This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 13, 2011 - Readers of a certain age will no doubt remember director Don Siegel's eerie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The film was an instant hit and acquired an enduring audience through countless televised reruns in the decades after its opening. It also inspired several remakes and take-offs, all of dubious merit. In 2008, the original was named one of the "Top Ten" science-fiction entries of all time by the American Film Institute.
The late Kevin McCarthy starred as a small town physician in the fictional hamlet of Santa Mira, Calif. The good doctor becomes increasingly concerned as various patients confide suspicions that their loved ones have been replaced by emotionless aliens. The psychologist he consults diagnoses the phenomenon as mass hysteria, but soon the truth is revealed: The people of Santa Mira are being replaced by joyless and despotic doubles grown from extraterrestrial seed pods.
As initially shot, the film concludes with a distraught McCarthy shouting frantically into the camera, "They're already here! You're next! You're next!" The studio deemed that ending too unsettling for audience sensibilities and a prolog and conclusion were subsequently filmed that transformed the original story into a flashback. The revised ending has civil authorities alerted to the threat, thus allowing for the possibility that the pod people would be defeated. Turns out the first ending was the more prophetic.
I was driving home on a crisp, clear winter afternoon when "they" first appeared. The city neighborhood in which I live lacks alleys, so the Refuse Division furnishes each residence with a roll-out dumpster for trash collection. Now, standing silently at the curb in front of each house was a bright blue duplicate of the familiar green containers. Like Siegel's pods, they arrived without explanation or stated purpose.
Block after block, they lined both sides of the street, facing each other like giant chessmen stoically waiting to do battle. I immediately suspected alien invasion or -- worse yet -- some new project of municipal government. This sounded like a job for the Board of Aldermen, an institution widely regarded as the greatest deliberative body on the second floor of City Hall.
A call to my alderwoman confirmed my gravest fears. To improve the ecology while saving money on landfill costs, we were going to begin recycling. The new dumpsters were paid for out of revenue raised from the recent $11-a-month trash collection surcharge on our water bills.
I asked how I was supposed to divine all this from curbside and she informed me that the instructions were taped to the underside of the dumpster lid. While it hadn't occurred to me to crawl inside the dumpster to see if it might explain itself from within, I had to admit that the program seemed to make sense.
I hung up somewhat mollified, but couldn't help but wonder what happened to the ancient and honorable American custom of ruling through consent of the governed. If not consulted in advance, shouldn't I have at least been warned?
Rather than let a trash can ruin my day, I decided to adjourn for happy hour. Entering a normally crowded saloon, I found the place virtually deserted. The bartender told me that business has been terrible since the smoking ban took effect. Early January is normally slow, she advised, but never this bad.
She suspected that the problem was the smaller tavern down the street where customers could still smoke. It seems the city allows smoking in bars of less than 2,000 square feet but bans it in more spacious accommodations. How the 2,000-foot figure was reached and why it is permissible to smoke in cramped quarters but not in roomy ones remain enduring mysteries.
I mentioned that City Hall was trying to protect her from the ravages of second-hand smoke and she sneezed in reply, then blew her nose into a paper cocktail napkin. She told me that she'd caught a chill the day before while standing outside to smoke a cigarette while on her break. Feeling guilty, I left her a $2 tip on a $3 beer and went down the street where I could enjoy a cigar.
The little joint was packed and the atmosphere was thick with smoke. As I fought my way to the bar, I thought of my friend from the previous place reduced to penury and disease because of the intrusive ministrations of paternalistic do-gooders. After all, it's not as though there are no genuine problems for civic leaders to address.
The city once again leads the nation in violent crime, its public education system fails to satisfy the state's minimum standards for canine obedience schools, traffic signal synchronization remains a baffling challenge and the snow removal program relies heavily on the arrival of April. Shouldn't our elected representatives concentrate on these issues rather than butt into the private life-style choices of adults?
At any rate, those were my thoughts when I noticed a nearby stack of pamphlets from that ward's alderman. Beneath a smiling portrait, these mentioned all the good work the board was doing to keep St. Louis an urban paradise and then outlined 36 fresh regulations it had imposed on citizens to better conduct their daily lives.
Peering through the blue haze that passed for air in the crowded dive, I stared into the lens of the security camera behind the bar and screamed, "They're already here! You're next! You're next!"
M.W.Guzy is a retired St. Louis cop who currently works for the city Sheriff's Department. His column appears weekly in the Beacon.