Welcome to the America of your childhood fantasies. When traveling carnivals came and left seemingly overnight, when the fish your father caught was related to dinosaurs, and when that strange animal you found in the ditch obviously was a space alien. In this collection of stories, return to the land of innocence and imagination. Prepare to laugh, to be scared senseless, and above all, to remember what it was like when a simple towel around your neck made you the greatest superhero of them all.
Unfortunately, Danny's father meant well, but he ruined Danny forever by buying a metal-framed treehouse kit. To make matters worse, he put it together while Danny sat idly by. Where is justice? Who is the loser by this tragedy? I built a crooked, unplumbed mess on a dying elm tree in the middle of the backyard. It truly was a thing of beauty. A few beams of two-by-fours going this way and that, with a slapped on piece of plywood here and there to sit upon to survey the domain. My luncheon meat sandwiches were devoured in that very place. A perch for vigilant wholesome kids. Take Davey Smithson's treefort, for example. Endless packs of cigarettes and nudie books were stashed in his insidious den of iniquity. We would have none of that surliness. No sirree. We were fighting for truth, justice, and the American way, just like Superman the way he was drawn by DC Comics before he became invulnerable to Kryptonite. Mercury and Jupiter had no particular vices per se, with the exception of watching too much Saturday morning television and being really partial to Gigantor. We were on the cusp of the tail end of the sixties. It was a good time to be a kid. Of course, almost anytime is a good time to be a kid if you're as lucky as we were. The phosphor images of test patterns were followed by such illuminating programs on early Saturday (or Sunday) morning as Across the Fence and The Louisiana Agriculture and Farm Report before the likes of Looney Tunes or the rugged pouty face of Popeye would show up in the remake of Arabian Nights and WWII propaganda cartoons with caricatured jap-teethed soldiers getting clobbered when Popeye got his junkie strength fix of raw canned spinach. Hundreds, thousands of kids all across America were subsisting on a proper diet of cartoons in black-and-white and color both. Our minds reeled with action figures and GI Joe submarine and frogman equipment. I had two GI Joe equipment army chests filled with every sort of stiletto, army rifle, pistol. How many times did I roam Sears and Wilson's department store, looking for every accessory for our fighting man? My two sisters had Barbie and Ken and Mystery Date games. My forte was more of a Stratego, Risk arrangement. Monopoly was for everyone and crossed all lines. How could one resist not popping the dice scrambler bubble one more time just for that extra "pop"? Geographies of dollhouses and little trolls and tie-died t-shirts and swinger cameras enfolded our quarters. Our biggest superheroic adventure, besides the ones we lived through vicariously through Marvel and DC comic books, was attacking a villain named Johnny Love. Johnny Love was about twenty years old and at least two hundred pounds. He was just the friendly son of a next door neighbor who tripped through his heritage of Lovin' Spoonful and Strawberry Alarm Clock. We came into his villainous past right at the skewed corner of Danny's father's house. He was caught unawares, and we grappled with this demonic righteous nemesis until we couldn't take it anymore, or when he got a pit peeved and we ran away. Collections of comic books are treasure troves. I had everything from Little Lulu to Baby Huey to serious literature like Classics Illustrated and X-men. The folded and rumpled remained for quite some time. Dogeared Doc Savage and torn Conan the Barbarian paperbacks were in the realm. Danny and Johhny Haroldson and I all subsisted on a diet of these, along with Doc Smith's Lensman series. As hearty and brilliant as we were rocket scientists, we were also men of letters. We tried to submit a story to Analog. The story went as follows: a brilliant race of aliens were hunting a lesser-known species across galaxies for sheer pleasure. I don't remember how it came out, but we never sent it. Needless to say, Ben Bova, the editor of Analog, didn't seem to miss it any. Daredevil, Hulk, Silver Surfer were all our myths and truths. We enacted our baser instincts of noble savagery on campouts and tentouts. Many a doorbell was rung on the basis of sheer deviltry. Lightpoles were clanged with obtrusive sticks until porch lights came on suddenly. And we went our merry way into the long eternal night. We read reams of Mad Magazines by flashlight. Renditions of prank phone calls erupted along invisible lines through the ether. Cracked Magazines were not my style, really, but give me Don Martin's cartoons and Mort Drucker and the world was a bit better. Girls were a preponderance of our mighty thinking in those times. Aroused by cuteness, I formed the most intense crushes upon the most cherubic fawns of femalia that one could imagine. The inked sirens, nymphs, and maidens were also ones to be partial to. Bodacious, voluptuous, smooth-thighed amazon creatures oozing sweetness across a bordered ink-dotted page or two were the acumen of sexuality for a wholesome group of boys. Costumed beauties graced comic covers with buxom essence. That was literally our universe. Boyhood was good in those early years. Kids still wanted BB guns, go carts, but add to that now, Beatles albums for the rebellious. Lawn darts and Frisbees for the gamers. Lego blocks for the plodders. Erector sets for the engineers. Footballs for the jocks. Comic books for the dreamers. Summer days of languid heat with the hurlings of basketballs and playground weeds sprouting all over second base in brutal twin suns of Krypton. Pet dogs that, in lieu of chasing cars, could slightly resemble Superdog, only if we could attach that cape.
Description:
Welcome to the America of your childhood fantasies. When traveling carnivals came and left seemingly overnight, when the fish your father caught was related to dinosaurs, and when that strange animal you found in the ditch obviously was a space alien. In this collection of stories, return to the land of innocence and imagination. Prepare to laugh, to be scared senseless, and above all, to remember what it was like when a simple towel around your neck made you the greatest superhero of them all.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Unfortunately, Danny's father meant well, but he ruined Danny forever by buying a metal-framed treehouse kit. To make matters worse, he put it together while Danny sat idly by. Where is justice? Who is the loser by this tragedy? I built a crooked, unplumbed mess on a dying elm tree in the middle of the backyard. It truly was a thing of beauty. A few beams of two-by-fours going this way and that, with a slapped on piece of plywood here and there to sit upon to survey the domain. My luncheon meat sandwiches were devoured in that very place. A perch for vigilant wholesome kids. Take Davey Smithson's treefort, for example. Endless packs of cigarettes and nudie books were stashed in his insidious den of iniquity. We would have none of that surliness. No sirree. We were fighting for truth, justice, and the American way, just like Superman the way he was drawn by DC Comics before he became invulnerable to Kryptonite. Mercury and Jupiter had no particular vices per se, with the exception of watching too much Saturday morning television and being really partial to Gigantor. We were on the cusp of the tail end of the sixties. It was a good time to be a kid. Of course, almost anytime is a good time to be a kid if you're as lucky as we were. The phosphor images of test patterns were followed by such illuminating programs on early Saturday (or Sunday) morning as Across the Fence and The Louisiana Agriculture and Farm Report before the likes of Looney Tunes or the rugged pouty face of Popeye would show up in the remake of Arabian Nights and WWII propaganda cartoons with caricatured jap-teethed soldiers getting clobbered when Popeye got his junkie strength fix of raw canned spinach. Hundreds, thousands of kids all across America were subsisting on a proper diet of cartoons in black-and-white and color both. Our minds reeled with action figures and GI Joe submarine and frogman equipment. I had two GI Joe equipment army chests filled with every sort of stiletto, army rifle, pistol. How many times did I roam Sears and Wilson's department store, looking for every accessory for our fighting man? My two sisters had Barbie and Ken and Mystery Date games. My forte was more of a Stratego, Risk arrangement. Monopoly was for everyone and crossed all lines. How could one resist not popping the dice scrambler bubble one more time just for that extra "pop"? Geographies of dollhouses and little trolls and tie-died t-shirts and swinger cameras enfolded our quarters. Our biggest superheroic adventure, besides the ones we lived through vicariously through Marvel and DC comic books, was attacking a villain named Johnny Love. Johnny Love was about twenty years old and at least two hundred pounds. He was just the friendly son of a next door neighbor who tripped through his heritage of Lovin' Spoonful and Strawberry Alarm Clock. We came into his villainous past right at the skewed corner of Danny's father's house. He was caught unawares, and we grappled with this demonic righteous nemesis until we couldn't take it anymore, or when he got a pit peeved and we ran away. Collections of comic books are treasure troves. I had everything from Little Lulu to Baby Huey to serious literature like Classics Illustrated and X-men. The folded and rumpled remained for quite some time. Dogeared Doc Savage and torn Conan the Barbarian paperbacks were in the realm. Danny and Johhny Haroldson and I all subsisted on a diet of these, along with Doc Smith's Lensman series. As hearty and brilliant as we were rocket scientists, we were also men of letters. We tried to submit a story to Analog. The story went as follows: a brilliant race of aliens were hunting a lesser-known species across galaxies for sheer pleasure. I don't remember how it came out, but we never sent it. Needless to say, Ben Bova, the editor of Analog, didn't seem to miss it any. Daredevil, Hulk, Silver Surfer were all our myths and truths. We enacted our baser instincts of noble savagery on campouts and tentouts. Many a doorbell was rung on the basis of sheer deviltry. Lightpoles were clanged with obtrusive sticks until porch lights came on suddenly. And we went our merry way into the long eternal night. We read reams of Mad Magazines by flashlight. Renditions of prank phone calls erupted along invisible lines through the ether. Cracked Magazines were not my style, really, but give me Don Martin's cartoons and Mort Drucker and the world was a bit better. Girls were a preponderance of our mighty thinking in those times. Aroused by cuteness, I formed the most intense crushes upon the most cherubic fawns of femalia that one could imagine. The inked sirens, nymphs, and maidens were also ones to be partial to. Bodacious, voluptuous, smooth-thighed amazon creatures oozing sweetness across a bordered ink-dotted page or two were the acumen of sexuality for a wholesome group of boys. Costumed beauties graced comic covers with buxom essence. That was literally our universe. Boyhood was good in those early years. Kids still wanted BB guns, go carts, but add to that now, Beatles albums for the rebellious. Lawn darts and Frisbees for the gamers. Lego blocks for the plodders. Erector sets for the engineers. Footballs for the jocks. Comic books for the dreamers. Summer days of languid heat with the hurlings of basketballs and playground weeds sprouting all over second base in brutal twin suns of Krypton. Pet dogs that, in lieu of chasing cars, could slightly resemble Superdog, only if we could attach that cape.