As *spoon* as Arch comes back from vacation Hepcat will still be Hepcat.

8 8

Alright then. Here's a cross sample of Cowboy's pictures over the last five years.

Cowboy likes dice games:

He's also a big Winnipeg Blue Bombers fan:

And a big sports fan in general:

He also likes to celebrate all holidays, particularly with cake:

Nor is he strictly an indoor cat. He loves his garden and patrolling the neighbourhood in general:

My mother used to haunt the downtown Kresge's, Woolworth, Zellers and Metropolitan stores, collectively known as five-and-dimes, in London, Ontario looking for bargains. As a youngster I was very often in tow. I didn't mind of course as there was never a shortage of items to capture a young boy's interest, little turtles, goldfish, budgies, the bulk candy counter, the fancy birthday cakes in the front window and all those toys!

Here's an old photo of the downtown Kresge's store and the side of the Metropolitan store in London circa 1952:

This was the big Kresge's store in downtown Hamilton, Ontario:

This was the big Woolworth just down the block in Hamilton:

Then there was East London a mile or so down Dundas Street to the east. The East London business strip was anchored by the Hudson's department store plus its own Kresge's (or was it a Woolworth?) and Metropolitan. The once a year street carnival/sidewalk sale in East London would generally draw my mother. I of course had no objection to this more distant expedition because of the added attractions of rides, popcorn, candy apples and cotton candy!

It was on one of those trips to the downtown Kresge's in 1961(?) though that I came face to face with a Great Garloo, which I immediately brought to my mother's attention. But with a sticker price in the fifteen dollar area, there was just no chance I'd get one.

It was also at that Kresge's store in 1962 that I first encountered the Aurora monster model kits:

Oh man! They were the coolest things I'd ever seen and I made their acquisition a top priority! Those kits turned out to be a lifetime love.

A few months thereafter I managed to score one of these wild Hasbro Marble Mazes which were displayed in the front window of the Woolworth store:

I guess I'd been particularly good so my mother bought me one right then and there.

Those five-and-dime stores in downtown areas were also Halloween central for many a baby boomer kid. A young fellow could see a score of Ben Cooper or Collegeville costumes hanging from the ceiling of the local five-and-dime in the weeks before Halloween and if he was very lucky get his parents to spring for one.

Note that there were a whopping 24 Kresge's stores alone in Toronto in the early sixties!

Then of course these five-and-dimes typically featured a lunch counter. The one pictured here in 1988 was at the Kresge's store on Coxwell Avenue in Toronto close to my present day neighbourhood:

The next one is a shot of the packed Kresge's lunch counter in Windsor, Ontario taken in August, 1975:

Here's a picture of a Woolworth menu:

And here are some shots of various Woolworth lunch counters:

Hopefully hers wasn't the take-out service being offered!

These lunch counters often came equipped with a very cool Campbell's or Heinz soup display:

The one at the Met store in downtown London was so popular that they even had a satellite take-out counter at the front of the store from which businessmen could grab a quick cheeseburger, hot dog, french fries, donut or coffee. Not that I had the money for such things of course, but there was always the chance I could get my mother to buy me a dish of ice cream served in one of those metal dishes covered with a cardboard insert.

Nor was I necessarily always accompanied by my mother on trips to downtown London. Helicopter parenting wasn't in vogue yet and a young fellow could range a mile or more of his own accord in those days. I very clearly remember passing by the Met with a buddy of mine in the summer of 1962 and seeing that they had the new CFL cards on display right by the snack counter at the front of the store before I'd seen them anywhere else and buying two or three packs:

I also recall being very bitterly disappointed. Not only were the cards just in B&W but they were only half the standard size. Cheap bastiches!

Moreover Woolworth had great Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches that they made up between two wafers fresh before your very eyes for only fifteen cents! These were something I could fund myself by high school after looking through the records at the Disc Shop right across from the new Woolworth store in the downtown Wellington Square Mall!

Great memories, but sadly none of those places I've mentioned still exist. What I'd give now for a cheeseburger and fries at the Met store followed by an ice cream sandwich from Woolworth! You never know what you've got till it's gone.

That's actually one of the reasons I still love A&W hamburgers! They have that old-fashioned five and dime lunch counter hamburger taste I seem to remember.

Mmmmmm! Now that's exactly what I'm going to get for supper.

I the kmart,zellers,towers ect lunch counters that were open in the late seventies early eighties around here...remember the chocolate milk from the special milk machine,so thick your straw stood up..

Here in alphabetical order are scans of my twelve favourite DC covers from 1960 that I have in my collection:

Here in alphabetical order are scans of my ten favourite non-DC covers from 1960 that I have in my collection:

Love the date stamp. Bethlehem copy ?

What a great cover. That shade of yellow really stands out, different. Bearded cats ?

Love the date stamp. Bethlehem copy ?

Yes. I'm the lucky owner of seven of the Bethlehem Adventure of the Fly comics!

Bearded cats?

I think they're supposed to be lynx....

The Maine high school year ended in late May and by this time fifty years ago I was headed back on the dog to my home in London. My feeling at the time was one of absolute euphoria! The long(!) ordeal was over and I was free for the summer a month earlier than the June 28th date or so that elementary school classes in London had ended for me previously. Such happiness!

I remember very little about the return trip other than the joy I felt. I know that I transferred to another bus in Hamilton this time for the last leg of my journey . It was a bright airy new station and like most was blessed with a newsstand and spinner rack for comics. I deliberately revisited that same station some twenty years later and found it small and uninviting. The newsstand was gone although the luncheonette was still in operation. It wasn't at all appealing though. Its business fluctuated not with the times of arrival or departure of buses but with the arrival of monthly welfare cheques! I asked the waitress.

I must have bought a copy of Showcase 63 somewhere on the way back because I remember having very mixed feelings about the Inferior Five concept.

I just couldn't rationalize how this parody of a superhero team fit into the DC Universe and it troubled me. The answer was of course yet another one of the multiple Earths but even so up to this point the other Earths lacked this element of zaniness intrinsic to the doings of the Inferior Five.

I was also excited by the appearance of the Weather Wizard in the latest issue of Detective Comics:

Nonetheless I found it vaguely unsettling. While it never made any sense for villains not to crop up willy nilly all over the place, together with other DC comic readers I had become accustomed to Flash and the other superheroes having their own specific gallery of villains and accepted it as a fact of life. For the Weather Wizard to crop up in a Batman tale therefore seemed not just incredibly innovative but somehow bizarre. Hence the cover which highlighted how very startling this development actually was:

I found both the cover and story of the then current Justice League simply uninteresting:

I also perused that month's House of Mystery:on the stands:

I found the disposable use and throwaway concept for superheroes just plain wrong though, and I didn't buy the issue..I also have a vague recollection of perusing but not buying these other two issues as well:

They just weren't as appealing to me as the DC comics were in 1964. Moreover my Fox and the Crow subscription still had a few issues to go and I would be appalled to discover when I got home that the irascible pair had now been reduced to being featured on only half the cover by the execrable Stanley & His Monster:

This of course raises the perennial question of whether I'd grown out of comics at the age of fourteen or whether DC's products had slipped in quality over the previous two years. While I personally think that the DC line was not as good in 1966 as it was in 1964, I recognize that the Go-Go Check years were to many including our own Alan DC's new Golden Age.

Buying a Mad magazine when embarking on an intercity bus or train trip had become a bit of a tradition for me, but I have no specific recollection of buying this issue which was on the stands at the time:

But I know that I bought this issue of The Worst from Mad shortly after getting home:

By the way, Alfred E. Neuman's vocalizing consisted of belches.

I also perused the then current issue of Drag Cartoons on the stands:

I had no inkling that the inclusion of a strip devoted to this Wonder Warthog character constituted the first big break for Gilbert Shelton since it was his first strip in a nationally distributed magazine, but I was intrigued anyway. It looked pretty cool. I was disappointed though that there was no Ollie Ollie Overhead strip by Dennis Ellefson and that some of the stories were reprints I'd seen previously so I didn't buy it.

I did buy that month's CARtoons though which was where Dennis Ellefson had gone:

It was the Warren horror magazines to which I was really drawn at the time though. I bought both these issue either on my journey home or immediately upon my return:

I sent away the funds to subscribe to both that summer and duly received a card from Warren confirming my subscriptions. The incompetent louts then fulfilled only my Eerie subscription!

Ironically enough my father approved of my new interest in magazines because he thought they were more "adult" than the comics I had been buying previously and were thus a sign of maturity! Well I did admire the cleavage on display in the Warren mags so I suppose he may have been right in a way....

But nonetheless over three months of blissful idleness awaited me on my return to London. My buddies were still in school for a month though so I initially had to occupy myself by shooting baskets at my local elementary school court. Hey, I'm Lithuanian. It's what we do!

I also sprained my left ankle badly for the first time on that court and I've been prone to turning that same ankle ever since. I've had to wear high top running shoes or an ankle brace to be safe from re-injuring that ankle since university if and when I've been doing something involving running or jumping.

Riding my first generation Nash wooden skateboard down the driveway into Thames Park was another favoured activity:

I was deterred by neither steepness of slope nor potholes since I never wrecked myself falling at that age anyway! In a few weeks time I'd also get this gem of a Monogram slot car kit at a hobby shop on Seven Mile Road just west of the Southfield Expressway in Detroit:

Of course I then attempted to run it on the steeply banked track upstairs at Cowan's Hardware on Dundas Street in downtown London but I found the damage I was inflicting on my lovingly assembled slot car rather distressing. I didn't therefore run it often enough to get very good at it.

I'd also brought the Cox Spitfire I'd bought at a hobby shop in Wells(?), Maine back with me:

I had to send away for a new body for it because crashing it had damaged the old one beyond repair. After rebuilding it though, I never flew it again since I knew I'd just end up destroying it. It made a delightful racket when I fired it up in the house though! Here it is today:

And I still had my Duncan spin tops!

I never got beyond the Around-the-World trick which consisted of throwing the top behind your back and then catching it in midair in the palm of that throwing hand still spinning. That right there was a pretty good trick of course.

I would have to take a first year French course in summer school since I wanted to continue secondary school back in London. That was no problem at all for me since the class was over by 10:30 and I was home with that day's lesson mastered before 1:00 PM. The rest of the day I devoted to hanging out with my buddies on the street or in the park. Even dances Saturday evenings at one of the local elementary schools! I was growing up. Looking back they were good times indeed.

I've had this box of Hawk Weird-Ohs Decals complete with the shipping box for about thirty years:

I picked it up at Collector's Corner in Scarborough which specialized in car model kits.

Now here in alphabetical order are scans of my twelve favourite DC covers from 1961 that I have in my collection:

Here are scans of a few of the "Big Daddy" Roth T-shirt designs with colouring courtesy of fellow Roth fanatic Weldonmc that I have in my collection :

Jack Davis may very well top the list of my favourite comic artists. Here are scans of several of my comics and magazines featuring Jack Davis cover art:

Here are pictures of my three Aurora monsters in hot rods kits:

And I still had my Duncan spin tops!

 

 

I never got beyond the Around-the-World trick which consisted of throwing the top behind your back and then catching it in midair in the palm of that throwing hand still spinning. That right there was a pretty good trick of course.

Davis

And I still had my Duncan spin tops!

 

I haven't thought about that toy in ages. They were hot for one or two of my elementary school years and my friends and I all got one or two as birthday or Christmas gifts.

Yes. They were a hot fad for a year or so in 1963(?) in my neck of the woods. All of a sudden they popped up in every corner variety store and five-and-dime such as Woolworth and Kresge's. At 39 cents or so they were fairly cheap and I was able to hit my dad up for the price of one because a buddy of mine had already done the same! That plus the fact that my father had tops himself as a kid back in the old country so he was positively predisposed to this new interest of mine.

The first one I bought was a Whistler. Duncan though sent older high school and college kids around to the elementary schools during lunch hour to demonstrate the tricks that could be done with the tops and I really caught the bug. (Can you imagine twenty year olds hanging around elementary school grounds these days? Sad what everybody would think.) Within a few weeks I had graduated to a top-of-the-line Imperial which was better for doing tricks. I never mastered the man-on-the-flying-trapeze or any of the really advanced tricks which involved flinging the top but then catching it in the throwing string before it hit the ground.

I tried to find a MOC Duncan top at toy shows all through the eighties and nineties with no success. Since Ebay appeared on the scene though, they've come out of warehouses and attics and I now have several dozen.

The best thing about this set released by Fleer in 1965 is actually the wrapper, although the cards themselves are pretty cool as well:

The set sold well enough to spawn a sequel;

[im]http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g434/Balticprince/BaseballWeird-Ohswrapper.jpg[/img]

Hepcat, I am, as usual, astounded and impressed by the breadth and depth of your wonderful collections -- love the Aurora monster kits -- terrific. I have most all the Polar Lights/Monogram reissues, and several of the originals, some of the old boxes.

Looking forward to more as you wish to share!

Thank you! I have lots more to post. I have to be careful though because I don't want to duplicate things I've already posted.

And I still had my Duncan spin tops!

 

I haven't thought about that toy in ages. They were hot for one or two of my elementary school years and my friends and I all got one or two as birthday or Christmas gifts.

 

Yes. They were a hot fad for a year or so in 1963(?) in my neck of the woods. All of a sudden they popped up in every corner variety store and five-and-dime such as Woolworth and Kresge's. At 39 cents or so they were fairly cheap and I was able to hit my dad up for the price of one because a buddy of mine had already done the same! That plus the fact that my father had tops himself as a kid back in the old country so he was positively predisposed to this new interest of mine.

 

The first one I bought was a Whistler. Duncan though sent older high school and college kids around to the elementary schools during lunch hour to demonstrate the tricks that could be done with the tops and I really caught the bug. (Can you imagine twenty year olds hanging around elementary school grounds these days? Sad what everybody would think.) Within a few weeks I had graduated to a top-of-the-line Imperial which was better for doing tricks. I never mastered the man-on-the-flying-trapeze or any of the really advanced tricks which involved flinging the top but then catching it in the throwing string before it hit the ground.

 

I tried to find a MOC Duncan top at toy shows all through the eighties and nineties with no success. Since Ebay appeared on the scene though, they've come out of warehouses and attics and I now have several dozen.

 

 

 

I remember these from my childhood but with a difference.

Did you ever have the tops with a magnet "at the top" that would then be attracted to a steel ring (bit like a key ring) that was attached to the string? Enabled the spinning top to be lifted "by the string" as it were.

As an aside, I ran into a girl I knew at High School not long after I'd left. She was a professional Yo-Yo demonstrator and traveled the world promoting Duncan Yo-Yos.

Talk about strange callings . . .