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

8 8

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.

 

 

We did not have anyone demoing them in the school and when they were popular in my area it was the 70s.

What I recall was how heavy they seemed to my little hands due to the wind up motor and having to swipe hard and at just the right angle to wind them up. They lasted a good time considering how fast they spun.

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.

No. They must have come out after my time. In the seventies perhaps?

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 . . .

Cool! A young pro! What year was this?

We did not have anyone demoing them in the school and when they were popular in my area it was the 70s.

 

What I recall was how heavy they seemed to my little hands due to the wind up motor and having to swipe hard and at just the right angle to wind them up. They lasted a good time considering how fast they spun.

Oh no! The ones you remember were a more modern technology. The ones I had were powered merely by winding a string around them and then flinging them.

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.

 

No. They must have come out after my time. In the seventies perhaps?

 

Possibly 1970-71

 

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 . . .

 

Cool! A young pro! What year was this?

 

Well, I left High School in 1973, so I'd say 1976 or 1977.

 

We did not have anyone demoing them in the school and when they were popular in my area it was the 70s.

 

What I recall was how heavy they seemed to my little hands due to the wind up motor and having to swipe hard and at just the right angle to wind them up. They lasted a good time considering how fast they spun.

 

Oh no! The ones you remember were a more modern technology. The ones I had were powered merely by winding a string around them and then flinging them.

 

Here are photos of some of my Aurora warplane kits:

The artist responsible for the box art on most of the above model kits.was Jo Kotula.

The ones pictured above that I think were among the ones I built as a kid were the Avro Arrow CF-105, MIG-19, Fokker Triplane, Focke-Wulf, Messerschmitt, Lightning, Starfire and Starfighter. The Avro Arrow CF-105 and MIG-19 I had hung from my bedroom ceiling with threads. They escaped my older sister's depredations. The rest which I had on an end table she vacuumed which resulted in some of the tiny parts being sucked into the machine. This broke my heart and put an end to my building of warplane and ship models.

Here are photos of some of my Aurora warship kits:

The German Wolfpack U-Boat was among the kits I built that suffered my sister's vacuuming depredations.

This is a travesty:

Controversial Women's 800 Metres

Chromosome testing to ensure that all athletes competing in Women's events were XX was conducted by the IOC between 1968 and 1996. Such testing was undertaken because of concerns that some countries would resort to cheating of any kind to fatten their medal totals. Chromosone testing was discontinued after 1996 in response to criticism that it was "socially insensitive and humiliating" to competitors that failed the test.

The IOC instead implemented a rule in time for the 2012 Olympics which disqualified athletes from female events if they had testosterone levels above 10 nanomoles per liter. The median testosterone level for women track and field athletes was found to be 0.69 nmol/L and the 99th percentile level was 3.08. The normal male Olympic athlete's testosterone range is in the twenties although it can get as high as 38. The 10 level was actually criticized therefore as it set a target at which women steroid abusers could aim in their efforts to cheat.

But in response to a legal challenge in 2015 the IAAF had to abandon its testosterone testing of competitors in Women's events. The current standard is therefore whoever wants to compete in Women's events can.

Canada's Melissa Bishop set a new Canadian record but finished fourth in the 800 metres behind Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba and Margaret Wambui. Concerns were previously raised about all three of the athletes who finished ahead of Melissa Bishop but the IAAF never disclosed their test results for privacy reasons.

Would Melissa have won the Gold had the IOC a strict gender policy for Women's events? I think so.

And what's the point of having Women's events in the first place if there are no strict gender testing requirements? If there's to be discrimination on the basis of sex, why then is there no actual discrimination on the basis of sex? What we have now is special status for women - sort of. It's political correctness run amuck is what it is.

Here are pictures of some of the Aurora superhero kits from my collection:

So I made my annual pilgrimage to the Canadian National Exposition yesterday.

I was moderate on the food front this year. For an appetizer I had the $0.98 bowl of spaghetti at the Primo booth in the Food Building. I then had a super corn dog with mustard out on the midway:

Together with a rather large order of french fries with salt, pepper and malt vinegar and a big paper cup of Coke. Then I had a plain ice cream waffle sandwich for dessert:

But that was it for me this year. I know. A pretty pathetic effort, but I'm getting old. I just can't pack it away anymore like I could even ten years ago. Very sad.

I then took in the football game between the visiting British Columbia Lions and the Toronto Argonauts. That one didn't end well at all.

Beloved Canadian sports legend Normie Kwong passed away in his sleep on Saturday at the age of 86.

Normie was born on 24 October 1929 in Calgary, Alberta where he attended Western Canada High School and starred on the gridiron. After graduating from high school, he signed to play with the Calgary Stampeders thus becoming the first Chinese-Canadian to play professional football.

Playing fullback, he helped the Stampeders to win the Grey Cup in his rookie season. (Incidentally Stampeder fans introduced modern day hoopla into the Grey Cup in 1948 when they rode their horses through the lobby of the staid old Royal York Hotel in prim and proper Toronto. This was a seminal event in making the Grey Cup weekend a national festival and thus a part of Canada's cultural heritage.)

He was traded by the Stampeders to the Edmonton Eskimos prior to the 1951 season. He led the Western Interprovincial Football Union in rushing in 1951, 1955 and 1956 setting a CFL record which stood until 2012 for the most yards rushing by a Canadian in a season with 1,437 in 1956. He won the Schenley Award for Most Outstanding Canadian in 1955 and 1956. He helped the Eskimos win three Grey Cups in a row from 1954 to 1956. He retired following the 1960 season.

Sadly statistics weren't kept by the WIFU in his first two years but Normie rushed for an average of 5.2 yards per carry between 1950 and 1960 and compiled a total of 9,022 yards rushing which puts him in eighth place on the all-time CFL rushing yardage list. He also scored 93 recorded touchdowns putting him tied for ninth on the all-time list.

His rushing exploits earned him the "China Clipper" nickname and he was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1969.

As a Stampeder and as an Eskimo:

With fellow CFL legends Johnny Bright and Jackie "Spaghetti Legs" Parker after their 1956 Grey Cup triumph:

From the Weekend Magazine:

In a practice jersey (or miscoloured) from the 1959 Topps CFL set, the very first bubble gum cards I bought and collected as a kid:

He was named Canadian Athlete of the Year in 1955 and inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1975.

But his achievements after his playing career ended were perhaps even more impressive. He was part of a group of six Calgary businessmen who bought the Atlanta Flames and moved the team to Calgary. When the Calgary Flames won the Stanley Cup in 1989, Normie Kwong joined Carl Voss and Lionel Conacher (Canada's Athlete of the 1900-50 half century) as the only individuals to have their names inscribed on both the Grey Cup and the Stanley Cup.

He also served as president and general manager of the Calgary Stampeders from 1988 to 1991 where he laid the foundation for the team being a perennial contender ever since.

In 1988 Normie received the Order of Canada. He was then appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Alberta on 20 January 2005 serving until 11 May 2010. (To the uninitiated, a province's Lieutenant-Governor is the titular chief executive officer of the province appointing premiers and signing bills into law. While on a day-to-day basis his functions are largely ceremonial, his is the supreme authority in the province under the Constitution.) With his legendary status in both Calgary and Edmonton, Normie was probably the best loved Lieutenant-Governor that Alberta ever had.

There exists a subset of comic collectors who attempt to build a collection of every comic that was on newsstands during the month of their birth. My problem with that approach is that the comics on the stand from the month of my birth aren't really meaningful to me since they came out well before I noticed and was attracted to the comics on display. More interesting to me are the comics that were on the stands at the specific pivotal dates that set me on the road to becoming a comic fan for life.

For example, the first comic I ever bought was Cicero's Cat 1 in May of 1959:

I see that Adventures of the Fly 1 was on sale that month as was Action Comics 254 with a great Bizarro cover:

The May 1959 Newsstand

I must have run across Superman and Batman titles in barber shops and other waiting rooms as well as on newsstands, but the first superhero comic that grabbed me and drew me into the genre may have been Adventures of the Fly 11 with this absolutely irresistible cover:

It hit the newsstands in January 1961:

The January 1961 Newsstand

That month I see Showcase 31 with an enticing Aquaman cover, Batman 138 with a dandy sea beast cover and Flash 119 with the dastardly Mirror Master on the cover!

While the Fly and the Jaguar were captivating enough, I still wasn't well and truly hooked on superhero comics. But then I was given a copy of Green Lantern 11:

I was absolutely enthralled by the aura of interstellar mystery the Green Lantern title exuded! It hit the newsstands in January 1962 which was a great month with sensational covers for Aquaman 2 and the introduction of the Metal Men in Showcase 37:

The January 1962 Newsstand

When I got my hands on a copy of Justice League of America 8 shortly thereafter, I was introduced to the whole gamut of DC superheroes which sealed the deal:

It hit the newsstands in October 1961 together with such other luminaries as Konga 4:

The October 1961 Newsstand

There exists a subset of comic collectors who attempt to build a collection of every comic that was on newsstands during the month of their birth. My problem with that approach is that the comics on the stand from the month of my birth aren't really meaningful to me since they came out well before I noticed and was attracted to the comics on display. More interesting to me are the comics that were on the stands at the specific pivotal dates that set me on the road to becoming a comic fan for life.

 

For example, the first comic I ever bought was Cicero's Cat 1 in May of 1959:

 

 

I see that Adventures of the Fly 1 was on sale that month as was Action Comics 254 with a great Bizarro cover:

 

The May 1959 Newsstand

 

I must have run across Superman and Batman titles in barber shops and other waiting rooms as well as on newsstands, but the first superhero comic that grabbed me and drew me into the genre was Adventures of the Fly 11 with this absolutely irresistible cover:

 

 

It hit the newsstands in January 1961:

 

The January 1961 Newsstand

 

That month I see Showcase 31 with an enticing Aquaman cover, Batman 138 with a dandy sea beast cover and Flash 119 with the dastardly Mirror Master on the cover!

 

While the Fly and the Jaguar were captivating enough, I still wasn't well and truly hooked on superhero comics. But then I was given a copy of Green Lantern 11:

 

 

I was absolutely enthralled by the aura of interstellar mystery the Green Lantern title exuded! It hit the newsstands in January 1962 which was a great month with sensational covers for Aquaman 2 and the introduction of the Metal Men in Showcase 37:

 

The January 1962 Newsstand

 

When I got my hands on a copy of Justice League of America 8 shortly thereafter, I was introduced to the whole gamut of DC superheroes which sealed the deal:

 

 

It hit the newsstands in October 1961 together with such other luminaries as Konga 4:

 

The October 1961 Newsstand

 

There exists a subset of comic collectors who attempt to build a collection of every comic that was on newsstands during the month of their birth. My problem with that approach is that the comics on the stand from the month of my birth aren't really meaningful to me since they came out well before I noticed and was attracted to the comics on display. More interesting to me are the comics that were on the stands at the specific pivotal dates that set me on the road to becoming a comic fan for life.

 

For example, the first comic I ever bought was Cicero's Cat 1 in May of 1959:

 

 

I see that Adventures of the Fly 1 was on sale that month as was Action Comics 254 with a great Bizarro cover:

 

The May 1959 Newsstand

 

I must have run across Superman and Batman titles in barber shops and other waiting rooms as well as on newsstands, but the first superhero comic that grabbed me and drew me into the genre was Adventures of the Fly 11 with this absolutely irresistible cover:

 

 

It hit the newsstands in January 1961:

 

The January 1961 Newsstand

 

That month I see Showcase 31 with an enticing Aquaman cover, Batman 138 with a dandy sea beast cover and Flash 119 with the dastardly Mirror Master on the cover!

 

While the Fly and the Jaguar were captivating enough, I still wasn't well and truly hooked on superhero comics. But then I was given a copy of Green Lantern 11:

 

 

I was absolutely enthralled by the aura of interstellar mystery the Green Lantern title exuded! It hit the newsstands in January 1962 which was a great month with sensational covers for Aquaman 2 and the introduction of the Metal Men in Showcase 37:

 

The January 1962 Newsstand

 

When I got my hands on a copy of Justice League of America 8 shortly thereafter, I was introduced to the whole gamut of DC superheroes which sealed the deal:

 

 

It hit the newsstands in October 1961 together with such other luminaries as Konga 4:

 

The October 1961 Newsstand

 

Hep, good stuff. It amazes me that you can remember these comic buying events so precisely.

While I can look at a book and know if I had it as a kid, it's still basically all a blur. I would only buy two comics a week and attempt to read as many as I could in the aisle until the proprietor would yell 'this isn't a library'.

Hey Hep.

Hep, good stuff. It amazes me that you can remember these comic buying events so precisely.While I can look at a book and know if I had it as a kid, it's still basically all a blur. I would only buy two comics a week and attempt to read as many as I could in the aisle until the proprietor would yell 'this isn't a library'.

That's one of the reasons I still love my comics so much. They're loaded with memories because I remember precisely where I was when I bought most of the comics I most highly prize. I remember the wonder and excitement I felt when I first spotted that particular comic on the newsstand and the delight I experienced when I purchased it. It was now mine to treasure! Many of those comics are therefore a mental snapshot, a window to my thoughts and feelings more than fifty years ago.

For example, I bought the Cicero's Cat 1 off a spinner rack at the back of Ken's Variety on Wharncliffe Road by the Hyland Theatre in London, Ontario. Ken's was a treasure trove of pop, candy, potato chips, ice cream novelties, comics, magazines, gum cards, model kits, puzzles, rack toys, PEZ dispensers, bobbleheads, etc, etc for any young fellow. And I very clearly remember the day I returned to Ken's Variety and bought the Cicero's Cat 2 a few weeks later:

It was a hot summer's day and I'd returned to our backyard with my new comic. When my father saw the Cicero's Cat 2, he initially told me to take it back for a refund because he thought I had bought the same comic twice! I had to show him issue #1 before he realized that they were different comics.

The Adventures of the Fly title I discovered at the Lamont & Perkins drug store just down the block at the corner of Wortley Road. Similar to a lot of drug stores in London, Lamont & Perkins seemed to carry only Dell, Harvey, Classics Illustrated and Archie comics. Like you though I read it there until they chased me out. This forced me to journey five(!) blocks south to Tyler & Zettel's pharmacy to continue my reading!

But it was Adventures of the Fly 13 that was truly wondrous. When I opened it up there on the magazine rack, these ads heralding the introduction of Fly Girl and the Jaguar greeted my eye:

I mean "Wow!"

It was in the tent at summer camp in 1962 that I first read Justice League 8. I was very impressed to put it mildly. After camp was over and I was back home with a dime in my pocket supplemented by a returnable pop bottle or two, the Justice League issue that greeted me on the stands at Les' Variety right beside Lamont & Perkins was #14:

What a great cover! I must have been feverish with excitement as I bought it. This prompted me to buy several more Batman and Superman family titles together with The Adventures of the Jaguar 9. But within a month my older sister convinced my mother to pitch my small collection before I was corrupted for life. (Of course she failed. I was already addicted and my life has been one of comic book degeneracy ever since.)

So, no, I don't want to let those memories go. While some may say I'm clinging to the past, what I'm actually doing is holding on to the self I was at the time. Since it's still an important part of my being now, I don't want to lose that part of myself. Quite simply, we are all a sum total of our memories and at the end of the day, our memories are all that we have.

never noticed that Cicero 's Cat before. Quirky art, almost a pre Heathcliff Heathcliff !

The cat's name was actually Desdemona. Cicero was the son of Mutt from the Mutt and Jeff comic strip.

The Cicero's Cat strip was created in 1933 by Bud Fisher's assistant, Al Smith, as a topper to the Sunday Mutt and Jeff strip. Cicero's Cat soon proved so popular itself that it became a freestanding strip of its own lasting about thirty years.

never noticed that Cicero 's Cat before. Quirky art, almost a pre Heathcliff Heathcliff !

 

The cat's name was actually Desdemona. Cicero was the son of Mutt from the Mutt and Jeff comic strip.

 

The Cicero's Cat strip was created in 1933 by Bud Fisher's assistant, Al Smith, as a topper to the Sunday Mutt and Jeff strip. Cicero's Cat soon proved so popular itself that it became a freestanding strip of its own lasting about thirty years.

 

 

One of my earliest possessions from back in the day is a pair of Koss HV/1 headphones that I bought back in 1975. I really liked them because the fidelity was great and they had a polyurethane construction that's designed to allow the wearer to still hear the world around him while wearing them.This also makes them very light and comfortable.

So after thirty years or so the polyurethane padding broke down into powder. But they came with a lifetime warranty so I sent them back to Koss. Koss not only replaced the padding free of charge but also refunded me the postage it had cost me to send the headphones back to them for servicing.

I wouldn't buy any headphones but Koss now.

As a kid I didn't actually get very far with my comic collecting efforts. I started buying and saving DC and Archie superhero comics in the summer of 1962 but my incipient collection was quickly nipped in the bud when my older sister convinced my mother to throw out my "stack" of a half dozen or so comics so they wouldn't corrupt me.

I got back into buying DC superhero comics in the summer of 1963 and actually got a subscription to Aquaman. I'd built up a collection of around 25 when with my mother's sanction my sister was allowed to hide them in the storage area under the couch. Bizarre I know and looking back it's tough to explain why my sister decided to plague me thus.

But losing my comics again broke my heart and resulted in another hiatus to my comic buying until the winter of 1964 when I couldn't resist the Green Lantern and Flash issues hitting the newsstand. At some point I rediscovered the comics that my sister had stashed under the couch. In addition to the superheroes by the spring of 1964 I had diversified into buying other DC adventure titles such as Metal Men, Sea Devils, Doom Patrol, Challengers of the Unknown and even such tertiary titles as Blackhawk and Tomahawk. This was finances permitting of course but by the spring of 1964 I had a morning paper route delivering the London Free Press. My collection thus "burgeoned" to dozens (but not hundreds) of comics.

Like many comic fans who eventually morphed into the collectors of today, I tried to keep my comics in as nice condition as possible. I read them gently and carefully. I had to keep a close eye on my friends who would at first opportunity fold the covers back to read them prompting me to shout "Hey! Don't read them that way! That wrecks them." Jerks!

At the same time I was also trading for any back issues I could find of titles featuring Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman, Hawkman, Atom and Wonder Woman. I traded any other titles including the ones featuring Superman and Batman for my favourites. Though I had only one real trading partner, he seemed to have access to other partners and I was particularly successful in acquiring back issues of Justice League of America. I had a badly beaten up copy of Brave and the Bold 28 and much nicer copies of Justice League 4, 5, 8-12, 14-16 and 22 on into the early thirties.

I never succeeded in tracking down a copy of Justice League 3 though. It was perhaps the back issue I wanted the most because of this fabulous house ad I'd seen in a beat up old comic in the waiting room of the Ontario Conservatory of Music where I was taking accordion lessons:

I also managed to trade for a very few older issues of the Flash back to #124 and a couple of Green Lanterns including the #11 that had served as my introduction to the character in early 1962. My biggest back issue score though was one of the already legendary Brave and the Bold appearances of Hawkman:

I got it from a fellow I met at the News Depot in downtown London. He turned out to be attending a rather upscale boarding school with semi-private rooms near the university. Through my regular trading channels I also managed to trade for an Atom 1 the house ad for which I'd long admired:

Somehow though the budding fanzine movement escaped my attention. As a result my back issue collecting efforts were haphazard and my success in general was limited. This left me pining for all those fabulous back issues pictured in house ads that I didn't have.

The real reason my collection never got into the hundreds though was because I had a plethora of other collecting interests vying for both my attention and my pocket change. I was usually collecting some type of premium coins found in potato chips, including the 1960-61 and 1961-62 Shirriff Hockey, the 1962 Shirriff Baseball, the 1962 Jell-O/Hostess Aircraft Wheels, the 1963 Krun-Chee/Humpty Dumpty CFL and the Krun-Chee Warship ones:

I also consistently collected whatever CFL or hockey cards were issued from the 1959 year onward. By 1962 I was also collecting the baseball cards although annoyingly at the time distribution of the baseball cards from 1962 onward in London stopped after the third series at #264. I also completed sets of both the Spooks Stories series 1 and Civil War News cards in 1962.

By the summer of 1963 I had agreed to collect any and all cards with a buddy of mine. This collection we kept at his house where such things were safe from being tossed out by marauding sisters and parents. By 1966 we'd amassed about 6500 different cards almost all of which were issued after 1960. Pre-1961 cards just seemed to have disappeared into shoeboxes in attics and basements and we only had a very few hundred such older cards in total.

By the fall of 1964 my comic buying slowed down to a trickle as I took up buying and building warplane and warship model kits aggressively starting with this dandy Aurora German "Wolfpack" U-Boat:

This hobby too came to a bad end when my sister vacuum cleaned my finished models thus sucking up the small pieces that weren't glued on too well.

But by early 1965 my attention was in fairly swift succession captured by Mad magazine, Drag Cartoons and Creepy. The Drag Cartoons magazines had spurred a growing interest of mine in race and custom cars and I built a couple of Revell "Big Daddy" Roth model kits in the spring including this wild and really complex Mysterion:

Then on a family trip to Detroit to visit with relatives I scored one of the Monogram slot car kits whose ads I'd been admiring in the pages of Boy's Life magazine, a 1/24 scale Ferrari 275P! This took my interests in yet another direction.

I was still buying comics on occasion, particularly the new and exciting Teen Titans, Metamorpho and Capt. Storm titles and the Doctor Fate/Hourman and Starman/Black Canary team-ups. Given how frustrating my search for back issues had been, I liked being in on the ground floor. In a fit of temporary enthusiasm I'd also subscribed to the Fox and the Crow.

By the summer of 1965 though I knew that I was fated to be packed off to boarding school in Kennebunkport, Maine for grade nine. Keeping up with comics or just about anything else would be impossible. On a whim I therefore decided to sell all my 65 or so comics for three or four cents each to a variety store that traded in old comics. My dozen or thereabouts Mad and Drag Cartoons magazines suffered the same fate.

The few comics and Mad special I picked up at Greyhound stations in my journey to Kennebunkport were confiscated by a mad monk in a locker inspection to protect my impressionable young mind from nefarious influences and thus save me from a life of sordid depravity

The last comic I bought as a youth was in August 1967 while I was working on a tobacco farm outside Delhi, Ontario was a Doctor Solar 21:

Reading material for the bunkhouse! So was this, my very first issue:

It had the luscious Angela Dorian who went on to be anointed as the Playmate of the Year as that month's feature:

Next, why and how I got back into comics and built my present day collection!