It was was quite the "special lunch" indeed that fine day in the later spring of 1965! But first, a bit of background...
I may have said that I spent my childhood in a neighborhood that was once a thriving county hub that, almost overnight, turned bad and outright dangerous. Summer 1960 until February 1969, to better place it in time.
You could almost say it was a "tale of two cities", with profuse apologies to Charles Dickens! Through 1966, it was, at best, a suburban paradise and, at worst, just an ordinary convenient village. With so many different places to buy comic books, all within reasonable walking distance, it was a great place to spend virtually the entire Silver Age! Those four-colored twelve-cent tickets to Utopia seemed to be just EVERYWHERE, and I was more than happy to reap the benefits of such a bounty!
By 1967, things suddenly took a dramatic change and, by the fall of 1968, it had gotten so bad, so threatening, so dangerous that I refused to go to school out of fear for my safety. Had I possibly known in 1968 what the future's "cyber-bullying" would be, I would have gladly traded it for the torturous reality I faced every day! Regardless of good or bad times, it was a particular quirk of this school that led to some decidedly wonderful lunches for me...
One problem I DIDN'T HAVE was getting "beaten-up for my LUNCH MONEY"!
Why? Because I DIDN'T CARRY lunch money! Why? Because my combined elementary and junior high school, built in 1911, per the cornerstone... (as hard as this is to believe) had NO CAFETERIA FACILITIES... and we students were (as hard as THIS is to also believe) were DISMISSED from 12:00 Noon to 1:15 PM... and SENT HOME FOR LUNCH! Yes, really!
Could you imagine this in today's world? Could you imagine mothers being home every day to receive their offspring and serve them lunches in their kitchens? Could you imagine kids having to (and BE ABLE TO, distance-wise) walk (most of us unattended) home and then back to school for an afternoon session? ...If you meet Mom in heaven, don't tell her about all those 1:15 to 3:45 afternoon sessions I resorted to some "creative ways" to avoid attending - once released for lunch!
Now, as things were still good in 1965, there were some distinct advantages to this, for me at least.
For one, I was out of the stifling school building, and would run the three blocks home like a road runner!
For two, there was always a reasonably good lunch waiting for me. Something, alas, not all kids had.
And for three - and best of all - sometimes there were COMICS waiting for me, which I joyously devoured along with lunch!
By then, I had solidly moved from "young casual reader" into "never-miss-an-issue" mode, as discussed in THIS POST and one way to "never-miss-an-issue" was to SUBSCRIBE to as many titles as my meager allowance and generous-to-her-grandson GRANDMA MILLIE would provide!
Our mail would generally arrive by 10:30AM, and so any subscription comics delivered that day, would be waiting for me on the kitchen table when I arrived home for lunch. What a WONDERFUL FEELING THAT WAS!
The day that is the subject of this post provided a particularly memorable yield, so much so that I remember it distinctly to this day. Try to imagine what a Gift-From-The-Gold-Key-Gods this two-issue bonanza was through the wide eyes of eleven-year-old me!
UNCLE SCROOGE #58...
"The Giant Robot Robbers" was one of the best Uncle Scrooge outings of the (much-unfairly maligned) sixties-period of Carl Barks' incredible - nay, historic - run on the title. Even inspiring an informal, though also effective, adaptation for the TV series DuckTales (1987).
Oddly, to digress, my favorite seasons of THE FLINTSTONES are Season One, and Season Five! Both seasons "did what they did" better than any of the other seasons - especially Season Six!
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...And get the UNCLE SCROOGE, too! They're two of the best Gold Key Comics of what was an extraordinary creative period for them! (1964-1966).
Where will we go tomorrow? Come back and see!
4 comments:
Wow! Growing up in Portugal, my parents were also sent home from school for lunch.
Different times... this certainly would not be viable today, here or there... for a variety of reasons.
As great as sixties pop culture was, it seems to be that that decade also saw the beginning of an apparently inexorable downward spiral in social mores.
Anyway... another great post, Joe! I particularly like the Flintstones cover... and, judging by the page you posted, "The Pirates of Skull Island" seems like a delightful story.
I wonder if Harvey Eisenberg's design for Skull Island was influenced by the Phantom's Skull Cave.
That's a lunch to remember! I don't recall ever having gotten two memorably excellent comics on the same day in my childhood (which largely overlaps yours). That didn't happen for me until I was 60ish somewhere in the 20-teens, when occasionally the IDW Uncle Scrooge helmed by Gerstein and Ryan North & Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl would be issued on the same day!
Sergio: (You write):
“As great as sixties pop culture was, it seems to be that that decade also saw the beginning of an apparently inexorable downward spiral in social mores.”
As sainted as the sixties are to me (and will always remain so), I must agree with you… the three catastrophic political assassinations, the fight for civil rights, the generation-divisive Viet-Nam War, the younger generation going off-the-rails (as opposed to the older generation doing it even worse today – and that’s all I’m gonna say about THAT!)
Indeed, the stark and rapid transformation of my 1960s neighborhood was all of that in microcosm – and literally happened before my eyes!
Still in all, the sixties remain a true high point for the types of pop culture we love – comics, TV, movies, music, general freshness of attitude, creativity that resonates to this day, etc. …And there’s no taking that away!
I cannot think of another period I lived through where ALL of the above kicked into such a high gear ALL AT ONCE!
As for Gold Key’s FLINTSTONES #28, I’ll simply repeat: “If you’re gonna get only one issue of THE FLINTSTONES, this is the one to get!” It is as perfectly reflective of the show’s Fifth Season, as THIS ISSUE is of it’s first! …Get ‘em both!
And, yes… since THE FLINTSTONES and THE PHANTOM were both published by Gold Key at the time, it’s entirely possible that Harvey Eisenberg was influenced by The Phantom’s Skull Cave!
…Funny, too, that both titles ended up at Charlton!
Elaine:
Indeed, it was a “lunch to remember”! I don’t think that bowl of tomato soup ever tasted better than on that day! Of course, I attribute that more to the two side-dishes of UNCLE SCROOGE and THE FLINTSTONES rather than the oyster crackers that floated atop that deliciously hot red goop!
…Needless to say, I was quite careful to contain any stray splash-drops from adding “additional color” to those (still in my comic room today) treasures!
Glad you had some double-excellence days of your own with two worthy titles – and with UNCLE SCROOGE as our common thread!
I had one more such experience, this time with newsstand purchases, that will certainly surface sometime over the next TWELVE “(Eek!)” posts! There were also some notable experiences at comic shops, which *may* also come up – but the newsstand experience is a definite!
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