Friday, September 30, 2005

Kool Filter Kings

While looking through a box of junk from my recently deceased uncle’s house, I came across a bottle of "Hai-Karate". Anyone born after 1975 probably never heard of Hai-Karate, but for me it caused a levee in my brain to let loose, flooding the poorer ethnic sections of my brain with memories of the late ‘60s & early ‘70s . . . probably bombed from the government side. (Allusions courtesy of Calypso Louie)
I remember seeing Hai-Karate commercials on our 13" diagonal Zenith. My favorite started off with a Jamesbondesque character applying some of the aforementioned shave balm to his ruggedly handsome face. "Peter Gun" style theme music swells in the background. He steps out of a seedy brownstone in a bad part of town. A girl in plastic go-go boots and white lipstick casts a sidelong glance from beneath lizard blue eyelids. Her delicate Audrey Hepburn nostrils twitch and she turns to follow the man of mystery. Then a girl in a trenchcoat catches his scent and follows. Then another. And another. The next thing you know he’s running from a teeming throng of nubile Smantha Stevens’ evil cousin look-a-likes.
He uses his best Judo & Karate moves to escape his pursuers. (Hai-Karate get it?) Then, suddenly a rope ladder drops from the sky. He’s saved! Pseudobond climbs to safety, only to find a helicopter filled with refugees from a Russ Meyer flick, who immediately begin to rip off his clothes in preparation for some sort of off-camera, man rape.
Way back then I was still in my single digits, and wouldn’t see my first pube for another few years.
I thought, "If he didn’t want to be chased by a bunch of girls in blue eye shadow, what did he rub it on his face for in the first place?"
Besides, I was an Aqua-Velva man.
Aqua-Velva men rode motorbikes, climbed mountains, drove race cars, and hung ten on curling waves. There were usually a few girls around the Aqua-Velva men too, but I had the idea that they were ancillary to the cool activity schedule.
Besides, my dad was an Aqua-Velva man.
He had hair all the way down to his ears, a well trimmed handlebar moustache and drove a metallic lavender ‘67 Dodge Charger Hemi Fastback.

Trust me, in the late ‘60s in Mississippi City, MS you couldn’t find more man than that. When I was a toddler he used to take me down to the beach for one of his favorite games "Bikini Spotting".
Legend has it that my first word was, "Daddy", and my second word was, "Bikini".
So, as you can imagine, one of my early goals in life was to become an Aqua-Velva man.
For my third or fourth birthday I received a cube shaped bottle with a top like a tiny wooden barrel. It was "English Leather". I have no idea how the Brits treat their bovines, but that shit smelled nothing like cow hide. Also, English Leather was linked in commercials to the same girls with lizard blue eyelids that had tainted the image of Hai-Karate. Not only that, but these girls with their iridescent ocular coverings wanted their men to wear English Leather or "Nothing At All". Here in 2005 wearing nothing at all with an Emma Peel clone doesn’t sound too bad, but in the summer of ‘69 it was as unappealing as brussel sprouts, bathing, or bedtime.
I think the first time I saw blue eyeshadow was in a Kent’s department store in Hattiesburg. My mom & I had stopped in so she could buy cigarettes. (Smoking was still cool back then) The woman in line in front of us at the check-out was young and pretty. Her hair was impossibly black and was lacquered into the exact shape of a Godiva pudding-bowl motorcycle helmet. She had on white lipstick. She wore a bright purple mini-dress with a 4" wide white belt and a 4" white stripe down the front like an inverted cross pointing a her cooter. Below that was 4" of exposed thigh, followed up by shiny white plastic go-go boots that smelled like the 4" deep inflatable swimming pool in my backyard.
She turned and talked to my mom while they waited. She said how cute I looked. She looked down at me, and asked how I was doing, and wasn’t I just the cutest little thing. Then she blinked. I was mesmerized. Her eyelids were painted the exact same color as those of an anole lizard.
She bought two packs of Benson & Hedges. My mom bought the same thing.
For the longest time I though that pretty girls all smoked Benson & Hedges.
Older women who hated men, and were trying to look like pretty girls smoked Virginia Slims.
Boys smoked Camels.
I longed for the day I was old enough to smoke Kool Filter Kings.
Kool Filter Kings were smoked by Aqua-Velva men.

1 Comments:

At 11:40 PM, Blogger TC Byrd said...

Nice one, Bert

 

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