Mimsy Farmer

(29 July 2014)

TCM is showing "Spencer's Mountain" tonight, in which Mimsy Farmer has a supporting role. This started up my memory churn as I recalled her appearance in my favorite episode of "Outer Limits" - "Second Chance" - which was originally broadcast in March 1964 (she was born in 1945 so do the math on the age). A carnival space ride becomes frighteningly real when an alien secretly rigs it to fly. The ominous bird-man carefully picks his unknowing crew including the carny ride captain who's a closet intellectual, an angry middle-aged man, and a star quarterback accompanied by his adoring buddy and his steady girl. The plot involved persuading a group of people whose lives were absolutely miserable (for a variety of reasons) to undertake a mission which would save the earth from destruction sometime in the distant future. The alien was confident that the humans would grab this last chance for personal redemption, he calls it their second chance, especially after being shown that they had nothing to lose given their hopelessly miserable lives on earth. The episode had little good to say about the human race and philosophically plays even better today than it did in 1964. So if you are feeling down about current events it can give you some perspective - today's pathetic ethos is nothing new.

Mimsy was quite good in this episode, and she nicely fit the 60's starlet look in this and in an episode of "Larado". Instead of an overwrought girlfriend, on "Laredo" she played a curvy fun girl who captivated Chad (Peter Brown's character): Laredo - The Caleco Kid - January 1966. I next saw her in Argento's "Four Flies On Gray Velvet" (1971), she was still in her mid-twenties but had lost her glow and was effectively unrecognizable. I watched the entire film, in which she had a central role, and did not recognize her until I looked up the cast.

The "Outer Limits" episode is burned into my memory because it was rerun in August 1964, on the night before we were to leave on our family vacation to Cooperstown and New England (or at least Massachusetts). I had been out playing tackle football in a neighbor's back yard, back then we played tackle football with no protective equipment. I had the ball on a sweep around left end and was tackled from the side, falling on the upper part of my left arm with a couple guys on top of me. I was sure that the arm was broken, it certainly was painful enough and my parents got a young doctor who lived nearby to come to the house and examine me. He said that it was just a bad bruise and that the arm should be in a sling for a few days. That night before going to bed I watched a rerun of the "Outer Limits" episode.

Between the pain and the anticipation of the trip I did not get much sleep but was up and alert and ready for our predawn start the next morning. We had a 1964 blue Malibu station wagon and a 1962 green Corvair. The station wagon had replaced our 1959 copper Bel Air four-door. All had been purchased new and none had radios or air conditioning (my father being adverse to spending money on such frills). We took the Malibu on the 1964 trip; apparently the belief was that the since the back seat could be folded down and we were leaving in the dark, my brother and I would contentedly sack out on the back deck until we arrived in Cooperstown. That proved to be extreme wishful thinking as I don't think either one of us even came close to dozing off and within an hour my father had stopped and raised the back seat to its regular position. So much for a station wagon being a good fit for our dysfunctional family.

Cooperstown proved to be a great destination with the Farmers' Museum in a class with "Greenfield Village" and for me the Baseball Hall of Fame a much anticipated shrine. In a store down the street from the HOF I bought a San Francisco Giants baseball cap and their 1964 yearbook. I also bought a 1963 Dodger yearbook, still being a John Roseboro fan although I think the pictures of the hot Dodger wives were an even more powerful drive. Apparently 1964 was the start of sex as an influence in my decisions. Up till then pretty girls could charm me for attention and favors but they had no physical hold on my behavior.

After Cooperstown we went to Saratoga, Fort Niagara, West Point, Plymouth, Lexington, Concord, and Boston. And then headed home through Scranton. Three years earlier we had visited Fort Ticonderoga, Lake George, Bennington (Vermont), New Hampshire, and Niagara Falls. These two trips to the northeast were the most ambitious of our vacations, kudos to my parents for twice taking on such daunting challenges.

The 1964 trip was essentially "my" last family vacation, occurring the summer before entering the madness that was 9th grade at Ashland Junior High School. We took a family vacation in 1965 to Indiana and Illinois but I was alienated and disengaged (see below) so I really was not mentally a part of that trip. Perhaps some of the rebellion that would be coming was already seeping into my subconscious. In retrospect Fall of 1964 would have been a good year for my parents to have pulled me out of school and put me to work on a local farm. I desperately needed a year of physical maturation and a little mental maturity would not have hurt things either. There was no magic pill but a one year delay in starting 9th grade might have worked wonders. Of course this idea would have worked even better had they delayed my entry to first grade. Who knew?

In 1966 we moved so there was no vacation, 1967 was a return to Gettysburg as I had an interview with the Admissions Office, supplemented by my week at Buckeye Boys's State. In 1968 I had a summer job but took a week off to attend Ted Kluzewski's Baseball School. They came down to pick me up early on Saturday morning and I was to play in a game in Parma that night - the last game of the season. It was something I was looking because after a week of batting practice I was ready to really pound the ball. But instead of taking me back my parents had decided earlier than week to make an all day touring thing of the return trip. I told them that I was expected to play but they were outraged that I had the nerve to even protest. It still pisses me off when I think about having missed that game - our team forfeited because there were not enough players.

The family resumed summer vacations during the 1970's but that was a world without me in it.

The 1965 trip was memorable for one reason. Adding to the normal family friction was a dispute between myself and my father over the August 22nd Marichal - Roseboro bat incident. Neither of us knew much about the incident other than the cursory account in the Indiana paper, but my father aggressively sided with Roseboro (a hometown hero from Ashland). 1965 was the absolute apex of my San Francisco Giants fascination, I wore a Giants hat, Marichal and Mays were my favorite baseball players. So the incident created a simmering tension between us for the remainder of the trip.

"In the third inning, Marichal brushed back Maury Wills and Ron Fairly, and then when Marichal came to the plate in the home half, Dodger catcher John Roseboro called on Koufax to come in high and tight on his opposite number. As Koufax was wont to do, he made a half-effort at plunking Marichal (to the lefty's enduring credit, he had strong misgivings about hitting batters intentionally), so Roseboro decided address matters himself. After one of Koufax's pitches settled into his mitt, Roseboro rifled it back to his pitcher and in doing so came perilously -- and intentionally -- close to striking Marichal in the head. By some accounts, the throw even nicked Marichal's ear.

Ultimately Marichal was contrite, and he and Roseboro later became friends. Years later, Marichal was denied admission to the Hall of Fame on the first two ballots. However, in part because Roseboro publicly stumped for him, he was voted in on the third try. More poignantly, Marichal was also an honorary pallbearer and speaker at Roseboro's funeral in 2002. A nice illustration of the saying that the truth is at best a half-told story.