Sherlock returns, 1952

Sherlock Holmes, it is said, is one of the most recognizable literary figures in the world, right up there with Tarzan and Superman.

In 1952 Life published a new story featuring Holmes, written as a collaboration between Adrian Conan Doyle (Sherlock’s creator Conan Doyle’s youngest son) and John Dickson Carr, a very popular mystery novelist and Doyle biographer.

Life considered it so important they included it in their Christmas issue, uninterrupted by the ubiquitous advertising that intruded on nearly every page of the magazine. An article on the creation of the story doesn’t escape that dubious distinction, though, and the ads are back.

A couple of years ago I found a library copy of The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle and Carr, and this is a picture of its dust jacket. There are twelve stories in the book, including “The Adventure of the Seven Clocks,” published by Life.

The last few years have seen a tinkering with—if not an outright dismantling of—the Holmes tradition established by Arthur Conan Doyle. Many books have been written using the Holmes character, including the classic Seven Per Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer. An updating of the characters to the modern era has been shown on television, and then there is the two-fisted revisionist Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jr. (To be fair, being an action hero as portrayed in the Downey movies is not that much of a stretch, when you read in the Life article that Holmes was once a boxer.)

Personally, I prefer the original Holmes set firmly in the last couple of decades of the 19th century. The new stuff is kind of fun, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as interesting as the classic portrayal by Jeremy Brett, which lasted from 1984 until his death in 1995.

“The Adventure of the Seven Clocks” Copyright © 1952 Adrian Conan Doyle
Life editorial material Copyright © 1952, 2012 Time-Life, Inc.

Chewed out by Sgt. Bilko

Seeing this picture of actor/comedian Phil Silvers in an old issue of Time magazine brought back a specific memory.

Fifty years ago Dad took my mother, brother and me to Hollywood. He had a business meeting in nearby Inglewood, and thought it would be fun to stay in Hollywood. When we got to Hollywood Dad was unsure of where he was supposed to go. He was on a main boulevard when he realized he needed to turn left. He started making his left turn without checking oncoming traffic. It caused a driver going in the other direction to slam on his brakes. Dad slammed on his brakes, also. The driver of the car who’d just avoided a collision with Dad pulled up so he was eye to eye with him. The driver yelled and called Dad a “goddamned idiot,” then told him, “watch what the hell you're doing.” The whole exchange took a couple of seconds, then the driver, in a large car which my memory tells me was a new Chrysler Imperial, pulled ahead and drove on. Dad, with left turn signal blinking, waited for traffic to clear so he could go. He turned to my brother and me in the back seat. “You kids see who that was? It was Sergeant Bilko!” Bilko was the chiseling character Phil Silvers played on television, a role which had turned him from an old vaudeville-style comic to a full-fledged star.

“Boy,” continued Dad. “Sergeant Bilko...”

I injected, “Phil Silvers, Dad.”

“Yeah, yeah, Phil Silvers.”

“Just be careful,” my mother said. She always chirped in after the fact with the obvious.

We didn't speak of the incident again but maybe Dad brought it up in his business meeting. “Hey, guys! Guess who chewed me out this morning?”  None of us thought of getting yelled at by Phil Silvers as a bad thing. It was enough to have a brush with celebrity. This is what people went to Hollywood for, yes? To see stars. We saw what we came to see in an unexpected way.

Guilty!

I don't think anyone was really surprised by the verdict for Jerry Sandusky, who was found guilty on 45 counts of child sex abuse. Over the years he pretty much had his way with several kids, using and abusing them. The proverbial chickens have come home to the proverbial roost.

My question would be, why did it take so long to find this guy out? Well, it really didn't, because some people knew years ago. They just didn't say anything. They are complicit because of their silence. You cannot let a person who has sex with children off the hook because they'll just go victimize someone else. Maybe your child.

Another question is, why did he fight it when everything was so overwhelmingly against him? He had ten accusers who are now adults, who sat in court and told their sordid stories. Did he think there was a chance a jury would find him not guilty and send him on his way to take up his life again? His defense team did the best they could, but evidence against him was overwhelming. Even his stepson was in the wings waiting to testify against him. He wasn't needed.

On the NBC program Rock Center a reporter asked one of Sandusky's accusers (who testified against him to the Grand Jury but not in his criminal trial) if he thought Sandusky ever thought he would be caught. The young man said no. Which is another thing, why would Sandusky not worry about being caught, and after being caught, have his worst nightmares come true, a jury trial, disgrace for himself and his family, and the chance he'd spend the rest of his life in prison? Did he think that far ahead, or was he really that stupid (or in denial) to think he'd never be caught?

This is all after one of the worst stories of child sex abuse in U.S. history: scandals of the Catholic Church, priests abusing children. The stories made headlines for years. Did Jerry Sandusky sit up at night sweating, thinking "this could happen to me"?

I don't begin to understand adults who want to have sex with children, or what satisfaction it gives them. I believe it's about power over someone weaker and more vulnerable. The stories of abuse usually include threats made by the abuser to his victim: "No one will believe you," or in some extreme cases, "If you don't do it I'll hurt your family." Obviously they're not trying to get love, just sex and control.

Pedophiles follow some patterns, grooming their victims, and Jerry Sandusky did all of those things that child sex abusers do. He made out that he was helping the child, he made the child's family trust him with the child. He took his time getting around to the evil stuff, and when he did, the poor kid was totally in his power.

I don't think there is an organization, no matter how altruistic or benevolent in its desire to guide or help children that hasn't been tainted at one time or another by one of these clever guys. My former boss, who was a scoutmaster his whole adult life, told me it's a problem within scouting. But it is also a big problem with church groups, schools, or anywhere that adults have access to kids. Many people are just naîve and don't know it's going on, even under their noses. My hope is that now that stories about the Catholic Church and a high profile story like that of Jerry Sandusky have been splashed all over the news that someone who would have otherwise been oblivious will now see the signs.

The problems that existed within the Catholic Church, moving priests who molested children from parish to parish, also exist in school districts, and it's because of liability laws. A few years ago there was a scandal (actually, one of many, but I'll use this as an example) with the school district where I worked. A middle school teacher was caught with a student and not only fired, but turned over for prosecution. I talked to the HR Director who told me why he'd been hired. He said that school districts worry about lawsuits. This teacher had worked for another school district, and was suspected of sexual misbehavior but they couldn't prove it. So they found another reason to let him go. When he applied at our district and HR called them for a reference they couldn't tell us what they suspected. Had they told us what they knew of his behavior and their suspicions our district would never have hired him. If he found out his old employer had told our HR of their suspicions he could have sued them. Years before that, in the late 1970s, the first time I heard of anyone being arrested for child sex abuse was when a teacher was arrested in the school. A 14-year-old boy told authorities the teacher had been having sex with him since the boy was 11. At the time many people were totally in the dark about the problem. One of the school secretaries told me, "I thought Mr. O was just being a nice guy, picking the boy up, bringing him to school and taking him home!" The victim, being raised by a single mom, was a latchkey child, and Mr. O found him an easy mark.

BUT KIDS GROW UP. And then they tell their stories. There might have been a time when adults did not believe a child telling such tales of an adult, but not anymore. Nowadays a teacher who abuses an 11-year-old will know that someday that kid will grow up and tell someone what the abuser did. So why do it? Why take the chance? I guess it's like Sandusky's victim said, he didn't think Sandusky believed he would ever be caught. Maybe it's that way with other child abusers, too. Or perhaps they convince themselves the child likes it, even that they're doing the kid some kind of favor by giving them attention they may not be getting from other adults.

There will always be Jerry Sanduskys in this world. What people need to do is learn what to look for if someone shows an interest, any kind of interest in your child that you think is above and beyond their duty to the child. What I found in my time working around children is that it is rare to have someone with ulterior motives. But like other destructive vermin, they can do a lot of damage before they are stopped.

The haters

Some people have a deep-seated suspicion, fear and hatred of the U.S. Government—they say it's big federal government they hate—and they listen to those who have the same hatred, suspicion and fear. The hatred is often in the abstract—even the haters use government benefits just like everyone else. (Read how presidential candidate Ron Paul, who believes Social Security is unconstitutional collects Social Security.) The haters can be billionaires or working class folks. Sometimes they are radio personalities like Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck forgets the old saying, "When you point your finger three more are pointing back at you."

This election cycle the haters have more than a hatred of government in the abstract. Along with that hatred of big government they hate Barack Obama, something shared by most, if not all, of Glenn Beck's regular listeners. Beck has said things like:

''Barack Obama ... chose to use his name Barack for a reason -- to identify, not with America -- you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Is -- really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.''
—Glenn Beck, ''The Glenn Beck Program,'' Feb. 4, 2010

(Glenn Beck was also looking for religion when he converted to Mormonism.)

''So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research. ... Eugenics. In case you don't know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. ... The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening.''
—Glenn Beck on his radio show, March 9, 2009

(A cure for Parkinson's or spinal injury makes a master race? Glenn, you've been reading science fiction.)

''This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture....I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.''
—Glenn Beck, on President Obama, sparking an advertiser exodus from his FOX News show, July 28, 2009

(And of course, none of the people like Beck who hate Barack Obama are racists, are they? "This president . . . has a deep-seated hatred for white people . . . I'm not saying he doesn't like white people . . ." Beck, one thing about your inconsistency is it's so consistent.)

Beck is a radio guy and while he's spewing bile or promoting paranoia he's also selling advertising. He's so successful that he just got a raise from $10 million to $20 million a year. I'd think that would put him out of the league of the poorer people who listen to him, but obviously they don't think like that. They align themselves with Beck and therefore place themselves in a position of being against their own self-interest. Do you think Glenn Beck is for making millionaires and billionaires pay more of a fair share of taxes? Do you think he cares if you take on the entire cost of government, the government he rails against?

Beck has his, and those who listen to him and support his advertisers have put that money right in his wallet.

Glenn Beck invokes God and religion but he's not a preacher in the conventional, ordained sense. Those preachers who are preaching hatred for Obama are also supposed to be Evangelical Christians, "love thy neighbor, do unto others, let he who is without sin cast the first stone" kinds of Christians. The New Yorker had an article on Bryan Fischer* in its June 18, 2012 issue. Author Jane Mayer gives us some background on Fischer, who had congregations in Idaho,a state which is no stranger to right wing hate groups, including American Nazis. Fischer is now director of issue analysis for the American Family Association of Tupelo, Mississippi (a state not that far removed from its image as Ku Klux Klan territory), a "pro-family ministry . . ." which "promotes Bible-based social conservatism and criticizes what is regards as sinful popular culture." Fischer is host of a radio program called "Focal Point," which like Beck's program, plays to an audience of so-called Christians, paranoid malcontents and racists.

From Mayer's article:

“The A.F.A. is a tax-exempt charitable organization, and it is supposed to remain strictly nonpartisan. Yet Fischer has spread doubts about the authenticity of Obama’s American birth certificate and Christian faith, and has claimed that the President’s aim is to “destroy capitalism.” Obama, he has said, “despises the Constitution” and “nurtures a hatred for the white man.” Fischer recently accused the Administration’s Department of Homeland Security of buying so much ammunition that it was causing a shortage. His source on this, he said, was a law-enforcement officer. “Who are they going to turn that ammunition on?” he asked his listeners. “They’re going to turn it on us!”

Fischer thinks that Islam is a violent religion, and argues that Muslims should be stopped from immigrating and barred from serving in the U.S. military. He believes that the country was a Christian nation when the Bill of Rights was written, and therefore non-Christians “have no First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.” He has said that Native Americans are “morally disqualified” from ruling America, and that African-American welfare recipients “rut like rabbits.”

Many evangelical leaders, meanwhile, have begun casting fiscal conservatism as a religious imperative. Ralph Reed says, “On a multitude of fronts, the economic wing of conservatism and the social-policy wing is now a false dichotomy.” David Barton, the author of best-selling Christianity-infused books on American history—and a favorite guest on both Fischer’s and Glenn Beck’s radio programs—argues that capital-gains taxes, collective bargaining, and minimum-wage laws are contrary to the Bible’s teachings.”

These Bible-belt bigmouths have to get attention, and Terry Jones, of Gainesville, Florida's Dove World Outreach Church is no stranger to notoriety. He held the government and media at bay with plans to burn copies of the Quran. His stunt put his name on the front page of every newspaper, and his face on every national news program. The furor over the burning has subsided, so his latest publicity ploy is to hang Obama in effigy.

I do not believe this is protected free speech. This is a hate crime.

It's hard to fathom why anyone would do this, but it just puts into sharp focus the real reason for the attacks on Obama. They're less about his stand on gay marriage, or being progressive, the economy or his fights with an impossible and irresponsible Republican Congress, and more about Obama being African American.

To the news media's credit, they have apparently figured this guy has had his fifteen minutes of fame (or notoriety) already, so there hasn't been a whole lot of coverage of this atrocious display.

So let's call all of these attacks on Obama by Beck and his posse of fellow radio blowhards, or so-called "Christians" like Fischer and Jones, what they really are, ugly racism. That's the agenda of the right wing, to get a black face out of the White House and a white face back in. By playing on the worst prejudices and biases of their audiences they hope to achieve that goal.

*Went to Dallas Theological Seminary, holds a 1973 Bachelors Degree in Philosophy from Stanford.

Happy birthday, Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson is 70 today. I've collected a few of his songs by other artists, the Beach Boys, and the man himself. Happy birthday, Brian.

(The way YouTube works, if you've accessed this and some of the videos don't link up it's because they've been pulled for whatever reasons YouTube has. It isn't my fault!)

Vince Gill "Warmth of the Sun"



Billy Joel "Don't Worry Baby"



BBS "Surfer Girl"



Beach Boys "Good Vibrations"



Brian Wilson and the Corrs "God Only Knows"



Brian Wilson "Lay Down Burden"

Owen Smith, illustrator

An artist bio of illustrator Owen Smith from California College of the Arts says:

“Owen Smith’s illustration clients include Sports Illustrated, Time, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker, for which he has created 15 cover illustrations. He has recently completed work on a new children’s book for Simon and Schuster.

Owen’s influences come from the WPA artists of the 1930s, Diego Rivera, and the lurid covers of pulp magazines and dime-store paperbacks of the 1930s and 1940s. His paintings have been featured in exhibitions in New York, Rome, and Milan as well as solo shows in Los Angeles. In 1998 a set of mosaic murals Owen designed was permanently installed in a New York subway station at 36th Street in Brooklyn.

Currently Owen is designing permanent art for a historic San Francisco hospital, including murals, mosaic, and relief sculpture.”

Every one of Smith’s illustrations is rich with detail. In many he has a noirish view of violence either happening or about to happen. I can look at his pictures and design my own stories around them.

The latest New Yorker cover is something of a change of pace for Smith, illustrating a current news story that floated around a few weeks ago. New York City's Mayor Bloomberg wanted to ban 32-ounce cups of soda, claiming they contribute to obesity. In Smith's illustration a couple has broken the law over a jumbo-sized beverage.

Most of Smith's cover assignments for The New Yorker have been for their fiction issues. He's done other subjects as well, but the fiction issue covers are the ones I like best.

Covers Copyright © 2012 The New Yorker

The rock ‘n’ roll slasher movie musical

An indie band heads for the woods to work on their music. There is a sign as they enter that says DON'T GO IN THE WOODS, which is also the title of this 2010 movie. It would have been more proper for the sign to read DON'T BOTHER WATCHING THIS MOVIE.

The band plays typical shoe-gazer music, introspective and pretentious. They are led by doe-eyed Nick, played by Matt Sbeglia. Nick is serious about making music, to the point of taking his band into the wilderness and setting up tents so they can concentrate on their songs. He also smashes their cell phones (oh the humanity!) Depending on your interpretation of this incoherent mess, he may also be the person responsible for the killings. This is Sbeglia's only credit on the Internet Movie Database, and I'm sure this is a movie he would not want casting directors to see.

What we're led to believe is that we're going to see a slasher movie. Normally I avoid movies about crazed killers attacking young people in remote locations, like woods or old farmhouses. I watched this movie because it was directed by Vincent D'Onofrio, an actor whom I admire. My advice to Mr. D'Onofrio is much the same as what I gave to Matt Sbeglia. Don't show this to anyone if you want to get another directing job.

The movie goes long stretches while these young men do their songs. They present the songs in their full form. So the movie takes a long time to get to the action. Some girls show up. Nick doesn't want any women around, but the girls apparently didn't get the message and have invited themselves. The girls also sing, which we see when they are walking in the woods to go home, or running away from a killer. The band plays songs while playing their instruments, the girls can sing with full accompaniment even without instruments. I didn't have closed captioning and I couldn't make out all the lyrics, but I heard enough to know the songs are full of angst and lost love.

Two of the girls, mad at the boys in the band, decide to take off in the middle of the night and drive to a motel. They sing their way through the dark forest with only lanterns to guide them, until they find the car, which won't start. In a short sequence one of the girls disappears, only to reappear a few seconds later (!) in the form of a chopped off leg on the hood of the car, which our killer, wielding a sledgehammer, has wrecked by busting out the windshield.

If I thought girls singing while going through dark woods was bad, it got worse. Later in the movie one of the girls who speaks only French, for a reason not made clear in the script (not unlike everything else in this story), runs to the group to tell them her friend has been dragged off into the woods by a mysterious man in a black topcoat and black fedora. She resorts to singing in French. About the time I got my jaw back off the floor from the silliness of that bit of business I was watching Nick and his girlfriend run from the killer. Nick stopped to sing a song. His girl tries to get him to come but he stands his ground, screeching out his ridiculous lyrics. It was more painful than watching people get whacked with a sledgehammer! The girl, as she runs from the killer, is knocked to the ground, where the killer appears to be pulling pieces of flesh from her back. The movie isn't short of gross-out special effects, but as she's being attacked she's singing. My chin dropped back to the floor and stayed there.

Nick makes it out, the only one alive, with some indication he's actually the killer. Eric Bagosian, who is credited with being in the movie, has two lines in the very last scene. Since he played D'Onofrio's boss for a time on Law and Order Criminal Intent, he might have been doing his friend a favor by stepping in for a quick scene. The ending is supposed to be some kind of surprise, but by then I didn't care, I just wanted the thing to be over.

If not for the endless music being played and sung in this movie I believe the movie would have been about ten minutes long. But as it is, it seems much longer than its listed 83 minutes.

There's a 1981 movie with the same title, which also scores about as low on the Internet Movie Database rating. It gets a 3.0, whereas this turkey does slightly better with a 3.1. If there had even been any sex or nudity I would have given it at least a 1.5, but on the IMDb rating I give it a 0.5 I watched it on Netflix online, and at the end where Netflix asks the viewer to rate it I gave it a "hated it" rating.

I believe at some point in the development of this movie it must've looked really good on paper. My advice is if someone suggests renting this movie hit 'em with a sledgehammer. Honest, you'd be doing them a favor.

This movie gets my personal Postino FLUSH-IT award.

Murder in Magna

Magna, Utah, is a town on the western side of Salt Lake County. It’s a working class town, where family names are apt to be Greek or Italian. A hundred years ago immigrants came to work for Kennecott, the company that owns the biggest copper mine in the United States. The town was on my school district route from 1980 to 1992, so I read this story from a true detective magazine with interest. A woman was killed in Magna. No murder is routine, but there wasn't much about this murder that would have gotten much attention. A white woman went into a boarding house with a “dark-skinned man,” an Indian or a Mexican. She ended up dead. In 1945 when the murder happened some bigots might have even said she deserved it.

And that's what struck me most about this article, published in 1950, the racist attitude that pervades the entire piece. As it says toward the end of the article, “Deputies Beckstead and Caldwell sighed with satisfaction and relief. ‘I had no idea there were so many Indians, Mexicans and Spaniards [sic] in Utah!’ grinned Caldwell, ‘nor that they all looked so much alike.’”

The hook for the whole story is a Navajo belief that one can tell a lie three times, but never four. Read the article from Chief Detective #2 for the reason.

J. C. Penney reaching out to new customers

The headlines tell the story. Today, June 11, 2012, I googled polls gay marriage support and going down the page the headlines say: “Same-Sex Marriage Support Growing in New Poll” (Huffington Post), "Majority of Americans support same-sex marriage: poll” (New York Daily News), “Poll says gay marriage ban losing support in Minnesota - Twin Cities” (www.twincities.com).

But in yesterday's Wall Street Journal Sunday (owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News), the headline for Al Lewis' column was “Shop ‘Gay C. Penney’”, which appears to be a slam at gay people, and gay people who shop at J.C. Penney, in general. Lewis says Ron Johnson, the new C.E.O. of the company, is attempting to target gay customers at the expense of the “regular folks” who shop at JCP.

I'm not gay, and I don't shop at J.C. Penney. Mr. Johnson notwithstanding, and the iconic status of J.C. Penney as a department store chain considered, I'm probably not in any of the demographics J.C. Penney is trying to reach. Mr. Lewis said the brouhaha is about a Father's Day promotion for JCP that shows two men under ad copy that reads: “First Pals: What makes Dad so cool? He’s the swim coach, tent maker, best friend, bike fixer and hug giver — all rolled into one. Or two.” A conservative group calling itself One Million Moms is protesting the ad and J.C. Penney, and according to Lewis, “It's fair to say One Million Moms hardly represents a million moms . . . But it's also fair to say this organization, though often branded as antigay, is expressing a sentiment common among the middlebrow demographic that J.C. Penney serves.” But does it?

Intrigued by the story, I searched out the June JCP brochure that came with my Sunday paper, and there wasn't anything gay about it at all. It must have been another ad that is causing problems with One Million Moms, and I missed it.

Apparently the campaign using two dads was only one of the ad campaigns launched by J.C. Penney for Father's Day. In the second half of the catalog they dispensed with the Father's Day stuff altogether, and showed this picture of a young, frisky couple obviously in some sort of sex play. No gay people there!

I believe the polls mentioned in the news stories with headlines on Google this morning are correct. What seemed unthinkable just a few years ago is now coming true, acceptance for letting gays marry. It's a long way from happening nationwide, and maybe in some areas it will never be recognized—in spirit if not in law—but it's coming. I've followed human rights movements all my life, civil rights, women's rights, and now gay rights, and every time a movement is started, with its argument of injustice and unfairness to them, it follows the familiar path of controversy and non-support, then support, and at some point it becomes written into the law of the land. We're going through those latter stages now.

Maybe J.C. Penney under its new C.E.O. will fail in its overall plan to increase business, but I don't know how reaching out to a segment of the community is a bad thing.  Support for gay marriage is growing, but that isn't what this is about. It's about JCP attempting to attract consumers that even Al Lewis said he never sees in J.C. Penney stores, openly gay people. (He doesn't say how much time he spends hanging around J.C. Penney looking for openly gay people, couples or otherwise.) If people view ads aimed at gay people as being threatening then they sound paranoid.

We're going through a period where the total demographics of the United States is changing, from a white majority to white minority. That is also threatening to the same types of people protesting gay marriage. They probably hate ads aimed at Spanish language speaking people. They'll lose there, also. It's only good business sense to be all-inclusive in attracting customers, and despite some vocal paranoics the public won't be affected at all by having gay people shop at J.C. Penney. The company is doing the right thing.

The Al Lewis column is here.

Hey!! Kids Comics

  Copyright © 2012 Postino 

     On an August day in 1961 thirteen-year-old Kenny, preoccupied with going through this week's comic books at the drugstore, was suddenly aware of a presence. He turned quickly to see an old man standing behind him. A peculiar-looking old man, at that. He had gold-colored wire rim glasses, gray hair, a bushy, drooping mustache with a white beard, a pot belly he was trying to cover with a Hawaiian shirt, denim shorts and, of all things, white tennis shoes of some strange design. He could have been a bum or a beatnik. The man was too close. He was grinning like an idiot, and Kenny began to shrink away.

     “Hey!" said the man. "Kenny, right? My name's Ken, too! I see you're looking at comic books and I wanted to recommend something.”

    Kenny was puzzled, but also alarmed. An old man talking about comic books? Hadn't his mom and dad and teachers all warned him about being approached by strangers, especially strange old men? They said they'd try to get at a kid through the kid’s interest.

     “No, no,” the man said, as if reading his thoughts. “Really, I'm not trying to scare you, Kenny. I read comics when I was your age and noticed this one here.” He pointed at one toward the bottom of the Hey!! Kids Comics  spinner rack. It was called—and despite his trepidations Kenny found himself bending down to read the title—The Fantastic Four. The cover illustration showed a big monster coming out of the ground and four people fighting it. “That's Fantastic Four #1, Kenny. My advice is you use your dollar allowance and buy all the copies you see here—” the man reached and quickly flipped through them, as Kenny moved back and away from the man's hand “—six copies. With that buck you can get them all. Then you know what? This comic book will be valuable someday. You put these copies away somewhere safe and guard them, and someday, fifty years from now, you can sell them for thousands of dollars each!” The man continued his grinning and Kenny's mind whirled. He looked past the man to see if he could just bolt and run, get to his bicycle and ride for home. The druggist and his teenage clerk were busy at the register with a customer but Kenny supposed he could shout and get their attention if the man tried to touch him.

     Ken sensed the boy's unease and backed up a few paces. “Really, Kenny, trust someone who knows. This will be valuable.” He had the imploring look of someone who believed what he was saying, but Kenny, who liked superheroes just fine, was looking for the titles he usually bought: Green Lantern, The Flash, Justice League of America...he didn't recognize the comic book the man was pointing at with such enthusiasm.

     “I know this seems weird,” the man continued, reaching into his back pocket, “buy anything you want, but make sure you get that Fantastic Four...” The man took a wallet out of his back pocket, thought about it for a second and put it back. “I'd give you money to buy it, but my money wouldn't be good. Where I live I use plastic to buy everything.” He shrugged. “Even if I had some cash it would have the wrong dates.” Kenny looked at him blankly.

     The man glanced at his watch. “Look, kid, I'm sorry if I sound funny. I'm really trying to help you, here, but I'm going to go and just let you do what you want to do because I can see I'm spooking you.” To Kenny's relief he stepped back into the aisle, leaving him some breathing room, at least. “But, I have more advice for you, okay? Because I know a bit more about you than you think.” Ken held up his hands and with the index finger of his right hand started ticking off fingers on his left. “First off, in a few years stay away from a girl named Debbie. You're a bit young to know about sex, but it'll cause you a lot of misery.” Kenny's face registered more alarm. Sex? No adult had ever mentioned that word to him. “Next, when you get your driver's license don't buy a black ‘57 Ford. It'll be too much trouble.” The man got to his middle finger. “Third, don't drop out of college or you'll end up in the Army. Fourth, remember the names Apple and Microsoft. Buy stock in Apple and in Microsoft when they come on the market. You'll be a grown man by then and money will be a little tight, but buy what you can...”

     He might have said more, but Kenny decided to make his break. “Excuse me,” he said, as he brushed past the man, who let Kenny go. He watched him rush through the door, and through the store window he saw the boy jump onto his bicycle seat and speed off without looking back.  

. . .

     Ken woke up with his dream still fresh in his mind. It was so real, so vivid. It was like he’d been in a real place. That old pharmacy, those old comics; an old memory coming back strong. He’d mention it to his wife, Stella, and make an observation. “Even if I could go back in time to those moments where we could tell our past selves what to do and what to avoid, it wouldn't work.” After sixty-plus years he knew himself too well, thousands of dollars in psychotherapy to find out why he made the mistakes he did. He told Stella, “I was the kind of kid who never listened to anybody, not my parents, not my teachers. If I had I would have avoided a lot of problems. I was the kid that even if I’d been told by my future self what to do to make life easier I wouldn’t have done it."

     Stella, who had heard him talk like that often, let him have his say because she knew she couldn’t stop him anyway.

     “If I'd only known then what I know now...” he let his voice trail off. “Stubborn. Huh. Stubborn and stupid. Oh well.” he said with resignation. Stella got the remote and turned on the Today program. Ken went to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee.

. . .

   In 1961, Kenny woke up, put on his clothes and brushed his teeth. The drugstore opened in fifteen minutes and he’d be there to pick up the comics he missed yesterday. If he saw the old man there today he’d tell the druggist, and he would tell the old man to leave Kenny alone. What was that he'd said about holding onto comic books for fifty years? Jeez, the guy must be mental as anything. Fifty years! The last thing Kenny needed was some old geezer bothering him, telling him what comic books to buy. Huh. And as for that “advice” he was handing out, what to do about anything else, for that matter.

. . .

Fantastic Four #1, with a cover date of November, 1961, went on sale August 8, 1961. This copy was sold for $47,800 by Heritage Auctions in 2011.

I bought my own copy of Fantastic Four #1 from the “Hey!! Kids Comics”  spinner rack at Millcreek Pharmacy in Salt Lake City. In 1969 I got married, so I sold it with my other early Marvel Comics for $175. I used the money to start a checking account with my wife, Sally. In that pile were perhaps a hundred thousand dollars worth of comic books in today’s market.

I can’t do anything about that but continue looking for a way to go back through time to tell my youthful self to hang on to those comics, and to hope he'll listen to me.

Goodbye, Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury in New York City, 1939. Photo by Julius Schwartz.