Sputnik I begat beatniks (YET ANOTHER LEFTY CONSPIRACY THEORY - THIS TIME FROM '57)

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | March 18, 2007 | DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter

[Chi-townChief]

SAN FRANCISCO -- You could be anything you wanted to be in the Beat movement. This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, in which he wrote how he stayed in San Francisco for a week and had the "beatest" time of his life.

San Francisco is still a good place for that.

The Beat Museum opened last fall in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. It honors the Beat creed of tolerance, inclusiveness and having the be-all to follow your dreams. That's how remnants of the Sputnik I satellite landed last month in the museum.

You have to think outside the box to dig this:

The Russian-made Sputnik I was the first man-made object to orbit the Earth. It was launched on Oct. 4, 1957, and it scared the bejesus out of America. The Russians were experimenting with the atom bomb.

The late Herb Caen was sort of the Mike Royko of San Francisco. On April 2, 1958, he used the Sputnik moniker to coin the phrase "Beatnik" when he wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle about a party held for "50 Beatniks." With old-school resignation, Caen wrote, "They're only Beat, y' know, when it comes to work."

And that's why 13 alleged parts of the Sputnik satellite are in the Beat Museum.

Beat Generation relics The pieces sit in a glass case like precious diamonds. The remnants are hand cut and not machine tooled. The U.S. Air Force has identified two of the pieces as parts of a transmitter. They're featured among 200 Beat items like the referee shirt Neal Cassady wore while driving the Further bus for Ken Kesey (featured in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) and a signed copy of Alan Ginsberg's 1957 poem "Howl."

Jerry Cimino owns the non-for-profit museum with his wife, Estelle. If he can verify the satellite parts he will take the space trash on a cross-country tour in an Airstream trailer to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sputnik I. Cimino speaks about the Beats at colleges with John Allen Cassady, the son of Kerouac's buddy Neal. They travel around in an Airstream called the Beatmobile. The Beatmobile pulls a storage van with large pictures of Kerouac, Cassady and Bob Dylan.

"The 'Beatnik' term meant the Beat Generation writers -- who were intellectuals -- immediately became Communist sympathizers," Cimino said during a radioactive interview at his museum. At the 1960 Republican National Convention, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover stated the three greatest threats to the American way of life were "Communists, eggheads and beatniks."

Bummer.

The Beat Museum was born in 2004 in an Airstream trailer in Monterey, Calif., as "The Beat Museum on Wheels." Cimino, 52, moved it to Kerouac's beloved North Beach a year ago. The 5,000-square-foot museum is across the street from City Lights Bookstore and Vesuvio Cafe, 255 Columbus Dr. In 1960 Kerouac was supposed to head down to Big Sur to confer with author Henry Miller, who was a fan of Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. The shy Kerouac started drinking at Vesuvio to calm his nerves. He never met Miller.

A work in progress I thought the museum would be a beat-up hole in the wall, but the spacious joint incorporates dozens of glass cases that feature items such as a first edition of Kerouac's Tristessa, a Kerouac bobblehead that was a giveaway at a minor league Lowell Spinners game (his hometown) and a $10.08 check Kerouac wrote to Nunzie's liquor store. The museum also features vintage pulp fiction paperbacks like North Beach Girl by John Trinian. Appropriately, the museum is in a former bookstore. Jack's only daughter Jan gave Cimino her blessing for his 1-800-KEROUAC number before she died of kidney disease in 1996. The gift shop includes drawings made by Carolyn Cassady (widow of Neal) that sell for $100. I cracked up at the life-size 1955 "Beat pad" Cimino created in the rear of the museum. The digs have an Underwood typewriter, a 1955 RCA television set and an RCA turntable (on loan from the California Historical Radio Society). The pad has a working 1928 stove and a beat-up "fainting couch."

Now I always have someplace to stay in San Francisco.

Cimino is beginning work on a Day-Glo '60s room and the museum also has a small movie theater where Beat-related films and documentaries are screened.

Back to the Sputnik A replica model of Sputnik I hangs from the ceiling near the museum entrance. The original Sputnik was about the size of a Southern California beach ball. Around Christmas a visitor noticed the satellite. Cimino recalled, "I say, 'Yeah, the Beats became the beatniks and the beatniks became the hippies and it all came from that term Sputnik.' Then the guy says, 'I know someone who has the real thing.' And I go, 'The real what?' And he said 'The real Sputnik.' "

Cimino was told how a man from Southern California had satellite parts and letters from the U.S. Air Force. "I said it was impossible; it burned up on entry," Cimino said.

Bob Morgan had the parts. He lives in Santa Barbara County, where he makes parts for jet skis. The satellite parts are not jet ski parts. Cimino called Morgan and spoke with him for an hour. "We had a great conversation," Cimino said. "I realized he wasn't wearing a tin foil hat."

The two eventually met. Morgan was in town during my late February visit to San Francisco when the museum hosted a press conference about Sputnik I. Cimino said, "We think there's a good possibility this is real. On Dec. 8, 1957, the family dog [Buttons, named after Red Buttons] woke up from a commotion. Bob's father went outside and saw this stuff glowing on the ground." The alleged Sputnik pieces landed on Morgan's grandfather Earl Thomas' property near Encino.

Morgan, 60, said, "We're looking for people who know about this material. There's no doubt verification is difficult, which is why we're asking for help." In mid-February the New York Times reported that the smaller parts of Morgan's booty could have been part of Sputnik's booster rocket.

On Dec. 11, 1957, Morgan's grandfather took a plastic ring to the Air Force public information division in Hollywood, Calif. The ring was intact. Now in pieces, it's part of the museum display.

"When my grandfather got it back from the Air Force there was a 5-inch piece missing," Morgan said. "And the Air Force told my parents point blank the United States had nothing up there in 1957."

Wait, it gets better.

On Dec. 8, 1957, KDAY Radio in Redondo Beach offered a $50,000 reward for Sputnik parts. The top-40 radio station had been tracking the satellite over Northern California. DJ Mark Ford was to give away the reward on air. Thomas took his satellite parts to Air Force officials who were at the radio station. The museum now has the original receipt of the Air Force receiving the items, dated Dec. 11, 1957, and signed by USAF Col. Dean E. Hess. And Ford, who has since died, also signed the receipt as a witness.

"My grandfather never got his money," Morgan said. "They returned the parts in a brown box. He moved up to Sacramento, put the parts in a box in a cellar and left them down there for who knows how long. But from 1958 to 1965 my grandfather wrote letters to [California] Gov. Pat Brown, President Kennedy and President Johnson." The museum even has a Feb. 21, 1962, letter from President Kennedy's office. It apologizes for being tied up with other matters. The Cuban Missile Crisis was going down.

Conspiracy theory? "We found out Mark Ford's real name was Marvin Howard," Cimino said. "He was in the Air Force, got out in 1956 and joined the radio business." The museum features a section of the book Los Angeles Radio People, in which Ford said, " ... I was sent to a language school during the Korean War and studied cryptoanalysis. I listened to Russian broadcasts to break the codes for U.S. Intelligence ... " Cimino smiled and said, "The government realizes Sputnik is coming down, they wonder 'How are we going to get this thing?' and it's 'Oh, that guy who used to work for us is the Air Force is now a DJ in California." Unbeatable.

Following his dream Cimino was an American Express and IBM salesperson before going Beat. "The museum started with my personal collection," said Cimino, who was reared in Baltimore but relocated to Northern California in the early 1980s because of the Beats.

"After we opened people started bringing me stuff. The first day someone brought me that," and Cimino pointed to the Lawrence Ferlinghetti LP "Poetry Readings in the Cellar," which would fetch $300 today. And don't miss the museum's copy of Holy Goof, Neal Cassady's biography. The title comes from On the Road, where Kerouac says of Cassady (he inspired the Dean Moriarty character), 'That's what Dean was, 'the Holy Goof.'."

"I did OK during the dot.com era, but I was looking for something that had meaning," he said. "The Beats were the most tolerant people in the world. Their thing was, 'We don't care who you are, what you look like or what you're into, as long as you're not hurting anybody else, come join our party.'

"That's an important message, especially for young people to hear today. Allen Ginsberg was the bravest man in America in the 1950s. He came out of the closet in 1955. Nobody was doing that. He stood up and said, 'I'm here and I'm queer and I want to be part of the solution -- let me put my queer shoulder to the wheel [the closing line from Ginsberg's poem "America"]. I started to use the story of the Beats to promote a message I believe in, which is to follow your own dreams."

dhoekstra@suntimes.com

[Chi-townChief]

Sputnik I crashing in Francisco with the local hipsters and jazzbos gathering up the wreakage is almost too funny but I guess it goes with the territory. Kerouac, by the way, was a pretty great novelist but Ginsberg sounded like he was trying to win an Edward Bulwer-Lytton award. You can't get much more over-the-top bad poetry than "Howl" or "America."

[tranzorZ]

Ok, I made it through half way through that thing. Are they celebrating sputnik itself, great tech buy the proletariat, or just that time period?

[Chi-townChief]

Actually, they're celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of "On the Road" which, in itself, is pretty cool. But the Sputnik and Ginsberg things are a pretty odd twist.

[tanuki]

Thank you for posting this. An entertaining if somewhat quixotic read. I doubt if anybody apart from Charlie Tuna has parts of the original Sputnik I, but the spare satellite was lying in rubbish and probably could have been had for cheap in Moscow around the early 90's.It might still be available for the right price.

[Dallas59]

Cool...*snaps fingers*

[ClearCase_guy]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
sputnik, starving hysterical naked,
dragging satellite pieces through the negro streets at
dawn looking for a beatnik museum,
angelheaded hipsters burning from the radioactive
connection to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night

[LibFreeOrDie]

"You rang?"

-- Maynard G. Krebs --

http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/lawrence/153/krebs.html

[ansel12]

Good old liberal icon Allen Ginsberg.



"In the early 1980s, NAMBLA was reported to have had over 300 members, and was supported by such noted figures as Allen Ginsberg.[4] Since then, the organization has kept membership data private, but an undercover FBI investigation in 1995 discovered that there were 1,100 people on the rolls.[4] It is the largest organization in the umbrella group IPCE[5] (formerly "International Pedophile and Child Emancipation").[6]"

[Brad from Tennessee]

When I was a kid, before Sputnik, I used to hear beats sometimes referred to as "Bohemians."

[Chi-townChief]

There ya go - maybe since Allen's gone you can give all of his "work" some posthumous updating.

[Chi-townChief]

I think they still are. Czechs get pissed if you refer to them that way, though.

[rbg81]

FBI head J. Edgar Hoover stated the three greatest threats to the American way of life were "Communists, eggheads and beatniks."


Perceptive.

[elcid1970]

There are references to "Bohemians" not as Czechs, but as artsy-fartsy creative types, going back to the 1920's and earlier (remember the opera "La Boheme"?)

Anyway, this is a fun thread. I remember as a kid hearing how beatniks were said to wear turtleneck sweaters, berets, hornrim glasses, and goatees, while playing bongo drums in funky cafes and reciting unintelligible poetry.

Beatnik girls were pretty and had long, straight hair. That part I liked.

[Bender2]

Re: The Russian-made Sputnik I was the first man-made object to orbit the Earth.

In the late 1950s my Dad was the Project Manager on constructing rocket pads at White Sands and McGregor Range test sites. I was an 11/12 year old with wide eyes at all I could see.

I recall (fuzzy though it be) some of the base personnel telling...
of either a Redstone...
or Jupiter-C Rocket...
launching 3 solid steel balls into orbit in 1955. They also said a proper satellite could have been launched in August, 1956, but the Eisenhower Administration wanted it to be a private (i.e. non-military) launch for the International Geophysical Year running from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958

As we all know, the Commies beat us to the punch on that and the Liberal Dems are still taking anyone's and everyone's side against our nation...

I say launch each and ever danged Liberal Democrat into the sun!

BTW...

The only good Beatnik was Maynard... G. Krebs

[BluH2o]

Sputnik I, whatever ... I can say with a fair degree of confidence I'm the only member of FR who actually saw Sputnik I in orbit October 1957. I was hunting with a friend of mine that beautiful fall day (a weekend); about 3PM we both observed a silver object about the size of a small ball bearing (BB size) transiting across the eastern horizon in a south east to northwest direction. This was in eastern Canada ... practically everyone around the world was aware the Russians had launched a satellite into space.
When my friend and I (both young teenagers) told adults we saw Sputnik they were skeptical ... what cinched the deal, a Captain, on a ship, perhaps a hundred miles north of us on the St. Lawrence River reported spotting Sputnik about the same time we did ... except, he was considered credible and it was reported by CBC News radio.
Years later I visited the Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC and they now have a large map tracking the flight of Sputnik ... which shows the orbit clearly tracking over eastern Canada.

[Fiddlstix]

......I remember as a kid hearing how beatniks were said to wear turtleneck sweaters, berets, hornrim glasses, and goatees, while playing bongo drums in funky cafes and reciting unintelligible poetry.

LOL! I remember that too......
But.....
You forgot to mention the "Expresso".....
J

[Battle Axe]

I was eleven in 1957. Dad was furious that the Russians had launched it. (USAF officer) I remember him dragging me outside in the middle of the night and pointing out a moving star. Don't know if it was that one or another.

But beatniks.......all that was done with fluoride.

[speedy]

Espresso and listening to Thelonious Monk were part of the scene too, Daddio.

[speedy]

You beat me to the espresso. Like crazy, man. Regular coffee was strictly for squares.

[Star Traveler]

You said -- "Sputnik I, whatever ... I can say with a fair degree of confidence I'm the only member of FR who actually saw Sputnik I in orbit October 1957."

I'm about to shatter your confidence then...

When I was a kid in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my family went out into the backyard looking for Sputnik, because it was reported to be going over at a certain time. And sure enough, there it was, moving across the sky, in the early evening.

It was a shiny moving spot in the sky, at the right time and right place where it was reported to be. And, of course, in those days -- there was *nothing* else in the skies (no International Space Station, no hundreds of other satellites, like you can see now, all the time). That was the *only thing* out there, at that time.

And, I'm sure many hundreds of thousands of others saw it, too. We were not the only ones...

Regards,
Star Traveler

P.S. -- I can get out my "Starry Night" program and check the satellites, and at any hour of the day, there will be a flood of them going across the sky, these days. It's easy to get a loot at many of them. And it's easy to get a look at the ISS (International Space Station).