[Bender2]

Re: 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.

Sorry, but there are at least two of us...

I was in Columbia, Tennessee, that October visiting my cousin Wick when his dad called us outside to watch that little dot of light fly through the night sky...

Gadzooks, it was strange! I remember the hair on the back of my neck rising... I also saw another strange dot of light in the night sky a few years ago while fishing, but that is another story...

Okay, now... I believe I am the only Freeper to have seen with my own two eyes two atomic explosions in 1958 at the Nevada Proving Grounds. My late Father was a Project Manager on building facilities for Hush-Hush government projects and as his son, I got to see a lot...

Go to http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Hardtack2.html for info on those series of atomic tests. I admit I do not now recall which of the ones I saw, but I will never forget that initial flash of atomic light!

I found this shot... that matches the memory in my mind...

[Monterrosa-24]

"...It was launched on Oct. 4, 1957, and it scared the bejesus out of America. The Russians were experimenting with the atom bomb..."

Whoa! They had the bomb about eight years before that.

Bohemians and Beatniks...I refuse to think of them as always Leftists. To me a beatnik was addicted to jazz, progressive jazz, and other hip music and poetry. A bohemian was addicted to any one of the arts; painting, music, writing, et al. They were the starving artists who had to suffer and disavow materialism.

In those dark nights near Columbia, Tennessee did you ever see the Bell Witch or the ghost at Spring Hill?