As February rolled in, I settled into a routine. Going to school, visiting my grandparents, going to church, buying comic books. It was comforting to be safe and have that regularity, but I didn’t know that feeling was about to be threatened.
My teacher, Mr. Hunter, was big on reading, so he made sure we all got library cards for Tustin’s small public library. He literally walked us across the street to get our cards and our first books. The first book I checked out was The Making of Star Trek, by Stephen Whitfield. I read the book from cover to cover the first day I had it. I was a huge Star Trek fan from the time I was a little boy, and it was still in syndication. I watched it after school on the black-and-white TV in the living room.
The book was so interesting and I learned so much from it that I read it again over the weekend. It described in great detail what everyone involved with a television production does, from writers to directors to producers, even best boys and gaffers. It had preliminary designs for the Enterprise, detailed views of the props, biographies of the actors, everything to keep a 12-year-old fan’s attention, especially in the age before the Internet. I didn’t take the book to school on Monday, and that turned out to be a costly mistake. My dog, Ladybug, apparently didn’t enjoy the book taking attention away from her, so she chewed off about 1/4 of the cover while I was away.
I had taken responsibility for Ladybug, remember, so I knew I was on the hook for the price of the book, $1.50! I was in a panic. I had to return the book at the end of the week, but I didn’t have $1.50 to pay for it. What was I going to do? I’d already bought a comic book on Sunday (Justice League of America #142) with my church money, so I was dead broke. I didn’t want to tell my dad or my stepmother what had happened, so I was determined to figure things out on my own. I started by trying to sell some of my old toys that I still had and didn’t need anymore to try to raise $1.50, but I couldn’t find anyone who wanted my old stuff.
Justice League of America #142
In Justice League of America #142, the Atom was having a crisis of confidence. The Mighty Mite didn’t think he fit in with a powerful lineup that included Superman, Wonder Woman, and he was ready to retire. He, Aquaman, and the stretchy Elongated Man were forced to fight to protect an alien called Willow, and even then, the Atom felt overwhelmed by the situation. I could relate.
I started looking for kids who weren’t in my class to buy my toys. I was getting desperate. I finally thought I’d found someone, a neighbor kid from down the road that I’d just met. I let him take the toys home before he brought me the money, and I was so relieved. But he returned them the next day because his dad had said no to the deal. I was crestfallen. I was spending nights lying awake, wondering what I was going to do. On the following Monday, I learned something about borrowing books from the library; you could renew a book if you weren’t done with it! I renewed the book for another week, while saving my church money in hopes of eventually paying for the book.
This temporary solution helped me sleep a little, but I was still nervous. After I ran out of renewals, I started paying the fines on a weekly basis. I got my next fifty cents of church money, but I had to pay 10 cents for the late fine for the library, so I was back down to 90 cents. The following week, I got another fifty cents, and paid another 10 cents. I had $1.30 saved up, so I knew it would only be one more week before I could pay for the book. My dad noticed that I wasn’t buying any “funny books,” as he called them. I just looked down at my shoes and said that there weren’t any that I wanted that week. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d done, and I didn’t want to be a burden to him or Peggy. I was still afraid of being sent back to live with my mom. I knew how my dad favored the women in his life.
After another week of fitful sleep, I finally had $1.80 saved up and I took my money to the library along with the damaged book to pay my debt to society. When I shamefully explained the situation, I thought the librarian was going to fall over laughing. She not only forgave and returned my fine money, but she gave me the book as well. They said that I was the first person to check that book out in over five years, and it was headed for the discard pile anyway. She thanked me for being such an honest young man, and sent me on my way. And I was rich! I had two whole dollars, and a book that I would read many, many more times over the years.
The Atom also found his strength, as Willow chooses him to defeat a powerful new enemy, the Construct. The Atom also realizes that he has a place in the Justice League. And I had my place at home. I wasn’t a burden after all.
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.
