New cars and comic books

IT’S SATURDAY!

For two nine-year-olds, it’s a day of thanksgiving.

After a full five days of slav­ing away in a class­room ruled over by a teacher intent on forc­ing facts into our devel­op­ing-but-resis­tant brains, it’s def­i­nite­ly a day for cel­e­bra­tion.  How much math can a teacher expect a kid to absorb in a week’s time?

Five days of work­ing over a hot note­book, try­ing to get the hang of frac­tions.  How much can a young­ster take?  How long ‘til summer?

It’s also September, which means two things.  First, it has tak­en only a very few weeks for us to be burned out by school.  And sec­ond, it’s that time of year when all the new car mod­els hit the market.

And this, of course, means that all the local car deal­ers are going to have shiny col­or­ful brochures which illus­trate all the mod­els avail­able by each manufacturer.

At this time of our lives — 1949 — car makes and mod­els are very dis­tinc­tive and change dra­mat­i­cal­ly every three years.  It’s also a time in the lives of two young boys anx­ious­ly look­ing for­ward to being able to dri­ve, when knowl­edge of all the car types and styles is very com­mon in that age group.

“Jake, want to go down­town and check out the new cars?” I ask over the phone.

“Sure.  When?” is the response I hear through the handset.

“Meet me out front as soon as you can,” I reply, hang up and head out the front door to await Jake’s arrival from up the street.

As Jake comes to a halt on his bicy­cle in front of the house and I walk mine to the side­walk to join him, we head to town to make the rounds of all the car deal­ers there and begin our col­lec­tion of new car brochures.

In those days, a cou­ple of young boys wan­der­ing into a car salesroom did­n’t seem to con­cern any­one work­ing there. We saun­tered up to the recep­tion counter, eyed the stack of brochures there, pulled one from the top of the pile, and exit­ed the store eager­ly por­ing over our first acquisition.

However, there was lit­tle time to dwell on what we had col­lect­ed as we con­tin­ued on our rounds to acquire Chrysler, Ford, Pontiac, Chevrolet, Dodge, Plymouth, and Mercury, to add to the Nash we already had.

And while we’re down­town, we might as well stop in the shoe repair shop across the street from the Chevy dealer.

Here the pro­pri­etor runs a side busi­ness of buy­ing and sell­ing used com­ic books.  One can bring in a used com­ic — it must be intact with the front and back cov­ers — and sell it for two cents.  That com­ic is then put up for sale at a nick­el, which is half the price of a new com­ic book.

However, the selec­tions today are pret­ty slim, so Jake and I take a pass and head home with our auto brochures, even though we had some change burn­ing holes in our pockets.

That night, lying on the liv­ing room floor and devour­ing the beau­ti­ful col­or pic­tures of the newest autos, a kid can but dream about being behind the wheel of one, with­out even think­ing about the fact that he’s still too short for his feet to reach the ped­als or to peer over the top of the steer­ing wheel with­out sit­ting on a stack of encyclopedias.