Wayne Weekly “Quagmire Monsters”

I watched a good portion of an old B&W science fiction movie the other night. I must have been desperate for wholesome entertainment!

I don’t even remember the name of it. All I remember is that is features these big snail-like creatures and they were in some canal system somewhere in the US. The monsters had big eyes and reminded me of our family dog’s eyes. Daizy Dew is a puggle. The mutant (probably radiation) was billed as blood-thirsty. I guess it was!!! The creature feasted on the blood of a number of unsuspecting individuals and had an appetite for some laboratory rabbits, too.

I think in the late fifties and early sixties, Hollywood found an audience who loved surreal monsters. In those days, they looked pretty fake and cheap. When I was a kid I remember watching such high end productions such as “The Attack of the Crab Monsters”, “The Giant Behemoth”, “Mothra”, “Godzilla” “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”, “The Return of the Creature from the Black Lagoon”, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon’s Mother”, well not really, but probably almost! And who could forget the blockbuster, “The Day of the Triffids”.

My Mom let me watch the Monster Movie Matinee with Dr. E. Nick Witty (at least his hand), and Epal, and the Saturday Night Special with Baron Daemon…and I loved her for that at the time!

In sixth grade my friends and I started a Baron Daemon club. We sent the Baron some plastic Aurora monster models and made a papier-mâché bat with real needles for fangs! The bat looked more like an old passenger airplane, but if you held it just right, face to face, it looked kind of like a bat. How we were thrilled when the Baron showed our gifts on his TV show! I still have a B&W picture of the Baron, with a real autograph and note that says “Wayne, Thanks for watching!” signed Baron Daemon (written in red ink no less).

We’re intrigued by weird and scary things. I guess that’s one reason why Halloween is the second biggest financial income season next to Christmas for retailers. At least that is what I’ve been told. Kind of depressing.

We all get bogged down in quagmire along the journey. Some is pretty harmless, some not so much, some very destructive. As “sons of God” we’re to be on guard that we don’t get lost in stuff that appeals to more of our base nature. It’s a good thing to look at the value of something and decide how much to ingest.

Balancing life means saying no sometimes. But also we find a lot of good yes’s, and in the long run those can bring the greatest joys in life.

Who, then, are those who fear the LORD? He will instruct them in the ways they should choose.

Psalm 25:12