I couldn’t wait to spend more time with my dad after I moved in with him. It seemed like no sooner had I moved in then we had to jump into a new routine, with going to church on Sunday, starting school, visiting my grandparents midweek, and bringing in wood on Saturdays. Honestly, I barely knew my dad at that point. When we’d have the rare chance for visitation, Dad would usually have some kind of female companion, whether it was his second wife, a new girlfriend, or his third wife, Peggy. We didn’t exactly get his full attention. But now that I lived with him, I wanted that to change.
In Mr. Hunter’s class at school, we were shown, courtesy of some timely Scholastic reading materials, some of the behind-the-scenes secrets of King Kong, which had just come out in December. I asked my dad if we could go to see it, and he agreed. He had to work a half day on the last Saturday of the month, but we’d go to the movies after. The theater in Cadillac was just down the street two blocks from Suburban Furniture, where he was a floor salesman. Also on Mitchell Street was a newsstand, one of my favorite places in the whole world, where my grandma had often taken me to buy books and comics.
I spent the entire morning at the newsstand, armed with fifty cents from the previous week’s church behavior money. There hadn’t been a new Justice League of America to buy, so I had saved it. I took my time and read as many comic books as I could, with no one around to yell at me that it wasn’t no library, which was nice. And sure enough, I finally decided on something worthy of my limited money; it was Six Million Dollar Man #4, from Charlton Comics! I had never seen #1-3, of course, but I wasn’t about to leave a comic book featuring Steve Austin behind!
Six Million Dollar Man #4
I hadn’t been able to read comics or watch many cartoons with superheroes when I was with my mom, but the Six Million Dollar Man was somehow an exception. My grandma on my mom’s side, had even bought me the coveted Six Million Dollar Man action figure for my 11th birthday, one of the greatest gifts ever. I met my dad back at Suburban Furniture, packed my comic book away in his van, and we went to the movie.
The one-sheet poster had been up for weeks, and it was tantalizing enough. Kong was straddling the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which had been completed not even four years previously. And unlike the 1933 classic, he wasn’t just going up against biplanes. There were helicopter gunships and a jet!
King Kong One-Sheet, 1976
The quality of the movie was unimportant to me at the time. What was important was that I was with my dad and I had him all to myself. We split a big bucket of popcorn and had our own drinks, something pretty much unheard of in my previous moviegoing experiences. It was like a dream come true. When I walked out of the theater, my spirits were as high as they’d ever been. Then my dad took me to Burger Chef for a late lunch, and I got one of the collectible glasses from the movie. Boy, those were the days; buy a Coke for $0.59 and keep the glass! And I miss Burger Chef to this day. House of Hunan has stood on that site for decades now.
King Kong Glass from Burger Chef
As we sat there eating our delicious Super Shefs, my dad couldn’t help himself but describe in detail what was wrong with the movie; how the bullets from the helicopters shouldn’t have been able to pierce Kong’s skin, how they couldn’t have gotten him on the ship; how Kong wasn’t big enough to wade across the river. I listened respectfully. I didn’t have the knowledge then to agree or disagree. One thing was certain: I wasn’t as jaded as he was–yet. I was just happy to be there with him, and the whole day just added another layer of security to my life.
I drank out of nothing but that King Kong glass for the rest of the time I lived there with him in Tustin.
While we were at home for a few days during the cold snap of January 1977, my dad suggested I work on my country report, the first long-term project I ever had to do. Oh, it was a laundry list of things I could choose from to put together about Saudi Arabia, a country that I could not have possibly cared less about. I could prepare food from there, draw their flag, talk about the major religions, clothing, culture…blah.
I was pretty cocky about my academic performance back then. I’d never had to try hard to do anything to do with schoolwork. The only grade below an A- I’d ever gotten was in penmanship. Yes, my young readers, we used to be graded on that. With that in mind, I ignored the country report for as long as I possibly could. I had better things to do with my time. That is to say, anything would be a better thing to do with my time. I’m sure you can see where this is going.
I waited until the last minute and I had thrown enough stuff together to get it done, at least. Or so I thought. I saved drawing the flag for last, because I was good at drawing. Have you ever actually looked at the flag of Saudi Arabia? Neither had I. I looked it up in an old set of encyclopedias, and cursed its designer to hell.
So, I spent a couple of HOURS drawing this nightmare, outlining the Arabic inscription, which translated, means, “There is no deity but God; Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” Ask me how I know that. It’s because I had to do a country report on Saudi Arabia. I was up well past my bedtime getting it done and coloring in a massive green field around my outlines by the light of the fireplace. And I swore that I would never procrastinate on a large task again. Oh, if I’d only lived up to that promise.
I ended up with a B on that project, which was the majority of my grade for social studies, so I finished with a B+ in the class for the quarter. And that is when I learned that some grades are stupid things to worry about. And to this day, I still don’t like Saudi Arabia. But not because of their stupid flag.
One big difference about living with my dad in 1977 was doing manual labor. I had to do plenty of it while living with my mom and stepfather, but I hated every minute. Working with my dad was fun. We used a fireplace to heat the unfinished basement we lived in, and every weekend, we went out and got wood for it. I learned how to use a chainsaw to cut down a tree, and how to split wood using an axe. Pretty cool for a 12-year-old!
But the fun part of cutting wood for our family was how we hauled it. We would venture back into the woods on Peggy’s property on snowmobiles, and we chained an inverted car hood to the back to one of them to use as a sled. We would stack the wood on the inverted car hood and haul it back to the house. For the next trip back to the woods, it was game on, as we boys would take turns clinging to the car hood for dear life as another would make sharp turns at high speeds to throw the rider off.
One weekday in January, it was bitter cold, nearly 10 degrees below zero. The wind chill made it far worse, like 25-30 below. Winds were fierce and snow was blowing horizontally by the time it reached the ground. School was called off, and it would have been a perfect day to huddle by the fireplace. The problem was that we were completely out of wood. It was one of the coldest Januarys on record and we had gone through all of our firewood by Wednesday. With no choice in the matter, it was off to the woods, just my dad and me, since my step-brothers stayed with their dad during the week. I can tell you with certainty that I’d never been that cold before, and I haven’t been that cold since. It was the kind of cold that made your lungs hurt when you breathed. We brought back four loads of wood on the car hood, but without the hijinks of the games we boys usually played. I realized later that this was actually a matter of survival. The physical activity of splitting the wood usually kept me warm enough to take off the top of my snowsuit, but not that day.
For the first time in my young life, I had a real sense of pride in the labor that I had done. I wasn’t just mowing a lawn or vacuuming a house. I was helping to provide heat and comfort for my family on one of the coldest days in memory.
When a stranger offers an opinion about my arrested development or emotional immaturity because I still enjoy the trappings of childhood in the form of comics or cartoons and the like as an adult, I just think about this day when I was 12 years old and I let them ramble in their ignorance. They have no idea what I’ve experienced in my life, and frankly, I generally don’t care enough about them to take the time to explain how wrong they are. The only person I ever need to convince is me.
Tustin Elementary was a small school. There was only one class for each grade, so I got to know all the sixth graders in Tustin. Mr. Hunter was the teacher, and he was cool. He had a big, bushy mustache and a way of speaking I had never heard before. He actually said “toe-mah-toe,” once when he spoke. I thought that only happened in the song.
This sixth grade experience in Tustin was entirely different from my previous one in Engadine Michigan. One drastic difference in attending Tustin Elementary as a result of living with my dad was the fact that I could wear blue jeans to school. When I lived with my mother, that was not allowed. When I asked if I could wear tennis shoes, I thought I was really pushing boundaries because I wasn’t previously allowed to do that either. I always had to wear dress shoes to school, which made recesses challenging at times. And God help me if I came home with a grass stain on my slacks. This was a whole new ballgame. I thought I might actually fit in right off the bat.
Up in the Upper Peninsula, kids were shy about the opposite sex. Not so, here in Tustin. Russell was paired off with Monica, and Ron had already laid claim to the prettiest girl in class, Janet. Oh, yeah, instant crush. I spent way too much time staring at her in class. Janet was best friends with Robin, who was also really pretty. As far as I knew, Robin didn’t have a boyfriend, so I felt good about that. I know, I know. Sixth grade?
I had always made friends pretty easily in elementary school. I didn’t have a choice. By the time I was 12, I had gone to nine different ones. And being a baseball kid, I would always find the boys to play baseball, pickle, or the more popular $5.00* with at recess. The problem was that it was January, and there wasn’t going to be any baseball to break the ice. They were doing indoor track events. A boy named Brent was a hero to all of us. He had been doing the shot put and someone threw him the shot. He caught it in one hand, but the weight of the shot pulled his hand to the ground and his finger nearly exploded under the weight. One day soon after, he pulled a bunch of us around to show us the stitches from the surgeons trying to put his finger back together again. The toughest of us stayed in. Some of us almost puked. His finger looked like it belonged on Frankenstein’s monster. I was one of the ones who stayed in, and that gave me the “in” I needed to be accepted.
The drawback of starting in a new school midyear was made plain to me that first week. The entire class were doing country reports, a long-term project. I had arrived after all the countries had been assigned. I would have hoped for Japan, since my uncle lived there. That would have been nice. But no, I was given Saudi Arabia, literally choice #25, a country no one else wanted. It was going to be a long week.
After church on Sunday, I was shocked to see that Justice League of America #141 was on the spinner rack. I honestly had never seen a cliffhanger resolved in a comic book series before. I would get the first part when visiting my grandma’s house, but by the time we returned, it would be three or four months (and issues) later. The first time I got the second part of a story, it had only been a week! Green Lantern was on trial for destroying that moon in #140, but Batman (of course) figured out that the moon had not really been destroyed, and that the Manhunters were engaged in a conspiracy to discredit the Green Lantern Corps as well as their former masters, the Guardians of the Universe. Such satisfaction had never been achieved by this young reader. What a perfect ending. And yet, at the very end, the League hadn’t been able to contact The Atom, Aquaman, and The Elongated Man, who hadn’t answered the alert, and in the best tradition of comics fandom, I couldn’t wait to find out where they were!
Justice League of America #141
On our way to visit Grandma and Grandpa later that day, I read both of the issues back-to-back all over again to get the complete scope of the story all in one sitting. I loved it. I still do.
My dad had a dog named Ladybug. She was a three-month-old basset hound/dachshund puppy. She was long, short-legged, with big floppy ears, and light brown fur all over. From the very beginning of my life with my dad and his wife’s family, I had an attachment to Ladybug. We did not have indoor pets in my mom’s household. Mom had tried to keep a pet, but Steve had always put his foot down. We had a German Shepherd named Dudley when I was in third grade, but he had a house way out in the back yard and never came inside. I fed him twice a day but was not allowed to let him loose or even to play with him. When we moved from that house, Dudley disappeared. I don’t even want to think about what might have happened to him.
But from the time I moved in, Ladybug and I were inseparable. She took to me immediately, since my dad’s affections were divided. She slept with me in my room, burrowing under my covers and sleeping at my feet each night. The problem was that Ladybug was a chewer. She chewed my dad’s moccasin slippers. She chewed a pair of my shoes. And then one day, she made a big mistake. She chewed up the couch. I don’t mean that she chewed one of the wooden legs of the brand-new couch. I mean that we came home and all four legs had been chewed. I mean that there was stuffing everywhere and that the upholstery was destroyed. For such a little dog, she did an awful lot of damage. Peggy, my dad’s wife, was done. She said that the dog had to go. Is it difficult to predict my reaction to this proclamation? I didn’t think so. I broke down completely, sobbing, begging them not to get rid of Ladybug. I had just made an attachment to another living thing after five years of trauma. After about an hour of tearful pleading, a deal was struck.
Ladybug would become MY dog. But as my dog, I would be responsible for everything to do with her. I would feed her, water her, take her outside, clean up any accidents, and, work to pay for any future damage that she would do in the house. To no one’s surprise, I agreed. But then, I would have agreed to give up my firstborn child to save that dog.
With deep snow outside, I spent a lot of time in my black Arctic Cat snow suit and Detroit Lions stocking cap, digging tunnels and throwing snowballs at Ladybug. She would try to catch them with her mouth. She loved being outside with me. And when it was time to come back in, there was no better companion with whom to sit by the fireplace and warm up. She was the Queen of Belly Rubs.
Ladybug’s favorite toy was a tube sock. Any tube sock. I would take my old socks, tie a knot in the middle, and turn her loose on it. She would shake them back and forth, toss them up in the air, pounce on them, and rinse and repeat. But her favorite game was tug of war. She would bring you the sock, drop it, and wait for you to reach for it. And once you got ahold of it, it was game on. She’d grab the other end, and pull for all she was worth. I think if you tied one end of one of her socks to a car, she could have pulled it uphill. She would make this adorable growling sound, so very vicious, but the moment either you or she let go of the sock, she’d wag her tail and be your best pal.
We had another dog in the house as well as Ladybug. Her name was Suzy, and she was Peggy’s youngest boy David’s dog. She was a beagle mix, and she and Ladybug would often go on adventures together in the woods next to the house. They loved to chase rabbits, which were plentiful. This adventurism, however, came at a cost one time. That cost came in the form of a porcupine. When Ladybug came back to the house, her mouth was just filled with blood. Suzy had a couple of quills, but with Ladybug, we counted, once we got her mouth open, over 200 quills. She was in agony. My dad grimly brought me a pair of needle nose pliers and told me to get to work. He showed me how to remove them by taking Suzy’s few out, and then I got to work. I had to pull the quills out individually, each time evoking a cry of pain, and I spent over two hours removing them, hoping that Ladybug wouldn’t bleed to death. We cleaned her mouth as best we could, and I slept out in the living room with her wrapped up in a towel. Incredibly, by morning she was her old self again, like nothing ever happened. I couldn’t believe it.
That next night, with moonlight still illuminating the Fantastic Four on my Marvel calendar on the wall, I wasn’t just grateful for my own safety, but also for that of the snoring dog under the covers at my feet.
