(The bulk of this post was originally written in June of 2012)
In early 2012, I walked in the door of Krypton Comics in Omaha. I was unexpectedly greeted by Doctor San Guinary … a character originally from Omaha’s own Creature Feature TV show that graced the airwaves on channel 3 ( then an NBC affiliate ) in the 70’s.
He was there seeking blood donations for a bloodmobile drive.
When I was a kid, my brothers gave me comic books to kind of start and fill out my collection. I wrote about the earliest ones I had owned here: https://jimlawless.net/posts/my-first-comics/
When I started buying comics on my own, DC was probably my favorite publisher. I think the stories were more geared toward elementary school kids like me. At some point, I discovered this hero known as The Flash
Justice League of America #97 ( MAR 72 )
Before I was in Kindergarten, I had a comic book collection. It began with some issues that were hand-me-downs and it grew slowly from the late 60’s into the early 70’s.
I had plenty of exposure to Batman and Superman:
“Night of the Reaper” scared the bejeebers out of me.
The DC 100-Page Super Spectacular anthology issues were great!
There were a few Marvels in the collection:
Shooter
I was a little surprised when I saw an announcement from Krypton Comics in Omaha ( http://www.kryptoncomicsomaha.com ) that comics legend Jim Shooter would be the guest of honor on Free Comic Book Day, this year. I was very happy to chat briefly with him.
I had wanted to bring something for Shooter to autograph, but I have had so many comic book purges throughout the years, that my original comics from his tenure at Marvel, Valiant, Defiant, or any other company are either long gone or packed away somewhere.
Radio was a constant in my early childhood and teen years. I don’t have the old gear that I used to, but in trying to piece together old memories, I’ve searched the Internet for pictures of the now-vintage radios that I used to have.
The First Radio I believe that it was Christmas Eve of 1970 when I received an AM radio as a gift from my eldest brother and his wife.
A friend and I used to really enjoy playing pinball. We happened upon a group of stand up video machines in the late 1970’s as we were exiting our local mall through a Sears store. We noticed Atari’s video pinball which we thought was interesting. We played it a couple of time but we didn’t really enjoy it as much as a real pinball machine.
We did, however, notice other kids our age (mid-teens), gathered around some of the other machines.
The Cycling Tour is the eighth episode of the third season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The Cycling Tour is unusual when compared against other episodes of the show as the entire show is dedicated to one long skit. Michael Palin portrays the central character of the show: a bicycle tourist named Mr. Pither.
Pither goes about his way on his bicycle repeatedly crashing and damaging his food supplies. As he talks to people he meets along the tour, he informs them that he is on a cycling tour of North Cornwall.
When I was a kid … ten or eleven years old … I happened upon a local AM radio talk show called Beatle Trivia. It aired Sunday nights at 10:30 p.m. I was a burgeoning Beatles fan, having “discovered” them in the mid-70’s.
The show began as a 5-minute segment during the 7:00 p.m. to midnight “Hall of Fame Show” on Omaha’s WOW AM radio (590 on the AM dial.) By the time I happened upon it, the show ran for about an hour.
I saw in the online Wall Street Journal that Radio Shack is preparing to file for bankruptcy:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-prepares-bankruptcy-filing-1421279360
I had read a blog post eulogizing the store from a former employee several weeks ago. I ended up on the Radio Shack Catalogs site:
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/
…poring over old catalogs, looking at all of the gear that I’d purchased throughout my childhood and through the early years of my adult life. Reminiscing brought back some good memories.
My introduction to the world of electronic bulletin-board systems ( BBS’s ) began in the mid-1980’s.
One evening, my friend John called to say that he’d gotten a modem for his Commodore 64. On a whim, I went to Sears and spent over $60 for the same 300 baud “dumb” VIC-1600 modem. This modem was marketed for the VIC-20, but it worked with the C64 as well. It lacked the auto-answer/auto-dial features that were present in the 1650 modem.