Southern Fried Stories. Deuce Dalton

Russians had launched the world's first man-made satellite into outer space.

      They called it Sputnik, he said, and it was scheduled to pass right overhead that night. Suddenly we had to start worrying about the Russians again: What if Sputnik had a laser gun and shot at our house?

      We went outside a little before 9 o'clock and, sure enough, we saw it: a yellow, blinking object moving across the dark sky. Wiz said, “That spacecraft is traveling over 17,000 miles per hour.” That was hard to believe, as it appeared to be moving slowly over our house.

      I will never forget standing there in the cool night air, thinking that the Russians were going to take us over for sure. My little brother, Moose, started to cry and said, “Deuce, we don’t have a Sputnik."

      It was our country's wake-up call, but the Russians didn’t take us over. About three months later, Sputnik burned up in the atmosphere and the space race caught fire. America shot past the Russians, and what would someday be called their evil empire eventually collapsed.

      America got another wake-up call when four black students defiantly sat down beside shocked white folks at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and a skinny Jewish kid with a guitar moved from Minnesota to New York. The times they are a'changin', he sang. Boy, was he right.

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