World War III. However rambunctious her husband might get, Nina simply wasn’t going to let really bad things happen.

Nina Khrushchev – Yousuf Karsh

As I recall it, Nina Khrushchev was very popular with the American people. Surely Nikita got an earful for starting the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Oh, holy cow–am I waxing nostalgic for Nikita Khrushchev? I guess that’s a measure of how bad things are today.

The kingdoms of this world are the alternative to the Kingdom of Heaven: one damned crisis after another. See Matthew 24.

I will not write about the election today! Or the debate, either–and you can’t make me.

I was nine years old when this song came out, and my friends and I quickly acquired toy Flying Purple People Eaters to add to our collections of Miller Space Aliens. Imagine my surprise, years later, when I learned that Sheb Wooley, who wrote and sang The Purple People Eater, was on TV every week as a regular member of the cast of Rawhide.

Oh, it seems a different world! Hard to believe that world ever existed. A world where Eisenhower was president and everyone respected him, and where harmless nonsense could push you right up to the top of the charts without any mention of any kind of sex.

Don’t blame me for calling it back to mind. Those of you who are young, you don’t know what you missed. But I’m here to tell you that an awful lot of it was very, very good.