TERRE HAUTE — The comic books in Wilbur Hickman’s grocery store always sat in a spinning, white-metal rack that was tapered like a Christmas tree, and no less inviting than one. The rack stood just a few feet inside the glass doors that led into Wilbur’s Rosedale IGA when I was a kid, and it was a monument to boyhood temptation at 12 cents a copy.
I used to spin and read and spin and gawk and spin and peruse the comics on that stand, the grating squeak of its ungreased pedestal undoubtedly annoying the ladies who manned the nearby checkout stations. The rack was just about my only access to comic books when I was 10 or 11 and still going to the grocery with my mother in hopes of getting a box of candy cigarettes (there was no stigma about those then), a Zero bar, or red paraffin lips in exchange for helping with the overstuffed paper sacks laden with cereal boxes, canned goods and milk cartons.
Those were the days when Peter, Paul and Mary were “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the war in Vietnam was raging, of Lyndon Johnson and Walter Cronkite, and which my Great Uncle Bill summed up by saying that our country was “going to hell in a hand basket.” My older brother wore a leather jacket and listened to Bob Dylan on his 8-track tape player, my sister was into knee socks and horn-rimmed glasses, and I undoubtedly sported a pair of skinned knees and a flat top haircut.
The sound of Hickman’s still resonates in my head — the cha-ching of the brown, push-button cash registers, the ringing of a rotary dial telephone in the background, the whirring of the huge open refrigerated cases filled with turkeys and head-sized hams.
But, as much I wanted it, reward for my labors never came in the form of a single comic book. They were just too expensive in those days when Mom’s budget allowed for only bubble gum at a penny a piece or an orange sherbet push-up for a nickel. I’m certain, as well, that at some point she had read an article in “The Reader’s Digest” or “Good Housekeeping” that suggested that comic books were paving the road to juvenile delinquency, and that my next step would be “Mad Magazine,” then “Rolling Stone.”
Perhaps she feared that those weird tales would be the first step to my moving to Haight-Ashbury to take up dope smoking and free love, but I doubt it. It’s more likely that she knew that one thing led to another; every issue I wanted was also stuffed with advertisements for Daisy Air Rifles, replica hand grenades, and, horrors above all, the tactless and suggestive X-ray glasses. I still remember full-page ads for something called the Junior Sales Club of America, which offered me “terrific prizes or cash profits.” I think enrollment came with a free membership card…
I was actually into the tamest of comic books; Wilbur seemed to stock only the most conservative issues. There were no underground comics in his store — I doubt if there was a single copy in the whole county. The “Comics Code Authority” was still wielding its power in those days, so Mom really had nothing to worry about, although I still feel her reasoning was more economic than parental authority. She wouldn’t, or couldn’t, buy potato chips or Pepsi for us, either.
For me, it was the Green Lantern, as far as action heroes were concerned, although Batman and Superman (the 1950s George Reeves series was re-run on Channel 4 about every day) were always in consideration, had I been able to scrounge together the dime and two pennies to actually buy one.
I often picked up and thumbed through copies of “Our Army at War,” a World War II-influenced series that reminded me of Vic Morrow and “Combat,” which we regularly tuned into on the television. I also rarely passed up a copy of “Sad Sack,” another military-oriented comic, but mostly because its anti-hero was adept at avoiding work detail.
I tried just about every tactic in my arsenal to get Mom to buy a comic book for me. I even began asking for the “Classics Illustrated” that Wilbur kept in stock. Far from Archie and Jughead, they were comic book versions of real classic literature — a forerunner of today’s best graphic novels. How could Mom say no to an autobiography of Ben Franklin, or H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” or Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”?
“You can get the books at the library and make the pictures up in your head,” she said. Besides, they went for 35 cents a copy, so my chances were both slim and none. When your mom says no to “The Call of the Wild” and “The Last of Mohicans,” “Iron Man,” “Lois Lane” and “Captain America” didn’t stand a chance.
A few weekends ago I went to an auction, and on one table sat about 10 stacks of old comic books. They are not uncommon sights, as collectors who know about vintage comics come to explore for rare finds or to complete a set or just to buy and sell. I waited for the pile I most wanted, and for a reasonable $4, I picked up a few nice copies of “Batman,” “Roy Rogers” and “Blondie,” all issued in the summer of 1957 (they cost just a dime then). Every comic on the table was published before I was old enough to read, but thumbing through worn comic books was something I was used to; my cousin, Roger, kept a stack of his favorites in his bedroom closet, and I often headed to that sacred spot whenever I went over to his house to play.
I guess it didn’t really matter to me that much what comic book I got my hands on in those days. They weren’t an obsession with me, like, for instance, my box of plastic soldiers, but they were something I couldn’t quite get, so I wanted them all the more.
Now, I can afford a few comic books, but I’d rather have Superman help me fight the scourge of thinning hair and aching joints than save Metropolis from thugs or keep the earth from veering into the sun. One thing is certain: I sure wish times were as uncomplicated for us as they seemed to be when I was spinning that creaky, white rack at the IGA, no matter how the cashiers felt about it.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@
aol.com, or by regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. He will be presenting “The Writing Life: Stories From Home…” from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the ISU College of Business, 11th Floor Conference Room, on Feb. 25 as part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Visit Mike’s Web page at mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Temptation sometimes comes in a 12-cent package
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
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The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped. Already, I have the overflow stacked on the floor and shoved into the spaces where previous tenants once lived. Gradually, expediency is replacing order, so fiction and non-fiction, biographies and novels, are scandalously co-mingling on my shelves.
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THE OFF SEASON: The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped.
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THE OFF SEASON: It’s taken long time to say thanks…
It was with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in my hands a few Mondays ago that I discovered that Mr. Hapenny had died.
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THE OFF SEASON: Lessons learned from the night the ice fell
The picture window of my cabin is sealed in a perfect glaze of ice as I write this, last Thursday morning, and since it faces due north and sees little direct sunlight, I imagine I will be looking through this shower door glass of mine for a few more days. But since I sit and watch the woods much of the time, instead of writing, I suppose the ice is serving a rare good purpose in keeping me on task.
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The Off Season: Pass a ‘midnight dreary’ with The Big Read
It was a pretty poor excuse for an evening one night last week as I lay beside our glowing fireplace, a pillow propped behind my head. I was spending some time with my current read, enjoying each page in the semi-darkness, smug in the knowledge that I’d not be heading to my classroom the next day.
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The Off Season: ‘Too old and too lazy’ to deal with coyotes
Despite the cold and the ever-present winter breezes that blow across our hill these days, I often find myself, even in the blue evenings, standing on the walk near my cabin, looking at the stars or watching for the last red-tailed hawks of the day as they float by in the drafts.
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The Off Season: The passion of having a passion is a great thing
It just occurred to me that I am fortunate to have a passion — a drive to do something that takes me away from the clutches of my job, of home repairs, of the mundane and the ho-hum.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
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