1973 - Return of the Prehistoric Beast

June 8th, 1973 - Return of the Prehistoric Beast
By Michael Thomas-Knight

The only thing in life my father had ever concerned himself with was money. He listened to the stock market reports and read the money columns in the Wall Street Journal, spoke of profit margins and percentages, but alas, he was not a rich man; he was just plain-old-cheap. He was frugal to a malignant fault.

My older brother and I would see him twice a year, when he would pick us up from where we lived with my mom. He would bring us on one of his special outings, usually to a fair or a stock-car race, for which he would make us aware of every dollar he spent for the day. He would calculate how many miles to drive to the Danbury Fair, what mileage he was getting on his Pontiac Bonneville, and calculate the total cost of gas consumption for the day. Then, he would tally the cost of meals for my brother and me, admission to the fair, cost of the rides, and add-in how much he would have made if he had worked for the day, and not taken us out. He kept a running total for the trip.

That was bad enough but, he also calculated how much money every one else made in profit. He would do this for everyone in every place where there was a cash transaction that involved my father‘s money and a proprietor; how much the gas station owner made on a gallon of gasoline, how much money the fair brought in for the day, and how much profit the vendor made on my vanilla, soft-serve cone, with rainbow sprinkles.

At one-dollar a cone, he calculated a 74-cent profit.

So, this guy was making over a 300% profit and that guy was doubling his money, and the fair owner was making-a-killing, and: “You kids will learn, when you start working for a living,” he would say to us, “What it really means to spend a-hundred-and-twenty-one dollars and sixty-four cents, in one day on entertainment expenses.” Very generous from a man that never gave my mom a penny of alimony.

I remember, one time he took us to Coney Island. There was a stand selling hot dogs and hot, buttered, corn-on-the-cob. The buttery aroma permeated every molecule of air for half-a-mile, all the way from the boardwalk to the Aquarium. We were all hungry and it seemed to be a clean enough place to break for lunch. When we got on line to order, my dad noted that the corn-on-the-cob was one-dollar an ear. That is when the big spiel started: “Do you know how much an ear of corn costs? Two-cents. And, they want a dollar for one piece? That’s a two-thousand percent mark-up and if I could make two thousand percent on everything I sold in my business, I could retire in a year-and-a-half, and this place has the gall to charge a dollar for it. Even if you used a sixteenth of a stick of butter for every piece they sold…”

I didn’t care about the vendor’s profit margin; I didn’t even know what a profit margin was. At seven-years-old, all I wanted was a damn piece of buttered corn! But my dad kept going on about profit margins; only now he had moved-on to the soda-pop and how it was ninety-eight percent water and used three cents worth of caramel coloring and sugar, but they still want to charge a buck twenty-five….blah, blah, blah. It was a damp day and we had been waiting on a rather long line. When we finally got to the counter my dad tried to talk the proprietor down on the price of the corn but it did not go over too well.

“This is not a flea market“, the man finally said, “If you don’t like the price, don’t buy the corn!” He angrily pulled the corn off the counter, which had been nicely wrapped in foil and ready to go, and placed it back behind the glass. A drip of melted butter fell from the foil and landed on the stainless steel countertop. I stared at it, knowing I would not be experiencing it's sweet taste on this day. “Next!” the man yelled.

I am not telling you these tales to prove how cheap my father had been; I tell you them to show how incessant my father was concerning all matters of money. So, you can imagine the expression on his face when I told him I wanted to be a Paleontologist.

We were heading home from the Long Island Game Farm, on eastern Long Island. It was a long drive westward on Sunrise Highway which consisted of three lanes in either direction with a grass island between them rimmed with metal guard rails about three feet high. The rural Suffolk County expanse condensed to more populated areas; the trees thinned and the road became lined with car dealerships, fast food joints, drive-thru banks and strip malls. Sunrise Highway was not a real highway and did not consist of exit and entrance ramps, but rather had cross-streets like any other road. However, there were few cross streets, which enabled vehicles to gain speed, going perhaps 45-50 mph between distant traffic lights.

I had been sitting in the front seat of my dad’s Pontiac, my eight-year-old mind deeply embedded in a book, as the world passed by in a blur outside the car window. The book was “The World of Dinosaurs” which I had borrowed from the library. The oversized book featured many color illustrations of prehistoric beast that ruled the earth millions of years ago.

“Just my Imagination” by the Temptations, sung softly from the car stereo speakers. My dad liked Motown, and CBS radio played quite a bit of it in the early 1970’s. I had blurted out my career choice quite innocently, not thinking it would harbor much reaction or discussion. At first it didn’t seem as if anyone heard my statement and I perhaps did not even realize I had said it aloud.

“The Allosaurus was over twenty-five feet long from head to tail and stood eighteen feet tall.” I added, authoritatively, speaking to no one in particular. That was when the discussion started.

“You know, Mikey,” my father began, “You’re still young and you don’t have to decide your career at this age.”

“I know, but that’s OK. I already decided I am going to be a Paleontologist.”

“Well, that may be how you feel now, but you’ll probably change your mind a dozen times before you’re old enough to even get a job,” my dad said.

“I’m going to be a Paleontologist,” I said, this time strongly accenting the last syllable of the word.

At that moment, my older brother, John, added his timely statement from the back seat of the car. At age twelve, he knew how to throw gasoline on a fire, then sit back and watch the flare up, especially when it came to matters that irritated my father. “I don’t know, dad,” he said, as my father raised his eyebrows and looked to him through the rearview mirror, “He’s pretty serious about this. He has dozens of books on dinosaurs and he can name every one of them.”

My father refocused his efforts and began advising me again. “I don’t want to discourage you…” although that was exactly what he was trying to do, “…but you’ll never be able to make a living doing that.”

“I’m going to be a Paleontologist,” I re-stated. I turned the page in my book to see a large side-view of an adult Stegosaurus. Its plated spine and spiked tail were a beautiful sight to me.

“That’s not the kind of thing I have in mind for a son of mine. Do you even know what a Paleontologist does? They don‘t spend all day in an air-conditioned museum looking through picture books.” He thought he had me beat with this statement.

“Paleontologists find fossils in desert rocks, dig them up, and put them together like a puzzle, to see what the dinosaurs might have looked like when they were alive.” This was almost a line-for-line definition, which I had read in a book, but I completely understood what it meant and couldn’t wait until I was old enough to explore the rocky desert landscape of Colorado.

“You also have to get money to fund expeditions; you have to ask for grants and donations. You have to spend your life begging for money and then, you can’t spend the money on yourself; you have to prove that every dollar is spent on the expedition,” he said.

He had already turned my dreams and hopes into dollars and cents and I was greatly irritated with the conversation. As a defense, I began my eight-year-old, stone-walling technique.

“I’m going to beeee, a Paleontologeee!” I turned my statement into a rhyming limerick.

“You’re going to spend your life in the desert? You’ll never make it. Have you ever seen those science people on their expeditions? All dirty, with ripped clothing; they look like a bunch of bums…”

To this I sang: “Paleontology, that’s what I’m gonna’ be!”
“Paleo - Paleo - Paleontology!” I was getting a good rhythm going.

My father’s voice began to climb in volume, to make sure I could hear him over my own singing. “Even if you’re lucky enough to have a great discovery, what kind of money do you think you can make from it? Peanuts! There’s no profit; it's like working for a charity.”

“Paleo - Paleo - Paleontology!” I sang.

“You’ll live your whole life broke, and don’t think you’re gonna’ be calling on your Papa for hand-outs when you have to pay rent, or pay a bill, or if you have a car payment to make. I had to make my own way in life; I paid off my mortgage in 15 years…”

“Paleo - Paleo - Paleontology!” I sang even louder because I did not want to hear the parade of my father’s achievements, a laundry list of accomplishments that I and my brother had to endure every time he visited us.

“I bought this car, brand new, for cash…” my father’s voice boomed in the small confines of the car, “I run my own business; I pay all my bills on time…”

“Paleo - Paleo - Paleontology!” I sang. I became aware of my brother giggling devilishly, in the back seat. He thought the whole thing was hilarious, which only caused me to sing even louder, drowning out my father‘s voice, “…that’s what I want to beee!”

Then, both my father’s boasting and my boisterous vocal performance were upstaged by a horrible sound. It broke the air, startling the late Sunday afternoon pedestrians. People darted their heads in its direction, while others cowered in fear. Sparrows scattered into the air and away from the noise. It sounded like an eagle’s ‘caw’ only two octaves lower and ten times louder. It lasted for a full five seconds until it grabbed everyone’s attention. The sound reverberated through the alleyways and echoed off the buildings.

I looked up from my book, my eyes wide with terror, my mouth hung opened, and saw it; a full grown Tyrannosaurus Rex. Its body was blue and it was in mid-jump over the center divider, coming right at us. It had large forward-looking, round eyes, and a powerful jaw, lined with gleaming, dagger-like, teeth. It touched down only a few feet forward of the Pontiac. My dad’s eyes bulged as he slammed on the breaks. Then with unbelievable speed, the powerful jaws of the beast grabbed our car and flung it aside. The windshield shattered instantly becoming a gray sheet of ice. The car rolled, up-side down, right-side up, two times. I jerked around in the confines of my seat belt, several different directions in a split of a second but somehow managed to hold onto my dinosaur book. The car jolted to a stop when the wheels hit the curb and in response, the windshield dislodged from its seating. I briefly saw the Stegosaurus illustration on the page of my book, and then the glass fell upon it, obscuring the page. Other chunks of glass hit me in the forehead gouging bloody lines in my flesh. The T. Rex passed over the car at a furious pace as I witnessed it through the opening where the windshield had been, only a second ago. Its underside was gray and its powerful hind legs propelled it away from us, as a trail of broken glass, small pebbles and kicked-up dirt, followed in its wake like the tail of a comet.

Stricken with fear, a rush of adrenalin surged through my body. Despite the burst of energy, I suddenly felt quite sleepy. I closed my eyes and a moment later I succumbed to darkness. Any will to fight off this sudden fit of sleep had been robbed by the violent attack of the blue Tyrannosaurus.

I awoke several hours later in a hospital bed, my eyes squinting from the bright light of the room. My mom stood over me, worry lines creasing her forehead. My brother stood by her side, seemingly unscathed by the incident.

“Mikey, how do you feel?” my mom asked in a gentle voice.
“I don’t know. OK, I guess. Where’s dad?”

“He’s Ok,” my mom assured, “He’s being examined in another room.”
She lightly brushed the hair away from my eyes and I heard a sound that was unfamiliar as her fingertips glided over bandaged spots on my forehead.
“Do you remember what happened?” She asked.
“Yeah, I think so.” I said tentatively. “We were attacked by a T. Rex,” I declared, “a big one!”

At that moment, a doctor walked in the room, clipboard in his hand and smile on his face. “What is this I hear?” he questioned.

I explained my story, telling them about the Tyrannosaurus-Rex jumping across Sunrise highway, tossing the car aside with us in it, then disappearing behind a wall of buildings. As I relayed the story in detail, the doctor checked my pulse, listened to my heart with a stethoscope, and looked into my eyes with a bright light. We seemed to finish at the same time and the doctor straightened his posture while tucking his mini-light back into the breast pocket of his white hospital shirt.

“Well, that’s some imagination, you got there, young fellow,” he said while jotting notes on a report, clipped to the clipboard. When he finished writing he looked up and said, “Now, can I tell you what really happened?”

“Really happened?” I couldn’t fathom what he planned to tell me, he wasn’t even there when it happened.

“Yes, well, you were in a car accident, a collision. A blue car, a Chevy Nova, I believe, jumped the divider between the East and West lanes and collided head-on with your dad’s car.”

I gazed at the doctor in disbelief, dumbfounded by what he had told me. It made more sense than the story I had told; dinosaurs had been extinct for millions of years. I knew this. But how had I seen it so differently?

“Do you remember, now?” the doctor asked.
“I don’t know,” I said wearily.
“What do you know?” the doctor questioned.
“I know one thing,” I said.
“Yeah, what’s that honey,” my mom asked.
“I know that I do not want to be a Paleontologist,” I declared.