When I was in fourth grade in the fall of 1974, we lived just outside of Hastings, Michigan. It was the longest stretch of attending a single elementary school that I ever had. I had started second grade at Northeastern Elementary, and did all of third grade there, and had just started fourth grade in the same place, despite moving out of town, which would have placed me in a different school. This required me to do an unusual transfer of buses, but my mom wanted me to have that stability.
I have told the tale to my students many times of the time I was hit by a school bus. They often wonder at the hyperbole of it. It certainly sounds more devastating than it was. When I got off the school bus one rainy afternoon, I noticed that my boots (galoshes, really) were unbuckled, and if my stepfather saw them like that, I would get “the stick.” So, I bent over to buckle them up as the bus rounded the corner to make a left turn, the back end swung around and hit me squarely in the rear end, knocking me to ground, carrying on its merry way. I lay there for a minute, splayed flat on the ground, unhurt, and after a moment I realized what a tale I now had to tell. I’d been hit by a bus! I started laughing maniacally.
I started with a funny story to soften this one. It was around this same time that my brother accidentally shut my finger in the car door. Now, you have to realize that at this time, most American-made car doors weighed about the same as an entire compact car does now. When you closed those doors, they made a satisfying “clunk” sound. That sound was drowned out by my yelling when my brother, who was only four years old, caught my pinky finger in the door. We got it back open quickly, but my little finger was a mess. There was a big old blood blister under the nail, and it throbbed.
Over time, my fingernail got infected. My finger was swollen and discolored. By the next weekend, it was looking very ugly, and the nail had started to come away from the skin. My stepfather decided he knew what to do about it. So, on a Sunday evening, he took me over to the sink, held my hand under cold running water, and pulled my fingernail off with a pair of pliers. I probably don’t have to describe the incredible pain I suffered, but it wasn’t enough to make me pass out. I’ve never passed out from pain. I’ve come close once or twice, but I’ve never passed out. I did scream, though. I never screamed as loudly as I did that day in my life. It was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced to that point. As I held paper towels over my finger to staunch the bleeding, I noticed that the quicker picker-upper was filling with blood. Like a lot of blood. We were applying direct pressure like all the first aid directions told us to, but it wasn’t stopping. It was finally decided that Steve would take me to the emergency room before I passed out from blood loss; or worse. He was mad at me because he was trying to avoid taking me to the doctor in the first place and now he was going to have to pay for an emergency room visit. At least he had his priorities straight.
Sitting in the emergency room, I was fascinated to see that they had a color television set up so that people could be occupied while they waited. The television show, Apple’s Way was on. I liked that show, but hardly had a chance to watch it because Steve didn’t like it. It was by the creator of The Waltons, another show he didn’t like. When we were finally called back, the doctor was able to stop the bleeding, and chastised Steve for waiting so long to bring me in. At this time, he and my mother were not married, and he was not my legal guardian, at all. The doctor said that the infection was pretty bad, and that some drastic measures would have to be taken to get it all out. Twice a day, I had to soak my finger in hot water with Epsom salts and then cover the spot where the nail had been with a raw potato for an hour to draw out the pus. This had to be done for a week. As you might imagine, this hurt quite a bit, but by this time, I was no stranger to pain. I did this every morning before school, and when I came home in the afternoon.
The upside of this event was the science experiment that my friends and I got to participate in, as every day we got to watch the progress of my fingernail growing back. When I came to school each morning, I would peel back the bandaid and we’d all check to see how it was going. It took about four months for the whole thing to grow back. All I cared about is that it would be back in time for baseball season, because my left hand was my glove hand. Fortunately, it worked. It stung a little, but baseball took a lot of my pain away back then. It still does.
This machine, The Great Hot Air Popper, is one of the finest ever devised by humankind. Note, I write is, not was. How do I make such a claim? Because even though I got it in 1978, it still works!
When my dad bought this KMart blue light special, it was an outrageous $9.99. Little did we know, however, that it would see me through decades. My dad was out of work for about six months in the winter of 1978-79, and we didn’t have a lot of extra money. So, in the evenings, we ate popcorn. Lots and lots of popcorn. Even then, half a cup of popping corn cost practically nothing, and all you had to do was melt a little butter in the butter tray, add some salt, and you had a reasonably healthy snack for literally pennies. Now, in those days, I liked to experiment and think outside the box with my food. So, when my dad had me put Lawry’s seasoned salt on my popcorn, I thought, why not? It is simply the best, takes less salt to make big flavor, and it’s still my preferred way to eat it.
That Christmas, we had a small tree, and no decorations to put on it. We had a needle, thread, and popcorn, though. We strung popcorn on that tiny tree, and I fed my dog Ladybug about 100 pieces of popcorn as well.
When I went away to college, the Great Hot Air Popper came with me. My dorm room was a popular place in the evening, because cooking appliances were not allowed in the dorm, yet somehow, my roommate knew how to block smells from leaving the doorway, and popcorn was to be enjoyed by many a poor college student who only had to bring an empty bowl.
I set up at my buddies’ local toy and comics show yesterday. It was the first time I brought any Megos out for sale, to go with the Hallmark ornaments I’ve been selling for a friend.
Sales were light as the traffic was pretty limited due to the inclement weather. But I think this model might be workable. I had a couple of people stop by the table, and instantly smiled and fell into reminiscence about their Mego figures. One even told me that he had a few that were broken. I told them I could fix them and we exchanged numbers. Another dealer asked me, after he saw what I had out, if old, broken Megos had any value. I said, “They do to me.” He even had them with him but not on display. He got them out and we worked out a deal.
Now, this might look like a pile of junk to most people, but to me, it’s a gold mine. I mean, yes, some of it is junk. But the Captain America, Aquaman, and Conan were decent, despite Conan missing part of his leg. And let me tell you, whoever owned these toys as a kid must have been as mean as Sid Harris in Toy Story, because they weren’t broken at the knee joints like most Megos break, but they were broken below the knees, where it’s nothing but solid plastic. That takes some serious torque. But after a bit, I was able to harvest fresh vintage knee pins from each one. So, another great reason to do little shows in the area!
Another dealer was working on his own collection and had his Dukes of Hazzard Megos with him. They were in need of repair and I told him I could help him out. I said that next time, I would just bring my spares and tool boxes with me and repair stuff right at the show! I think that would be cool to do. If it becomes known that I do on-the-spot repairs at shows, people will bring business to me!
But the best bit of the day came when my good friend Bruce Nelson just suddenly appeared in front of me. Bruce is a special kind of friend. He drove all the way from Indianapolis just to see me at the show!
I met Bruce at the first C2E2 convention I did with Solution Squad, and he encouraged me to apply for the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship, which I did, and received! We’ve been friends ever since.
You know, sometimes when I write about the past, people tell me that I make it sound like they are there. I take that as about the highest compliment a writer can be paid. But to me, there’s more to it than that. When I write about the past, it’s sometimes like I want to be there.
I have a vivid memory. It’s colorful. It’s full of sights and sounds and smells. And more recently, I have discovered the tactile sense of memory to be important as well. Working with and on the action figures of my youth has brought about a whole new perspective about my reminiscences. For example, when replacing a boot on a Mego Superman figure, I remember that sometimes it’s easier to get the boot completely back on the figure’s foot than others. You have to extend the foot by bending the ankle to point the toes to insert the foot. Then when the toes reach the sole of the boot, ideally, the foot bends back to flat again, the heel slides in, and the rest of the boot slides on easily over the calf. But sometimes it’s difficult. Sometimes the toes of the figure want to dig straight in the sole of the boot at a right angle and they don’t want to make that final slide. I have spent half an hour trying to get a boot on a Mego toy before, working the insertion at different angles, trying to get it to slide in just right. There’s a satisfying give when it finally happens that’s almost like flipping a switch in my brain that releases endorphins.
I think that’s a part of toy collecting that is overlooked by the people who don’t understand the hobby. When I watched the joyous faces of very serious 40-year-olds as they transformed their Optimus Primes from robot to truck and back again out of sheer rote and physical memory, that’s when I understood it. It isn’t just photos, videos, foods, and songs that take us back. It’s touch as well, and it isn’t just old people. It’s holding something in our hands that we held when we were the happiest in our lives; before we had responsibilities and our imaginations were curtailed by rules, discipline, and structure. And in my case, abuse. If you have read any of this blog at all, you know that I focus on those scant weeks of happiness in the midst of years of horror. It’s almost like there was no way I got enough of that joy during those five years of abuse, and I’m going back to get more, no matter what anyone thinks.
It’s more than that. Not only am I surrounding myself with many of the toys I never had (and was not allowed to play with even if I did have them), but I’m fixing broken toys so that more people can experience the same joy I do. It’s a similar feeling to when I was teaching. I tried, successfully at times, to be the teacher I needed when I was that age. Now that I don’t have that, I’m finding it another way.
When seventh grade was finally over and summer vacation began, I couldn’t wait to play baseball. The year before, I had played Little League in Tustin with my dad as an assistant coach, and there was no question that I was one of the stars on the team. But in Mesick, that pecking order had already been established, and I was more like in interloper coming in to disrupt things. Still, I had made friends over the course of the year thanks to my size and being recruited to play basketball, and I was one of the guys now. So, naturally, I wanted to play baseball, which was a sport I was actually good at and had experience playing.
To say that we were dominant as a baseball team would be an understatement. We crushed everyone in our path. These guys had been playing together practically since birth, and their roles were were established. Everyone knew who the pitchers were, who the catcher was, and who played each position. I, who had been used to playing first base, was cast aside in favor of two left-handed players. I was relegated instead to right field. Not because I had a good arm for that long throw to third, but because fewer balls were hit there than the other two fields. I had fielded fly balls for years on the playground, but playing organized outfield was different. I did have a good arm, far better than average, and I loved to unload from the outfield. I was pretty accurate, too. I was happy as long as I was playing.
Can you picture the movie, The Sandlot? Just kids playing in blue jeans and t-shirts? That’s who we were. Kastl Well Drilling was our sponsor, and it was written in black on the front of our orange t-shirts with our numbers on the backs. The head coach our team was Jerry McNitt, the local gas man who also had a trout farm. His son, Eric, was our best pitcher and one of the lefty first basemen I mentioned. Floyd Carpenter was his assistant. Floyd was married to Vonceille, who was the lady in town who cut everyone’s hair. No, I mean it. She was the only stylist in town as far as we boys went. Unless you wanted to drive 20-25 miles to Cadillac or Traverse City, Vonceille was the only game in town. She was also Monty Geiger’s mom, and he was one of my classmates and teammates. They lived right across from the ballfield, so it was convenient!
As the summer went on, I looked forward to Little League every day. There was nothing I loved more than playing baseball, even from a young age. It was one of the few things that I did that my abusive stepfather actually approved of. I still remember the thrill of getting my first baseball glove (from a garage sale) and playing catch with myself by bouncing a hard rubber ball off of the propane tank in our back yard. The cylindrical nature of the tank provided for fly balls, ground balls, and line drives, depending on the angle at which the ball hit the tank. Eventually, I received one of the best gifts ever, a Pitch-Back.
With the Pitch-Back, I could use an actual baseball, another wonderful Christmas gift. I was always amused that my Christmas gifts were usually things that I couldn’t use for months while we waited for good weather, but my dreams were filled with visions of using them, and that sure beat nightmares any time.
One thing I had never dealt with before in baseball but encountered for the first time in Mesick, was a curveball. For those of you who don’t deal in sports very much, a curveball is thrown with an angled spin that makes the ball change course in the air. It is NOT an optical illusion. The raised seams of the baseball provide resistance against the air in the direction of the spin, while the spin accelerates on the downward side. Bernoulli’s principle is at work here. For a right-handed pitcher throwing to a right-handed batter, you literally aim the ball at their lead shoulder, and the ideal pitch will break down and to the left, across the plate for a strike. That means to the batter, for a split-second, the ball looks like it is going to hit you. You have about half a second to determine if it’s a curveball or not, and whether to swing. You determine that by picking up the spin out of the pitcher’s hand as soon as possible. As a kid who had been hit a lot, I was not one to stay still in the box and find out. I flinched almost every single time. Throwing a curve ball puts a lot of tension on the elbow, so it’s generally not something you see until 12 or 13 years old. That added a whole new element to baseball for which I was unprepared.
Still, our team dominated every area team, going undefeated for the entire summer. We beat one team in Grawn 38-0. By the end, we were all batting opposite handed so as not to run up the score even more. When victorious, our coaches would take us to the Dari-Pit for ice cream.
The Dari-Pit, a few years before I was in Little League, but it looked pretty much just like this
This, of course, was the same place my grandma used to take my brother Jeff and me for ice cream, and I knew I loved those banana boats. When it was my turn to order, I ordered the banana boat. The other players jumped on me immediately. Banana splits were for players who hit a home run. Everyone else just got a vanilla or chocolate cone. I was devastated to have committed such a faux pas with my new team. I overreacted and refused any ice cream at all, because I had been conditioned to prepare for punishment for making such a mistake. The coaches wouldn’t hear of it, though, and were great. They just told me gently to check with them next time. This, like so many other instances growing up in Mesick, was a kindness that I would never forget. It was the polar opposite of what I was used to, and how I was used to being treated. Teachers and now coaches were proving to be positive models for adult behavior which I would emuate in my own adult years.
I guess I kind of REALLY fell down the rabbit hole I described a month ago. I do that sometimes. I get hyperfocused on the new thing in front of me, and I go all the way in, leaving everything else behind. I started repairing, repainting and reselling vintage Mego action figures, and wow! It is so incredibly satisfying. I found myself in over my head before I knew it. Since I last posted about them on August 30th, I went from this:
To this:
And that’s not counting the ones I’ve sold. That Planet of the Apes Ursus I posted about on August 30th? I sold it for $129.99. The risk that I was worried about paid off big time! I used the profit from that sale to do something better with my photography. I really didn’t care for the sunburst background I used. So, I went to Amazon and found a miniature 16″ x 16″ photo studio. Self-lit with a ring of LED lights and a number of plastic backdrops, it did the trick! The next figure I put up was a vintage Scotty figure from the 1974 Star Trek line.
Scotty in the studio
I used a diorama created by my friend Mike Sutter of the Guardian of Forever from the classic episode City on the Edge of Forever to frame my photo. Check out the result!
It really classes up the toy, doesn’t it? I put this Scotty figure together with parts. I got a head and uniform in one lot, the weapons in another, and the type-2 body in a third. I sold it after three weeks for $79.99. But before that, I was able to sell the Lt. Leslie custom figure I had made for $59.99! I couldn’t believe it! I used a printed background on a normal piece of computer paper and a riser that Mike made.
Then a type-1 Spock for $59.99. I was selling the figures just about as fast as I could pull in replacement figures and parts.
I even sold a French Spider-Man figure for which I fixed a broken leg! I bought it for $42.75, and ten days later, I sold it for $79.99. It may have taken me 10 minutes to fix his leg.
Encouraged, I started buying figures and parts like crazy. Then, as I realized I had too many figures on my shelf (as you can see above), I decided to put together a nice set out of reconditioned figures that I had repaired, repainted, and outfitted with reproduction weapons. And last night, after just a few hours, I sold it, my biggest sale yet!
I sold this batch for $180! That’s more than my pristine set cost me a few years ago with vintage weapons and their foil stickers still intact.
The only one that came to me whole was Uhura. I just added a reproduction tricorder to make her complete.
I have to take a step back now, and just be impressed with myself. I am selling my figures for far more than they’re worth. It’s just a pleasant surprise every time one sells, because every single time, I think I’ve overpriced them. But wow, it sure is rewarding.
