Billy Thorpe – "Children of the Sun" (1979)

“People of the Earth, can you hear me?”

Came a voice from the sky on that magical night

Traffic jams in Houston are a dime a dozen:

  

But a traffic jam caused by a naked woman dancing on the roof of an 18-wheeler’s cab while talking about aliens?  That’s something else entirely.

Early Monday morning, a woman driver was involved in two fender-benders in the Houston suburb of Jersey Village.  A little later, she was driving one of three vehicles that collided on Highway 290 northwest of downtown Houston.

If it had been me, I would have stopped there.  Three automobile accidents in one morning would make me feel like I had done a good day’s work. 

But our lady driver wasn’t finished creating mayhem – not by a long shot.

So she stripped down to her birthday suit, climbed up on top of a big rig that was stuck in the traffic jam she had caused, and started dancing.

(One news account said the cause of the woman’s behavior was unknown.  I’m willing to offer a theory that would explain her actions: she was crazy!)

Here’s a CNN report on the incident:

Yes, it is disappointing that FCC rules required the stations to blur the woman’s private parts . . . although you best believe that some local TV cameraman is showing an unexpurgated version of that video to his pals as we speak.

A Ms. Pearly Ward called 911 after witnessing the whole sordid affair.

“That’s the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen,” she told a reporter, “and I’ll be 68 in two days.”  [Emphasis added.]

The police and firefighters who responded to Pearly’s call extended a ladder from a firetruck and begged the woman to come down for her own good.  After all, if she had slipped while tripping the light fantastic on top of the truck, she might have seriously hurt herself. 

If you've got it, flaunt it!

Scarier yet was the possibility that Ms. Not-So-Tiny Dancer might have landed of top on an innocent and normal-sized person on the ground.  (This woman is sooooo fat that when she wears a black bathing suit to the beach, everyone thinks there’s been an oil spill!)

Instead of thanking the well-meaning first responders for helping her, she cursed and spit at them instead.  

Eventually the police lost patience, jumped on to the top of the truck cab, and handcuffed her hands behind her.

(If you’re a red-blooded American male like me, you would have paid good money to watch that handcuffing operation.)

“She was talking about all sorts of things: Wall Street, the CIA, aliens,” according to a sheriff's deputy who was at the scene. 

Pearly Ward spoke to the woman as she was being taken away taken to a local hospital for a mental health evaluation (which I’m guessing didn’t take too long):   “In the name of Jesus I bless you and hope things will be okay for you.”  Amen to that, brothers and sisters.

Billy Thorpe’s 1979 single, “Children of the Sun” (from the album of the same name) didn’t quite make it into the Billboard top 40, which just shows there’s no accounting for taste.  I don’t know much about Mr. Thorpe, but if the lyrics to this song are any indicative, he was as big a wack job as our au naturel truck-top dancer in Houston.

Here’s “Children of the Sun”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: