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Greetings and Welcome to The 405 Coffee Break with O.K. Solberg
New episodes tend to air over the local KMMR radio station @ 5 minutes past 4PM each M-F. And have been doing so, nearly every week since Sept 2018.
New episodes appear here usually within a few hours after that KMMR air time and been striving to post new releases here by 4:30PM.
I want again welcome you to The 04:05 Coffee Break. Get your cup of coffee, glass of iced tea, bottle of water. You know the routine. Let's see what's happening.
OK Solberg:Spring wheat $6.42 a bushel, 550lb steer calf, $4 to $4.40 a pound, depending on their quality. And a 100lb fat lamb in Billings $3.10 a pound to $3.15. But, guys, there's more, much more.
OK Solberg:Ok. It's the month October. Wow. In fact, the 1st day of October. You know what that means? Yes. You do. It's Autumn. We always love stories that mention the word autumn autumn. It's autumn.
OK Solberg:Instead of fall, I always like Autumn. It appeals to us, especially while we bask in the wind chill of -20F below zero as we read thr story. But it's nice, and it's autumn, and it is upon us right now. We will soak it in while it's happening.
OK Solberg:Okay. Yesterday and Tuesday, I talked about the banana. I guess there's no reason to stop now. When I stumbled onto the great banana hoax in 1967, I thought, wow. I'm a little late to the party, but I'm still gonna enjoy the festivities. So listen up because I found a clip that just expresses the high points.
OK Solberg:The great banana hoax in 1967. In the spring in 1967, a strange rumor swept swept through America. Supposedly, the inner part of a banana peel could be dried, smoked, and produced a psychedelic high from a fictional substance called bananadyne.
OK Solberg:One of the earliest documented printed recipes appeared in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967, and the stories quickly spread through underground newspapers around the country. The rumor became so widespread that people actually smoked banana peels and bananas became a countercultural symbol.
OK Solberg:At an Easter 1967 Human Bee Inn in New York Central Park, at least 10,000 people attended and contemporary reporting described people carrying banana symbols and participating in banana themed antics.
OK Solberg:Donovan's song Mellow Yellow added to the confusion, its lyrics mentioned an electrical banana, and many people connected the song with the banana smoking craze even though the song had been released a year earlier in 1966 before the hoax was spread.
OK Solberg:The joke eventually reached mainstream entertainment Mad Magazine January 1968, and that issue included Don Martin's A San Francisco Trip, a two page comic about a hippie getting high from smoking a banana peel.
OK Solberg:The cartoon shows a hippie trying to get high by smoking a banana peel, turning the supposed banana high into classic Don Martin slapstick. Instead of experience a psychedelic trip, he winds up stumbling and taking a painful tumble with a cartoon turning his supposed trip into a literal falling down trip.
OK Solberg:MAD had taken a bizarre 1967 rumor and turned it into a joke for National television national magazine audience. When I do the research, I find that the banana hoax really turned up in a lot of places back in 1967 and 1968, and then science delivered the punch line.
OK Solberg:Researchers were even checking it out, and they published tests showing that a baked banana skin contents has no hallucinogenic substance, and a 1967 report in the American Journal of Psychiatry was actually titled The Great Banana Hoax.
OK Solberg:So the Great Banana Hoax was real, but the psychedelic banana wasn't. Thousands of peace people were chasing a high that wasn't in the banana. The high was in the story. And I find it some 59 years later, and it's still making us laugh.
OK Solberg:I'll close with a bible verse, Proverbs 17:22 A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22
OK Solberg:I love a joyful heart, and the banana really tickled my funny bone, especially the way I accidentally found it.
OK Solberg:So until next time, as you go out there, remember now, don't be bitter.