Star Wars had been in the news for a while by the time I saw it in the summer of 1977. With all the traveling and baseball, I didn’t have an opportunity to see it until my aunt insisted on taking me to see it. “It’s no big deal,” I said. “I’ve already read the book.” But she persisted, and off we went.
We arrived at the newer theater in Traverse City, one that is sadly no longer there. It was in the Meijer parking lot, in a section to the northeast of the store that is now overgrown with vegetation. By July, you didn’t have to stand in line for hours, but as we arrived, the movie had already started. I got a big bucket of popcorn and a Coke, and instead of waiting for another hour and fifteen minutes, I thought we should just go in. After all, I’d already read the book and she’d already seen it. There weren’t going to be any surprises. We got to our seats during the trash compactor scene and from that point on, I was absolutely enrapt. When Han fires the blaster and it ricochets in the novelization, it reads, “The bolt promptly went howling around the room as everyone sought cover in the garbage.” That doesn’t even begin to cover what I saw. Lasers and energy weapons were common in science fiction, but they didn’t move like that! I think my jaw dropped into my popcorn and from that moment on, I couldn’t look away. Compared to every film that came before it, the movie was paced like lightning. Where starships were usually lumbering giants on screen, the X-Wing fighters darted this way and that, pursued by the screaming TIE fighters. I was not prepared in the least by reading the book, and watching the movie simply overwrote the entire story in my brain. Shot by shot, Star Wars gave us things no one had ever seen on screen before.
After it was over, I did not move. I could hardly wait for the movie to start again so I could see it all from the beginning. Some of the book was still staying with me, like in the cantina scene, when Luke gets knocked down and Obi-Wan has to intercede. In the book, Luke falls back, “shattering a large jug filled with foul-smelling liquid.” There was no mention of it or reaction to it in the movie, but that was seriously the last thing about the book I thought about for a long, long time. I knew there was always a difference between books and visual media from my lessons with The Six Million Dollar Man, but this was crazy.
We stayed through the entire next showing as well, so I got to see the second half of the movie again. I wanted to stay and watch it yet again, but it was getting late. When we got back, I had to describe for my grandparents the entire movie with enthusiastic detail. I talked on and on about it. When my dad got home, he got the same treatment. I told him that we HAD to go see it together as soon as possible.
The next day, I went out to Grandpa’s garage while he napped, and started work. I had to make my own lightsaber. Strangely, there were no Star Wars toys to be had at any store. Action figures wouldn’t be seen for almost a year afterward. There were no lightsabers to be had, either. I sawed, I grinded, I taped, and I painted. And after a few hours, I had built my first lightsaber. I had an old army duffel hanging from the rafters out in the small garage, and it was filled with rags. I had used it for a punching bag for a long time, but now it took the place of Darth Vader and I cut him down about a thousand times.
When I got my dad to take me to see the movie again the following weekend, he was just as enthusiastic about it. He took me to Burger King for lunch afterward and I got the first of the Star Wars glasses to go with my King Kong glass.
Burger King Star Wars glass
The next day, I built my dad a red lightsaber out in the garage, so he could be Darth Vader, and he indulged me with a few duels.
I would see Star Wars two more times in theaters. The final time I saw it was at a drive-in, again with my dad. I had never seen a movie twice, let alone four times before! But seeing Star Wars was a mass experience. Everyone saw it. Everyone talked about it. It was on magazine covers everywhere. And although there weren’t any toys out in stores, there were print products like trading cards. And suddenly, trading cards became part of my collecting habits. Although I wasn’t getting fifty cents for behaving in church anymore, I still earned an allowance of fifty cents a week. And some of that money went to buy the little blue-bordered cards at 15 cents a pack, which I didn’t arrange by number, but instead arranged in film chronology. In doing so, I could recreate the movie visually in my mind. If I failed to remember the sequence of events (not likely), I could rely on the novelization to help me put them together. I even chewed the gum, horrible as it was. It never occurred to me that there was a comic book adaptation of Star Wars. And by the time I did see an issue of it at Jack’s Market in August, it was #5!
Star Wars #5
Naturally, I bought it anyway, making it only the second Marvel comic I had ever bought. Suddenly my focus began shifting, from superheroes to Star Wars. I would sit down at the dining room table and draw the adventures of Luke Skywalker.
When it was time to go back-to-school shopping, I had a Star Wars folder.
Mead Star Wars two-pocket folder
My back to school wear also included a T-shirt that looked a lot like this, but new:
Vintage Star Wars T-shirt
To say that Star Wars changed the way I saw the word would be understating things dramatically. I started expanding my reading beyond comic books and books about Star Trek and began delving into more varieties of science fiction. My aunt had a book about Logan’s Run, a science fiction movie that had come out the year before, and I dove right in to read it. More on that later.
One of the hardest parts of having divorced parents for us was arranging visitation. My mother had the right to have me for two weeks, the same as my dad had the right to have Jeff for two weeks, and so that we had time to spend together as brothers, they decided to make them consecutive instead of concurrent. So after Jeff had been with us for two weeks, I went back to the upper peninsula of Michigan to spend two weeks with my mom. That meant missing little league, but nothing could be done about it.
We all piled into the Ford Econoline van and headed for the U.P. The idea was to camp out on the way there, to break the trip up a bit. My dad had built a bed in the back of the van for him and Peggy to sleep on, while my brother, both stepbrothers, and I would share a tent. We had an old canvas army tent that always smelled musty. For this occasion, though, my dad bought me my very first sleeping bag. It was super comfortable, because nights up north, even in July, can get pretty chilly. My stepsisters stayed behind to take care of the dogs and the house.
We found a campground in Mackinaw City to spend the night, and it was just a blast. They had a trout pond that you could fish, and you paid by the inch for however big the trout was. Then they had a restaurant where they would cook your own fish for you. Or, obviously, you could cook it yourself at your campsite. Now, that was way too fancy for us. We had to settle for feeding the fish. If you put a dime into a machine that looked like it would dispense gumballs, it would spit out a handful of fish food. Then you would throw it into the pond and the fish churned up the water like piranhas. It was great entertainment to us. But looking back on it now, what a racket it was. People paid them to feed their fish!
When we crossed Cut River Bridge along US 2, we stopped again and walked down the steps below the bridge. It’s a gorgeous valley, especially when fall colors are out. But it was still nice in summer, when everything was green.
When we got to my mom’s trailer, I was so happy to see her. I hadn’t seen her in over six months. She gave me a big hug and had me bring Jeff’s and my stuff into the house to our old room. Although it was a mobile home, it was a 14′ x 70′ with a pop out extension. It was still around 1200 square feet all told. They had a lot right along the shore of Lake Michigan, where they someday planned to build a house. Mom and Steve always had big plans, and were constantly looking for happiness with the location of their home and work. At this moment, they were both working in Newberry, about 27 miles away, a 40-minute commute one-way. My mom worked for the Department of Social Services and Steve worked at the state liquor store. Back then, the Michigan Liquor Control Commission handled the distribution of liquor to bars and stores and also kept a retail outlet in the front. At least they could commute back and forth together that way. It wasn’t always the case, because they would try to get transfers to their newest destination, and one would get the transfer and the other wouldn’t, causing them to both commute to different places.
Jeff and my sister Wendy had a babysitter that they went to during the day, but I didn’t have to go. I’d been staying by myself in Tustin for some time. But just to break up the monotony, I went to work with Steve at the state liquor store a few times. I got to wander fabulous downtown Newberry, which took about 20 minutes down the street and back, but it was still much larger than Tustin. It was then that I decided I would try an experiment. I bought a comic book just to see if Steve would take it away from me. I bought Detective Comics #472.
Detective Comics #472
In this comic, Batman had been subdued and replaced by a guy named Hugo Strange! I’d never heard of Hugo Strange, but there was a panel that referred to the last time Batman had tangled with him…in Batman #1! The art style of this comic was completely different than any other I had seen. It had elements of old Batman stories, like starting a paragraph of narration with an encircled colored letter. It looked like the older reprint stories, when Batman didn’t have the yellow oval around his insignia. But further, it was cartoonier than Neal Adams and Irv Novick, but still appealing to me. The artist’s name was Marshall Rogers, and to my surprise, the writer was the same as my favorite Justice League of America comics, Steve Englehart! That was so cool. I really hoped he wouldn’t destroy my comic.
There was a scene in which Robin ripped his tunic open, and for a little bit, it modernized Robin’s look a bit. It made it look like he was wearing an open shirt, which was quite in vogue in the 1970s.
This was the first time I really started to see Robin as being grown up. In the comics, he had been away at college for almost eight years at this point, but Englehart wrote him as pretty much an adult. Since I had identified strongly with Robin for a long time, I could sort of feel that way, too. And much to my surprise, Steve didn’t do anything about the comic book. He didn’t say a word.
The two weeks went by quickly, and it was time for me to go back. But I was in for quite a surprise, because we weren’t going back to Tustin. Mom and Steve dropped me off at my Grandma and Grandpa McClain’s house in Mesick. While I was gone, Dad had moved us out of Peggy’s house. All of my stuff and Ladybug were at my grandparents’ house! My aunt had had a huge room in their basement, the size of the entire footprint of their house, and for now, my dad and I shared that space. I was shocked. But Dad explained to me that there was stuff going on over there that he didn’t want me exposed to, and so here we were. He had sacrificed his marriage to protect me.
The first thing we had to do was to build Ladybug a dog house. She could not stay indoors all night. Grandma and Grandpa were taking care of my aunt’s dog, Nikki, who was part Samoyed and part Malamute. She slept outdoors, and so would Ladybug have to. We built her an A-frame doghouse out of extra plywood from my grandpa’s scrap pile. We painted it red, with the leftover paint from the two garages, which we had painted when Grandma and Grandpa moved there in 1970. I drew a cursive L on the front over the door, and we filled it with straw, which “Bug” could nest in. My dad assured me that it was only temporary, and that I could keep her indoors when we got our own place.
I could scarcely believe what had happened. I was now going to live with Grandma McClain, my favorite person on the planet? It was like a dream come true. I tried to do my best to be helpful. I mowed their lawn, trimmed the weeds around the house and both garages, helped with the gardening. I wanted my presence to be a positive one. I spent time with my grandpa out in his mysterious garage, that I never really felt welcome in, until then. He taught me about tools and how to use them and let me use anything in his shop that I wanted to, with one rule: that I put everything back where it belonged when I was done. I learned how to measure, cut, and fasten wood. I learned how to sand, grind, and sharpen. I could tell that he loved having someone out there with him; it had been a long time since he had taught my dad.
It was then that I took what I consider my first step into the adult world. I started drinking coffee. Usually, my dad would sit at the table with Grandma and Grandpa, and they would drink coffee and tell stories. I would drink milk and eat cookies. But now, I wanted to try their coffee. I took it with cream and sugar, but my dad did too. I felt so grown up.
I got to go back to Tustin to finish the last few Little League games that were left in the season. It was bittersweet, because I knew I wouldn’t be seeing my latest friends anymore. At that last game, my dad and Sherman bought packs of the brand-new grape Bubble Yum for us. It was enough for everyone to have their own pack. Naturally, we stuffed our mouths with bubble gum. How we must have looked. We had our team dinner at the end of the season at the Cadillac Big Boy (where else?) and I said goodbye to my friends, and finally, to Tustin.
I was used to moving around and making new friends. I had gone to nine different elementary schools from grades K-6. But when we moved in with my grandma and grandpa, my dad promised that even if we moved, I would graduate from Mesick High School. I would not have to change schools again.
With summer vacation in full swing, one of the things we enjoyed was swimming at Diamond Lake. It was a local hangout, with lots of people around kids and adults alike, and a great place to cool off. There was an old inverted metal barrel several yards out into the water that kids would dive off. I was never the strongest swimmer, but I usually did just fine and took my turns diving.
When I was younger, I was late to swimming. I always had a floatie of some kind, whether a duck or some other animal. When my parents split and we went to live with my stepfather, he would not allow a floatie. I had to wear a full life jacket until I learned to swim. I never learned how to swim with him because I always wore a life jacket. One day between first and second grade, however, I complained too much about having to wear the life jacket and he decided he was going to teach me to swim. He had me take off my life jacket and dragged me out to the end of a dock in Grand Traverse Bay. I’m sure you’ve heard the legendary tales of people learning to swim by being thrown into deep water. This isn’t that story.
What my stepfather did instead was grab me from behind, put his hand over my nose and mouth, and jump with me, still wrapped up, into 10-foot deep water, sinking all the way to the bottom. Then he let me go. My nose and mouth immediately filled with water and I started choking. I could feel the sand of the lake floor under me, and I gave one mighty leap straight up. As I broke the surface, I gasped for air, and then sank right back down to the bottom again. I had gotten a look at where the shore was, and on my next jump, I headed in that direction. I came up for another gasp, and submerged again. I repeated this process until I could stand up with my head out of the water. Then I waded to the shore and fell down, exhausted and crying. He gave me his usual insults, but didn’t try to take me out to the end of the dock again.
From that point on, he didn’t try to teach me how to swim, and I never let him walk up behind me again when we were at the beach. It was a few years later that my Grandma McClain took Jeff and me to the Backwaters and let us play in the water, that I put the whole swimming thing together. Turns out it wasn’t that hard, with Grandma’s kind help. I still didn’t like deep water, but I never really had to worry about it that much, until one fateful day at Diamond Lake.
We were playing catch with a Frisbee, and one throw went sailing over my head. Confident in my swimming ability, I swam to the deep water after it, grabbed the disc, and started swimming back. I caught a wave right in the mouth and started choking, and I sank below the surface. It was a familiar and terrifying sensation. Fortunately, my stepsister, Barb, saw me struggling and came out to get me. She pulled me in until I could stand, and just like when I was eight, I collapsed on the shore. I was grateful, but pretty much the whole family made fun of me for almost drowning. It was the beginning of the end of the illusion of the happy family in Tustin.
I started looking at the whole situation critically after that. I already didn’t like the girls smoking and swearing in the house, especially when I asked if I could swear and my dad said no. That was not how I was raised at all. And then there was the matter of the 18-year-old boy from next door, who the oldest girl Debbie was dating, coming home from the military on a break and bringing Coors beer east of the Mississippi (illegal back then), and smoking something that I was not familiar with at a party at the house. I think it was pretty much at that point that my dad decided that it was not a good environment for me to be raised in.
Now that school was out, I was spending a lot more time outdoors. One of my favorite things to do was tramping around the neighboring woods with my dog, Ladybug. I had the BB gun that I had received for Christmas the previous year, and we would go out with a paper bag to find cans to set up and shoot. That was the sad thing back in Michigan in those days, there was never a shortage of tin or aluminum cans on the side of the road. Proposal A in the 1976 general election had passed, and with a ten-cent deposit now required on cans and bottles, it got a lot easier to clean up the state. Fewer people just tossed their empties out the windows of their cars like they had before.
We spent great summer days together. I would ride my terrible bicycle, and Ladybug would run along the road with me. I hated my bike, though. Absolutely despised it. I had saved up for two years on my meager allowance to buy the coveted 10-speed bicycle with the curl handlebars that virtually all of my friends rode, while I still had my yellow Huffy single-speed bike with the banana seat. My stepfather Steve kept my money for me, so I didn’t have a chance to spend it. And finally, after two years, he said that my bike was here. I went out to the shed, to find a bike like this:
Columbia bicycle
It wasn’t a 10-speed. It wasn’t a 5-speed. It wasn’t even a 3-speed bike. It was a single-speed antique-looking laughingstock of a bike, and he had spent two years of my allowance on it. I was furious. Spoiled? No. It was my money and I never would have agreed to buy anything remotely resembling this bike. But, it was the only bike I was going to get for the foreseeable future, so I took the loss and moved on. Well, that’s not really true. I’ve never moved on without rectifying a situation. I vowed that I would get a 10-speed one day.
One warm summer day, I was fishing in the little pond in the front yard. It was stocked with bluegills, and they would bite at anything. All I had to do was put a piece of corn on a hook, and drop my line with a bobber. A car was coming down the dirt road, and Ladybug’s ears perked up. She went running at the car, And it drove right over her. She was part basset hound and part dachshund, so she was low to the ground anyway. But the differential caught her as the car passed over, and she went tumbling 15 feet down the road, and lay still. I screamed her name and ran toward her, expecting to see her dead. She wasn’t but she was bloody and just barely breathing. I picked her up and got her out of the road, tears streaming down my face, and brought her up to the house Even the tips of her long, floppy ears looked like they’d been dipped in blood. My dad was home, and he brought out a towel to wrap her up in. She didn’t seem to have any broken bones, and I took her to the open shed next to the house. Dad said we didn’t have money to take her to a vet, so we’d just have to see what happened.
I stayed outside with Ladybug, and listened to her breathe. It started to get dark, but I wouldn’t leave her side. My dad brought my sleeping bag and pillow out to the shed and said I could stay with her until the end. He was not hopeful. I sat there with her, into the night, praying just as hard as I could for God to save her. I had finally found someone I could take care of, and someone who cared about me, staying with me day and night, and now I was about to lose her. I cleaned her up as best I could, and the injuries looked like they were only on the outside. But she still wasn’t waking up.
I fell asleep around 11:00, and when I woke up the next morning, Ladybug was awake and licked my face! She got up, gingerly at first, and then started running around like nothing had happened! My partner in crime was all right! I don’t think I had ever been that happy in my whole life to that point. Suddenly, the kind of bike I rode didn’t matter a whole lot. There were many more important things to worry about.
My brother Jeff came down to visit in June, after school got out. It was the first time I’d seen him since going to live with my dad, six months earlier. We had shared a room for virtually his entire life, so not seeing him for six months was quite different, especially with all the changes that had happened in my life. It was comforting to have him with me again.
Marvel Memory Album June 1977
My dad was at work most of the time, so he took us to my Grandma and Grandpa McClain’s house to stay for the weekdays, up in Mesick. On one of those days, Grandma took us “to town,” as we always called it. That meant lunch out and special gifts! Cadillac had many retail choices not offered in either Tustin or Mesick. Cadillac had the always-amazing bookstore, as well as KMart, and Giantway. Giantway was a department store like KMart, but you could buy groceries there as well. It was where we got almost all of our toys on visits to Grandma’s house. Jeff got a Mego Kid Flash figure for his special gift on this trip.
Mego Kid Flash
He might have been inspired by the comic book I had bought at the bookstore, Secret Society of Super-Villains #9, which featured the character as a guest star.
Secret Society of Super-Villains #9
I still remember this comic for being notable about a trivial detail. I wondered about the pop can tab shown on the first story page:
What’s on Kid Flash’s pop can?
You have to understand that back then, most pop cans opened with pull tops, which you would then throw away, or sometimes, if you were bold, sink into the soda contained in the can. I do recall one or two people cutting their lips as the aluminum tabs made their way back up to the top of the cans, and I definitely remember cutting my own foot on one.
pull top
It would be a few months before the new tabs made their way up north. We were also a little backward in another way. When Grandma took us to KMart, Jeff had to go to the bathroom, and since he was only six, I went with him. The toilet still cost a dime to use! Pay toilets were still a thing in Michigan back in 1977, but instead of asking Grandma for a dime, I had him climb under the bottom of the door. After that, we continued our shopping.
Cadillac KMart, circa 1978
I didn’t ask for a special gift, since I got to see Grandma all the time, but I did ask if I could get a comic book. She agreed, of course. It was then that I bought my first Marvel Comic: Godzilla #1!
Godzilla #1
What you have to understand about Godzilla is that I had never, ever seen a Godzilla movie. Not a one. But my friends in second grade in Traverse City had, and based on nothing but their descriptions, I had drawn Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra more times than I could count. So, to see an actual depiction of Godzilla in a comic book was like a sign from above. I had to have it.
Our trips to town always involved going out to lunch, but it was usually a stop at McDonald’s. But this time, Grandma had something different in mind. “Would you like to go to Arby’s?” Neither Jeff nor I had ever been to an Arby’s before. I was aware of it from riding past the giant cowboy hat signs quite often, but no one had ever suggested going there. It was a total mystery! We, of course, agreed, and were excited to try something new. Grandma got us the traditional roast beef sandwiches, which I thought smelled appetizing, but the real adventure was the choice of sauces to put on them. She told us to try just a little of each on the corner of the sandwich before making a choice. Arby’s sauce was okay, kind of a mediocre barbecue sauce. Horsey Sauce, on the other hand, was another story. Of course Jeff asked if it was made from horses. Grandma laughed, and assured us both (I was too scared to ask) that it was not. I was hesitant, because the bottle said, “horseradish.” I knew from experience that horseradish was nothing to fool with. I had made the mistake of taking a bite of it from a spoon once.
The tabletop sauces at Arby’s
But when I put that white, creamy sauce on my roast beef and took the first bite, I was transformed. I had never tasted anything so flavorful, so indescribably powerful. It was like my brain exploded into a kaleidoscope of flavor. I immediately covered the rest of my sandwich with Horsey Sauce and devoured the entire thing. And then I asked for another, and I did the same thing. Now, in those days, there were no take-home packets. There were squirt bottles on the tables, and the workers dressed the sandwiches made to go, themselves. I whispered to Grandma, and suggested taking one of the bottles with us. Grandma said that although we couldn’t do that, she could make me some Horsey Sauce when we got back to her house. I was doubtful.
When we got back to her house, the first thing Grandma did was relate the story to Grandpa. He roared with that great belly laugh he had, and after she made him his afternoon coffee and he settled in on the couch for his daily nap, she got out the Hellman’s Mayonnaise, and a jar of horseradish. Grandma added horseradish a little at a time to a cup of mayo until I thought she had the mixture just right. And for the rest of the week, I ate Horsey Sauce on everything. Ham and cheese, tuna salad, hamburgers, hot dogs, it did not matter. Horsey Sauce made everything better! When we had leftover turkey sandwiches at Thanksgiving, there was only one thing I wanted on them. When I made the deviled eggs, guess what I put in them.
I’m not going to lie to you. That day changed my life forever. I have four different kinds of horseradish sauce in my refrigerator right now, including a bottle of authentic Arby’s Horsey Sauce. It is still easily my favorite condiment of all time.
