The Summer of 1977; A Tale of Loss

There’s a comic book columnist called Mr. Silver Age, and I believe it was him that wrote that the Golden Age of Comics is when you were eight. Not the traditionally acknowledged real Golden Age of comics, which is between 1935 and 1951, but each person’s personal Golden Age of when comics were at their greatest. And that age is when you were eight.

I turned eight in the fall of 1977. The summer of 1977 was my Golden Age of Comics.

It was the best family road trip in my memory. We were moving from San Antonio, Texas, to an Air Force Base in Platsburg, New York. We made several stops along the way, visiting friends, relatives, amusement parks, and Ocean City, New Jersey along the way. My Mom was very pregnant with my sister Robyn. And she had packed a never-ending stream of comics and distractions for us kids during the trip to keep us out of her hair. Many of these issues formed lasting impressions on the core essentials of these characters. And this is the block of childhood that I will choose to re-live once the memory-to-hologram technology exists.

And it was on this trip that I got the greatest Aquaman comic ever created.


This was the re-launch of Aquaman in his own title. The artwork, by Jim Aparo, was perfect. The villain was Black Manta, at his best. The Manta henchmen were even great. The action was top-notch. And I finally got to see my favorite Super Friend in his own real solo title. Before this, I only had the one reprint book.


Thing is… this Aquaman comic, my absolute favorite and the jewel of my collection, I lost it. I lost it soon after we got to New York.


We lived in base housing at the time, in a row of townhouses. And I was making friends faster than normal because of all the other Air Force kids who were used to moving a lot and readjusting. I had picked a couple of comics out of the collection one day and was sitting and reading on the small patch of grass that was our front lawn. One of the kids ran up and yelled something at me about joining the gang for some playtime thing. I leapt at the chance, stashed my comics, and would later find myself embroiled in battle royal where I had a trash can lid and was fighting everyone else off in a case of overwhelming odds… just like Captain America.

Did you catch it? My mistake? Something I would never do today. Did you? I “stashed my comics”.

Instead of taking the time to run back into the house, upstairs to my room, and placing my comics into the box with the rest of my collection, I got lazy and stashed them quickly. We had a little outdoor trash closet, where we were to put our trash can and the base trash collectors would come get the cans out of the closet. My sister and I were used to using it to quickly stash toys outside so we wouldn’t have to go back inside and all the way up to our room when we wanted to do something else.

I forgot them. I forgot the comics I had stashed.

Trash day was the next day.

I remember the devastating feeling of eight year old loss when I later realized what had happened. I remember checking the trash closet multiple times, unwilling to let go of hope. I remember being devastated on the inside, but being unable to show it on the outside because ultimately, the fault was mine. There was nothing I could say or do that would return those comics to me. I would NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN.


I was eight. The idea of comic book stores and back issue selling was still a ways off for me. At that time in that place, my statement was correct. I WOULD NEVER SEE THAT ISSUE OF AQUAMAN AGAIN… until I re-purchased it at a comic book store in Burke Virginia in 1985. Eight years later. But I had no way of knowing that.

I couldn’t tell my mom, there was no impending source of sympathy, the fault was mine.

I’ve always been plagued by the need for action. To get something done sooner, rather than later. If something’s wrong, to right it. If something needs doing, to do it. So when something happens that’s completely out of my control, that I can literally do nothing about, stress wells up like a tangible thing in my chest. It happened when dogs killed our family cat in 2011. It happened when the trash men took my comics and threw them out in 1977.


So I don’t leave things lying around, out of place. That was one lesson learned. And I’ll be pounding this lesson into my kids heads for as long as they live with me. I’ve tried to discuss it with Lorie, but you know how that turned out.

It was really a great comic, though.


Thanks,
DCD

P.S.  This will be my last Saturday post.  Scaling the blog down to just three times a week.