With winter coming to an end in Northern Michigan, all sorts of nature came back to life, including porcupines. I had never seen a porcupine before, but my dog, Ladybug, met one in the woods beside the house one evening. They had a disagreement that left over 100 porcupine quills in her mouth and nose. True to his word, my dad made me responsible for the care of my dog. He gave me a pair of needle nose pliers and showed me how to remove the quills, pulling them from as close to her skin as possible. I wasn’t prepared for the whimpering mess Ladybug became.
As I pulled my first quill, she tried to shake away from me, crying out. And on it went, for over two hours. I had to hold her head tight, wrapped partially in a towel, over and over again. Fortunately it was a Saturday night. She was bleeding from each hole that the pulled quills left behind, and I would have to occasionally stop to clean her up. I think I cried as much as she did, but I swear she looked at me with gratitude when they were all gone. I gave her ice cubes to try to curb the pain, but she wouldn’t have any of that, so I took her outside where she could eat snow. And she did.
Astonishingly, on Sunday morning, she practically acted like nothing had ever happened. I was grateful that it was going to be a normal Sunday, because I knew there was going to be a comic book waiting for me at the store in a few hours. After church, though, I had quite a shock. The price of Justice League of America had risen from 50 cents to 60 cents! Fortunately, I was still rich from raising money for the library book that I didn’t have to pay for. But this was not going to go well in the future. I would have to save an extra dime for the week when Justice League of America was going to hit the stands.
Justice League of America #143
The cover of JLA #143 was shocking. Wonder Woman hitting Superman? What could be behind this? It was true that Wonder Woman had been acting a little hostile toward Flash and Green Arrow two months previous, but hitting Superman? Why? As the story began, I felt uncomfortable. I was not used to my heroes disagreeing, let alone, arguing strongly enough that one of them would leave the team. I know Marvel comics did that a lot, but not DC comics. They were the Super Friends, after all, as seen on TV! By the time the issue was over, it was revealed that The Construct, the villain from the previous issue that had been vanquished by The Atom, was behind controlling a whole slew of characters, including Wonder Woman and several supervillains. And by the end of the issue, in true DC style, the status quo was restored, and Wonder Woman was back in the Justice League.
I was a big fan of status quo back then. It provided comfort and stability when I needed it.
We’ve already been over how the 1977 Marvel Memory Album calendar had an impact on my adolescence, but this is the one that got away. I never had the DC 1978 Calendar of Super-Spectacular Disasters…until now.
DC 1978 Calendar of Super-Spectacular Disasters
I just received this calendar in August. I’d been after this one for a long time. Back when my dad and I were the poorest I remember being, living in a trailer, him without a job, and depending on Grandma and Grandpa for financial help just to eat store-brand macaroni and cheese, I wanted this calendar. My dad had gotten me the Marvel 1977 Memory Album the previous year, but this one was $4.95 that we just didn’t have. I saw it every time we went to the bookstore in Cadillac, but comic book prices were $0.35 at that time, so this calendar would have replaced 14 comics and there was no way I was going to make that bargain. I was allowed to buy one each week, and 14 weeks without a new comic book would have been unthinkable then. Fortunately, I don’t have to make choices like that anymore!
First of all, you have to appreciate the Neal Adams cover. Superman and friends shifting the moon in its orbit? Come on! And look at Batman lending moral support. He may be yelling at Supergirl, I’m not sure. But when you look at the back cover, there appears a mystery afoot, with a secret mastermind behind a plot to destroy the Earth. Who is behind it? There are clues inside.
Looking at the inside, you find Batman battling Dr. Light. But what’s this? On January 3, a computer readout gives you a clue to the mastermind’s identity. You have to darken space I-23. Huh?
Yes, on the back page there is a puzzle board like a Battleship board where you darken in the clues to find the identity of the mastermind!
I don’t think I have to tell you that I absolutely LOVE stuff like this. It’s what made comics fun when I was a kid. But maybe the best part of it is, I can put the calendar up on my wall this year, because the dates and days of the week match!
The other McClain family Christmas tradition besides the McDonald’s gift certificates was the LifeSavers Sweet Storybook. It was a thrill to open one of those every year. We weren’t often allowed to have candy of any kind in my mother’s and stepfather’s house, so the expectation was that we would have the whole storybook gone by the time we left from our dad’s and grandparents’ houses.
The current version of the storybook
Currently, the LifeSavers Sweet Storybook contains six rolls of the 5 Flavor assortment. So boring. But back in the 1970s, The LifeSavers Sweet Storybook contained TEN rolls of LifeSavers of various flavors. When you opened it up, it held five rolls of LifeSavers on each side! And you would get not only two 5 Flavors rolls, but Wild Cherry, Butter Rum, Tangerine, Spear-O-Mint, Pep-O-Mint, Orange, Root Beer, and Tropical Fruit! It felt scandalous to be carrying more candy in my pocket than I would eat the entire rest of the year.
When I sat down to write this little memory, I did a little digging and found out that LifeSavers Sweet Storybook dates all the way back to 1935 (when they packed 12 rolls!) and have been a Christmas tradition ever since. Having seen a couple of images, I kind of want to try Clove-flavored LifeSavers, as well as Molas O Mint.
When my wife and I got married over 22 years ago, she asked me if I had any Christmas traditions. She had already shared hers with me, but I had never really wanted to share most of my family stories at first, because, well, there’s always a dark side. This one is no exception, but as I always add as a disclaimer, I promise that the story comes out all right in the end! And that leads me to one of my favorite McClain family Christmas traditions:
For most of the five years that my parents were divorced and before I went to live with my dad, we lived at least two and a half hours apart, if not four hours away from him. This led to fewer visitations than my dad was allowed. He was allowed to have us for one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer, and one week at Christmas. Because of poor choices on his part, he could rarely afford to make the 150-mile drive. Neither would my mother meet him halfway. So, my Grandma and Grandpa McClain stepped in one time in 1973, and drove all the way down to pick us up.
On the way back north to Mesick, we were driving through Big Rapids, Michigan, back when US 131 was fairly new and went straight through the heart of that town. And Grandma and Grandpa had been on the road for almost four hours by that point. So, we stopped at McDonald’s to eat. We went inside, and Grandpa McClain asked me a question I’d never been asked before: “What do you want?”
I stood there, dumbfounded. I honestly didn’t know what to say. Whenever we went somewhere with my mom and her husband, and had no choice but to eat on the road, I was given a hamburger Happy Meal, and my brother and half-sister, who were six and seven years younger than I was, would split their own Happy Meal. That’s not enough to eat for a nine-year-old, you say? I would have agreed with you. So, I stammered, “Um, I always get a Happy Meal.” My grandpa looked me dead in the eye and said, “I didn’t ask you what you always get. I asked you what you want.”
This was the most pressure I had faced up until that point in my life. I knew exactly what I wanted: Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun! Some of you are now singing it to yourselves. Others have no clue what I’m talking about. The Big Mac had recently experienced a very popular ad campaign simply laying out its ingredients in a catchy tune. I had wanted to try one for over a year but knew there was no chance. And now there was.
I said, “Could I try a Big Mac, please?” My grandpa ordered it immediately.
“What size fries do you want?” Oh, my gosh. I thought I was going to die.
“L-large?” He ordered it.
“What do you want to drink?”
“I’ve always wanted to try a vanilla shake like my mom orders.” And I got one. And it was glorious.
My brother got a full Happy Meal to himself (he was only three) and we sat down to enjoy this fanciful feast of fast food. I was in heaven. I ate everything in front of me and made slurping sounds as the last of the vanilla shake was vacuumed from the bottom of my cup. Then, the other shoe fell.
“Do you want anything more?” Wow, I thought, here’s where I go for broke.
“I’ve heard about this new burger, the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Could I try that?” I never heard my grandpa roar as loudly as that before that day, and I never did again. I thought he was going to double over laughing. He brought me back a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and I ate all of that too.
“Ma, this kid has a hollow leg just like his father did.” Grandma readily agreed with him, smiled, and winked at me. What a great trip that was!
I assume that Grandma and Grandpa later told my dad that story, because for every Christmas after that, my brother and I received a book of TEN 50-cent McDonald’s gift certificates in our stockings so that we could order whatever we wanted when we went to McDonald’s. Do you have any idea how much food $5.00 could buy in 1974-75?
By now, if you read my stories with any regularity, you know what to expect. Here it comes.
We had thought we were going to eat like kings, but my mother simply took the gift certificates away from us and whenever we stopped at McDonald’s, she used them to buy us our usual. A hamburger Happy Meal for me, and my brother and sister would split one. Even when I went on a school field trip where we were required to bring money for McDonad’s, I was only given enough gift certificates to buy a Happy Meal; two gift certificates, totalling $1.00. I explained one time why my dad had given them to us, but all that earned me was a good hard slap in the face.
It didn’t matter, though. Literally, it was the thought that counted. I knew there was someone who loved me. Those little gestures, those small glimmers of hope, sustained me until the day I was able to leave that household in January 1977. And that’s why to this day, Magi puts a McDonald’s gift card in my stocking; They don’t make gift certificates anymore, but even though my dad and grandparents are all gone, I still know there’s someone who loves me.
My annual McDonald’s gift card, which was in my stocking this morning!
When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, the merchandise available was unmatched. There were technical manuals, action figures, ship guides, uniform guides, soundtrack CDs, you name it. The comic books weren’t low-budget books produced by Gold Key, but by DC Comics instead. My favorite item, though, had to be the cutaway poster of the Enterprise-D.
Enterprise-D Cutaway Poster
If you wanted to run a Star Trek: The Next Generation campaign (and I did), this was the very best tool. Unlike the original series, where the best care really wasn’t taken to keep track of where everything was, the producers of TNG knew how rabid Star Trek fans were in their pursuit of trivia and they kept track of everything. I had collected the action figures, toy weapons, and ships obsessively, and when it came time to run another RPG campaign, I was well-prepared. With the seventh season of the series coming to a close in 1994 and the release of Star Trek: Generations, I proposed a new game to my friends.
The premise of the game was simple. The crew of the Galaxy-class starship, Challenger, would voyage to the Delta Quadrant, and seek information on The Borg, my favorite Star Trek villain. They would be equipped with every device ever introduced in the series, including the the soliton wave drive (“New Ground”), and the experimental phase-cloak (“The Pegasus”). Because Federation use of cloaking technology was forbidden by the treaty of Algeron, there would be a Romulan representative onboard to protect their interests. Challenger was a regular United Nations in space, with ambassadors from every world in the quadrant. This provided intrigue and cloak-and-dagger activity aboard ship, aside from the encounters they had along the way. We didn’t use a formal game system, but used pure storytelling instead. I used every prop I had bought and they were all on the table with one rule. If the toy made a sound, the person holding it had to improvise why the weapon or device was activated in the game continuity. That led to some fun! To create unique characters, we took apart Playmates action figures and switched out heads to create different combinations that could represent the characters.
When it came time to play the game, there was a teaser sequence to set things up, and then I played the theme song on a portable CD boombox. I used the Star Trek: The Next Generation alternate main title theme from the Next Generation score soundtrack. None of the players had ever heard it before, so it was a viable Star Trek theme for an original story! I would even hold up “title cards” with the players’ names and the name of the character they were playing, printed in the same font used in TNG.
Then I would change out CDs to use the Generations soundtrack, because it included sound effects for the Enterprise-D, including door chimes, transporters, warp drive, ambient bridge sounds, and more. I had a remote control for the CD player, so I could just enter the track number that I wanted to play on command.
I tried to pace the overall story in acts, like a television show, even pausing for commercial breaks so people could grab snacks or run to the restroom. We were playing in the upstairs game room of The Griffon Bookstore in South Bend, Indiana. I would hang the cutaway poster, which I transported rolled up in a tube, on the wall before we started game play.
I think the game was fairly successful. I know many people remember it fondly. It was just really hard back then to get people to show up at a game away from home. We were in our 20s and 30s (I was 30) and had a lot of things to do.
This was one of the happiest memories I had of the 90s and I’m glad I fell down this memory hole today.
