There’s this from yesterday’s Los Angeles Times: an obituary for Dr. Frank M. Berger, 94 and creator of the mood-alterer Miltown (and whose very name sounds like a Rocky Horror Picture Show reference if you say it fast).

In the years after World War II (cue documentary music), Berger and his fellow chemists “synthesized a series of compounds” related to something called “myanesin”–including something called “meprobamate.”

After proving that laboratory animals dug it, they convinced a company named Wallace to market it in 1955, naming the drug after the nearby “village” of Miltown, New Jersey.

In subsequent years of course, we’d learn it was just one of many highly-addictive substances to come out of New Jersey (rock critic Robert Hilburn’s longstanding habit of writing glowingly of Bruce Springsteen being perhaps the prime example).

But in the meantime–until Valium’s arrival in 1963–bliss!

According to the Times‘ Thomas H. Maugh II, Miltown “became a favorite among intellectuals and celebrities, especially Hollywood types, who promoted its use enthusiastically. Television comedian Milton Berle, for example, frequently called himself ‘Miltown Berle.’ ”

The drug was also noted up front in the lyrics for The Cramps’ 1980 B-side Drug Train: “Hey people, all aboard the Drug Train/for Plasteredville … and Miltown …”–which, of course, if you were born in, say, 1970 and led a sheltered life, you’d think until now was an actual place and not a drug.

And–surprise! It’s both. Naming towns after drugs is the American Way. (Reminds me–I need to make my Clearwater connection today.)

My final thought: what the hell are the rest of the lyrics for this song? Lux Interior mumbles something–a third destination–at the very beginning of Drug Train, between “Plasteredville” and “Miltown”, but I can’t quite make it out. (I must be on drugs.)

A shiny red Sudafed for the first person to help me decode the secret message (not really).

Tags: 1955, 1963, bruce springsteen, California, Clearwater, Dr. Frank M. Berger, Drug Train, Long Beach, Los Angeles Times, Lux Interior, meprobamate, Milton Berle, Miltown Berle, Miltown New Jersey, myanesin, New Jersey, Plasteredville, psychobilly, Robert Hilburn, Rocker Horror Picture Show, Southern California, Sudafed, The Cramps, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, Thomas H. Maugh II, Valium, Wallace, world war II