Misspent Youth #3: Race to the Bottom

Though my favorite toys as a child were action figures I did have my share of cars. Matchbox cars and Hot Wheels primarily. They were relatively cheap, so I’m sure they were Mom’s default when I wanted something. But there were a lot of them. I had the Hot Wheels track with the loop and the jump ramp that I would stretch from the kitchen table out into the living room. I don’t have any of these left and have no idea what happened to them.

There was one toy car that stands out more because I do remember what happened to it. It wasn’t one of the small cars, but a larger one called an SSP Racer. SSP stood for Super Sonic Power. Each car had a large wheel in the center of its body. You would insert the ‟t-stick” and then pull, making the wheel spin and create sound, then let it go.

Mine was called the Laker Special. It was bright orange and I thought it was the coolest model they made. The others all looked like cars. The Laker Special looked like a Sci Fi rocket car. When it raced along the floor it looked like it was floating slightly above the ground. I have often thought that Luke’s landspeeder in Star Wars was influenced by this.

Living in the country I didn’t have lot of places where I could really take advantage of the full Super Sonic Power. The space in my house wasn’t really big enough for it to play out it’s full potential. There were no sidewalks, and even with very little traffic back then playing in the road was a no-no. But, I took it outside and made the best of it.

One day after a hard rain I was in a nearby wooded lot. Crews from the telephone company had been working in the area, digging holes to bury the phone lines that up to that point had been stretched between poles. It was an overall upgrade to the system at the time. There was a large hole in the ground, filled with muddy water. That’s when inspiration hit. I yanked the t-stick and put the car in the water. Just as I thought, the spinning wheel revved and sprayed filthy water everywhere, soaking me in an instant.

Pretty cool.

The Laker Special immediately sank out of sight into the brown mud. The hole was a lot deeper than I thought it would be. I sank my arm into it, but couldn’t reach the bottom. I got a shovel from our garage and poked around with it, but no matter what I did I couldn’t find my racer. I didn’t tell my Mom because I think I was afraid of getting in trouble for losing this slightly more expensive toy. Within a day or two the work crews were back and filled in the hole. Unlike the happy ending of my previous story about Geronimo, the Laker Special was lost forever.

To this day I can go to that spot. Somewhere, six feet or so under the ground, like an ancient artifact of the past, my SSP sleeps.

Misspent Youth #2: Geronimo!!!

My favorite toys as a child were action figures. Pretty specifically a line from Marx Toys called The Best of the West. The cowboy Johnny West was the main character but there were soldiers and Indians and a full West family including Johnny’s wife, two sons and two daughters. I had most of these. There were also two medieval knights (my favorites), and two vikings, of which I only ever owned one. They came with a wide assortment of accessories. I still have many of the figures, though some of them are lost to time (and the memory of why some are missing). I have a few hats and swords left, but that’s about all.

These are the figures I have left.
They're standing on top of a bookshelf in my living room.

In first grade I took my Geronimo figure with me to school. I don’t know if it was a show and tell day, or if I just wanted to take it to show my friends because I loved it so much. During recess outside I started to throw it high in the air and then catch it when it came back down. I’m fairly certain I was shouting ‟Geronimo!!!” when I did this because for some reason that’s what you shout when jumping out of a plane or off something high. A friend asked if he could do it and I said Yes. I’m certain it didn’t happen on his first throw, and I’m equally certain it wasn’t intentional, but, on one of his trips to the sky Geronimo ended up landing on the roof of the school.

There were tears, mine and his. I think I yelled at him and told him he had to buy me a new one. The teacher came over and tried to comfort us. What no one did was make any effort to retrieve it. It was a small country school and all of the teachers were ancient, so I understand why they didn’t climb up there. But, we did have a maintenance guy, and there were ladders. But no one went up to get it.

For a long, long time.

Every day at school after that I would see Geronimo laying at the edge of the roof. Over summer vacation, every time we drove by, there he was. The following year, when my class was bussed to different school, every day through the bus window I saw Geronimo, abandoned to his fate. I saw him soaked by rain. I saw him covered in leaves. I saw him buried in snow.

One day while the bus was stopped in front of the school, discharging the kids who went there while the rest of used stayed seated to go on, I noticed Geronimo was no longer on the roof. The maintenance man got on the bus and handed him to me. He explained that someone had kicked a football and it got stuck on the roof. While he was up there he got my action figure as well.

This is the actual figure that went
through this ordeal.

Little Wayne learned a valuable lesson that day about what we value as a society. My toy, something really, really important to me at the time, and my tears, was not important enough to justify getting the ladder out of storage and climbing to the roof. But, one single football gets kicked up there and everyone leaps into action. Thanks for making my feelings and values an afterthought, Janitor Jim.

I’m still a little bitter.

Misspent Youth #1: Flashback

Ten years ago or so I wrote and drew two short comic strips detailing the misadventures of myself when I was a child. I intended these ‟Little Wayne” tales to be an ongoing series, to be collectively titled Misspent Youth. I drew them in a different artistic style than what I usually do. My goal was to emulate some of the great ‟Little” comics series of the past like Little Archie, Little Dot, and Little Audrey, as well as strips like Richie Rich. While I was mostly happy with the results of the two I produced the art style never clicked for me. I began work on a third one, but ended up really hating the art I was producing for it, got frustrated, took a break, and never went back.

It’s unfortunate, because I think I had some good ideas. I had a list of autobiographical memories that dealt with nostalgia, child-like wonder, and the disappointment that arises when confronted with the real world. They were also pretty funny. I still think they are worth sharing, so rather than go back to a dead project and attempt to draw them I want to relate them here. It will be different of course, but hopefully still entertaining. Each of these blog entries will carry the Misspent Youth title.

I want to begin by retelling the first story I drew in prose form.

When I was in first grade in 1967 I wanted to be the Flash for Halloween. I’m pretty sure none of my teachers or most of my friends even knew who the Flash was. Fifty years later he’s on TV and kids everywhere are into the Scarlet Speedster. It makes me incredibly happy when I see posts of friend’s children dressed in the incredibly detailed costumes that are now available.

I wasn’t so lucky back then. Mom bought me a Ben Cooper Flash mask and costume at McCrorys. One of those plastic affairs that made you sweat and it was hard to breathe. The costume was a plastic sheath that had a picture of the Flash on the chest. Flash wore a red and yellow costume with a lightning bolt on it. He didn’t wear a picture of himself. I didn’t want to wear a picture of the Flash. I wanted to be the Flash.

So Mom got out her sewing machine. We got red and yellow cloth ad began to cut and sew. I was pretty specific with what I wanted. In every Flash comic, and on the costume we bought, the yellow part of his costume streaked out behind him as he ran. I now know that these drawings were by Carmine Infantino. The yellow streaks were meant to represent Flash running at super speed. At the time, all I knew was that I wanted the yellow part of my costume to be made out of long, trailing strips of cloth. It would make me look like I was running really fast, you see.

So the day of the first grade Halloween party came. We held a parade down the only street in my small hometown. There I was, all drooping red and yellow cloth, not looking like I was moving very fast at all. To make matters worse they paired me up with some kid in a devil costume. I was supposed to be a superhero and they made me hold hands with the prince of Darkness.

-->

They just didn’t get it.