The Potato Headed God Makes a Visit

"Ethnography of rock art through the content of accompanying inscriptions… sometimes provides not only reliable interpretations. It also imbues the rock art with a human dimension; it lets its producers communicate their thoughts, concerns, priorities and desires to us. They, as actors in deep history, become individuals through the contents of their messages." Robert G. Bednarik 2021.

The old, old woman walks briskly along the beachfront to where a rock face with a smooth, flat surface is protected under an overhang and her five little listeners can also shade from the afternoon sun. She's noticed that the ocean rolls in quietly here as if hushed for the stories.

“The Raketty Tan islanders,” she begins, “were and are people of great perspicacity. Listen carefully, because your tale for today is about their wisdom.” From her bag, the old, old woman removes six colored pebbles and scrapes one across the wall, creating images to illustrate her story.

"Grandma, is this a true tale?" asks the first child.

"Yes, dear, all my tales are true."

"But grandma," asked the second child, is this a true true tale or a not-true true tale?"

"Now, that is a good question," says Grandma, "but you must make up your own mind about that when I'm done." She loved the second child for her curiosity. "Now, keep your questions, and I'll start."

“One day long ago,” the woman begins, "an odd shiny vessel shaped like a gourd dropped out of the sky and landed on the coast of our homeland far to the south, the ancient island of Raketty Tan. People (dolphins, humans, fairy penguins, kangaroos, ostriches, and bugs) came from miles around to marvel at it. You must understand,” says the old lady, “Our aunties had never seen anything like it.”

“What is it?” asked the humans. “What is it doing here on my property?” asked the kangaroos. “Do you suppose we can play with it?” asked the fairy penguins. The ostriches hissed in alarm. The dolphins just laughed—as you have learned, dolphins laugh at everything. As the audience grew, the gourd ship gently and then increasingly violently rocked back and forth. After some time, the top of the gourd exploded upward, opening a lid that crashed down and hung over one side.

"A grey round hairless head with large eyes and a tiny nose and lipless mouth poked out the top of the vessel and looked around. ‘Well, we could jump down,’ he called to someone in the interior. ‘There’s a nice soft patch of grassland over there by the side of the ship.’

"A second head, this one twice as large as the first, potato-shaped and a pasty yellow, pokes out and said, ‘Dammit! Okay, let’s go.’ He leaped out and landed gracelessly on a sharp rock, which he greeted with another curse. He was rapidly followed by several very pale grey to dark gray-green creatures, and a single reptilian figure, all leaping more or less successfully to the sandy beach. Potato Head as by far the largest of all the creatures, just short of human stature; the others are about half his size.

"‘Damnation!’ muttered the pasty yellow humanoid leader--He does seem to pronounce a series of curses,” reported the old lady. "‘We have got to get that door fixed.’

"‘Ow,’ said the reptilian creature, ‘Someone will pay for my bruises!’

The fourth little listener, who was holding the fifth suddenly cries, "She weed on me!" She stands up, carrying the baby with her into the shallows. "Sowwy! says the fifth," and the other four nervously giggle.

The Grandmother continues, "The newly disembarked creatures gathered in front of the Raketty Tan islanders were made up of three separate species. Many of the creatures—about a half dozen—were humanoid grey-green characters in various shades, thin aliens with large round heads and deep, large, oval black eyes. Each wore blue jeans and a tee-shirt labeled “Star Warrior.”

"The one barking orders was taller than the others, lighter in shade than any of the greys, an unpleasant, pasty yellow color. He wore a white coat with fancy decorations on the shoulders, and sported a spectacular sphere of hair on the back of his head colored light blond or white, one green and one blue eye, and tentacles."

The old lady illustrates the Reptilian as a reddish-brown being with spiny scales and a long snout, who she says “looked like an enormous mountain dragon that decided to stand on its back feet and expressed her dissatisfaction with the universe with a nasty temper.”

‘Efrosyni! Front and center!’ barked the leader.

With a worried look on her face, one of the darker greys steps forward.

‘Yessir, here sir.’

‘Get back in the ship and figure out what’s wrong with the ramp.’

‘Yessir!’ The little grey saluted, turned, crawled up the gourd’s walls, and hurled herself into the opening with a crash. Startled sounds emanated from the craft.

‘Ligeia!’

‘Yessir,’ answered a small being in a shrill voice.

‘Work with her!’

One of the children, unable to stop herself, interrupts the story. “Grandma, what language were they speaking?”

“No clue,” says the old, old woman. “I’m just making up that part of the story.”

"‘Yessir, yessir.’ Ligeia walked to the ship and began calling out commands and questions to Efrosyni. ‘Can you hear me?’ she asked, banging on the ship’s walls.

"‘Now,’ says the leader, twisting his tentacles together and turning towards the Raketty Tan islanders. “What can we do about you?”

“The pasty-faced leader now calls out in our language ‘We come in peace,’ but we had our doubts,” says the old lady. “Bang, bang,” the old lady adds, “the little one was still trying to get the door open on their spaceship.”

‘The tall yellow chap told us he and his crew were visiting our planet because their society was becoming extinct, and their only hope for survival was to find another species to breed and create a new blend of alien beings. Astounded, my aunties looked around at each other, then giggled outrageously and turned to walk away. The yellow guy ran around and stood in front of our eldest auntie, staring at her intently for a few moments, and speaking in a monotone, said ‘You will come with me to a new planet, where together we will colonize the new earth and eventually all the stars in the skies.’ Still, my auntie shrugs: she was not impressed. 'Try the penguins,' she suggests."

Turning to the children, the old woman remarks, “We weren’t going to be tricked into going away with this strange person and his fancy machine and crew and leaving our country open to invasion by more idiots such as these.”

Potato Head turns to the kangaroos next, and reels off in passable kangaroo his plea, but they put up their fists aggressively. “Pow!” says the old, old woman in appreciative illustration. The pasty yellow man reels back a little, shakes it off and then turns to the dolphins but they laugh—“They always laugh at everything,” says the old woman. Finally, Pasty Yellow looks at his feet and finally sees a slew of little blue fairy penguins, “As they always are,” the old, old woman adds, “small, curious and nosy and so they have been clustered around the ship and its recent inhabitants this whole time, ignored by the Pasty one. He rummages about in his napsack and brings out a metal square: some sort of translator.

“My auntie turns to her friends and they all laugh. 'Ask the penguins,' she says again, 'They’ll go.' and they begin to walk away.

They had barely turned around when with the loudest bang, the gourd opens up and a ramp slams down on the rocky outcrop. The translator does its work, and the penguins seem amenable to the adventure. The pasty-faced potato head says “Welcome” to the penguins in their language and about 20 of them waddle after him in a stately procession, their flippers held out wide and supported by the other aliens. Until they reach the ramp, which is too steep, and the penguins awkwardly flap their wings and hop up into the spacecraft.

The old, old woman adds a big white cloud of dirt emanating from the exiting spacecraft, and then begins to decorate the painting.

"But Grandma, what happened to the little blues?" asks the third child.

"No one knows--but I'd guess if Potato Head was telling the truth, they went to be colonizers for a new planet."

"What's the moral of the story Grandma?"

"Be kind to all your brothers and sisters regardless of species."

"But Grandma, that's always...."

"Shush now, time to go home, your mamma's calling you."