"Eloi and Morlocks"
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I'm not sure if I recall Eloi or Morlocks but certainly enjoyed this ditty on them. I wonder if they represent something else as implied. Good job

4/8/2025 12:49:26 PM [ Report Abuse ]

One of my favorite movies of all time. George Pal was a genius with vision. You had a 1940 Chevy Master Deluxe Coupe??? Be still my heart. A harrowing experience indeed. You painted a vivid picture of the moment. I'm glad you made it off that beach, Sir. Terribly glad as you have become rather dear to me in such a short period of time. I love your writing, your excellent thoughts and your exceedingly keen mind. I am privileged to have made your acquaintance in any form. The sea can be terrifying just as it can be breath-taking. It will put us in our place with the smallest of ease. I too, frequented the shores of California's Huntington Beach. Back in the day, as they say. I haven't been 'home' in many years and they tell me it is all changed. How sad a thing to envision. The quake took everyone by surprise as quakes are apt to do. Quite the wake up call, literally. There was nothing good about that Friday. Again, I'm ever so glad you are safe and sound and here...to tell the tale.

1/22/2025 8:24:11 PM [ Report Abuse ]

Interestingly, that story by H.G. Wells (The Time Machine), as translated to film in 1960, made a huge impression on me as a youth. Especially the Sphinx-like statue with its rising conical sirens that summoned the Eloi to the underworld lair of the Morlocks. To this day I feel a distinct chill every time I hear a warning siren wail, similar, I would imagine to what a tsunami warning siren sounds like on the Pacific coast beaches.

I was caught, late at night, camped on Pismo Beach (on the Californica (sic) Central Coast, with a couple of surfing buddies, when the infamous Anchorage/Crescent City quake occurred in 1964 (Good Friday, 27 March). We had driven my rickety old 1940 Chevy Master Deluxe Coupe south a mile or two down the beach from the only Pismo on/off access road and the fog came in to obliterate everything, so we couldn't see 10 feet in any direction in that murk. The tide had also come in, leaving us with the dreadful prospect of having to drive my old Chevy back up the beach in 'the soup' (the shore wash, on damp sand), while at any moment, a fanciful wall of ocean water swept in to carry us off to perdition! GAAK! That has to be one of the scariest moments of my entire youth and it didn't help at all that a year or so earlier I had been enthralled by that Rod Taylor film of Wells' story.

Long story short, we did manage to get off the beach safety (and onto a local hill-top), but the chilling sound of doom that filled the fog around us, as the wail of that siren blasted away, will ever remain locked away in the darkest little corridors of my recollections, forever.

In that instance, we were the Eloi and the feared tidal wave was the Morlock hoard, calling us to our watery doom. Brrrrrr. -K2

1/22/2025 7:19:47 AM [ Report Abuse ]