Comics

 A couple days ago, I posted a blog about my family's old station wagon.  I wrote about how my mother used to buy comic books for my sisters and me to read in the back of the car while travelling.  It got me thinking about the characters in the comics I read.  I was never into the super-hero comics, such as Superman, Batman or Spiderman.  I enjoyed a lot of the Harvey Comics, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Little Audrey, Little Lotta, Little Dot and Richie Rich.  The Disney series was a favorite, with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Scrooge McDuck, Huey, Dewey & Louie, and April, May & June.  I also loved the Archie comic series.

I'd have to say my all-time favorite comic when I was younger was Dennis the Menace.  I just got a kick out of all the shenanigans he pulled, often involving his friends Margaret and pal Joey.  Poor Mr. Wilson, and the ever-loving Mrs. Wilson.

While I accumulated a nice collection of comic magazines and books, I also read the comic section in the daily newspapers and especially looked forward to the color Sunday section.  I was a voracious reader of comics.  I have no doubt that it helped me with developing my reading skills as a youngster.  My dad called me a bookworm.

We usually got up early on Christmas morning to open the gifts that Santa Claus had brought us.  I remember one Christmas where, because we were up early, my parents wanted the whole family to take a nap in the early afternoon.  Once I got into bed, instead of sleeping, I read an entire Disney children's novel about Mickey Mouse.  I just couldn't put the book down.

Easter Joy

Happy Easter! I thought I would start the day with some positive thoughts this Spring of 2021 and hopefully the light at the end of the tunnel for this Covid crisis. Most of my family is healthy and doing well. My daughter Melissa is a burn survivor after a horrible car fire on January 27, but she is healing well now. Stacey and I were able to get to Florida for a few days earlier this week, enjoy some sunshine, and be in Disney with some relatives.

I am mindful of the fact that holidays mean different things to different people. Some people celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter, other people celebrate its more secular traditions, such as chocolate bunnies and colored eggs. I feel that neither is wrong. Easter, just like any other holiday, means what you want it to mean to you. 

I always enjoyed my family's Easter traditions, which included a church service and family get-togethers and activities. I took this photo of my mother, father, and two sisters on Easter Sunday, 1973, not long after receiving my first Polaroid camera.

Today Stacey and I will be visiting one of my daughters, her husband, and my two grandchildren.

Happy Easter! Enjoy your day!

Scatterbrained Thoughts #1

John F. Kennedy never knew the name Lee Harvey Oswald.

Ben Franklin flew a kite but never flew an airplane.

Somebody had to be the first person to die in an airplane crash.  It was Thomas Etholen Selfridge, who was a passenger in a plane piloted by Orville Wright on September 17, 1908.

Clothing stores don't have an "intimate apparel" section for men.

When you walk into a Walmart store, most of what you see will be in a landfill in 10 years.

A porn weather forecast:  5-6 inches here, 8-10 inches there.

That god-awful sound of us from behind closed doors is not what you think it is.  It's the two of us trying to sing a song together.

People cough, burp, fart, and have other bodily functions, for which they say, "Excuse me."  But why is it up to someone else to say "Bless you" after you've sneezed and got spit all over them?

In the movie, The Parent Trap, starring Hayley Mills, how is it that an American couple has two daughters with British accents?

On expressways, I don't believe there is any such thing as a "passing lane."  The left lane should be called the "tailgating lane" because everyone in it is tailgating the person in front of him or her.


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The Old Family Station Wagon

We weren't exactly The Brady Bunch but we fit the stereotype of a 1960's and 1970's family with a station wagon. I think it was in the mid-60s when my parents purchased a Dodge Dart. We certainly made use of the cargo space in the back to carry things around, and the back seat was always down on family trips. That would never go today, of course. This was back in the days when we would lay out the blanket across the whole back section. My sisters and I could lounge around with books, comic books, snacks, and sugary drinks to while the hours away while traveling.  The one thing it didn't have was the third row of seats in the back, which faced rear-ward.  My cousin's family had a station wagon like that and I was actually jealous.

This is my sister, Nancy and me in the back of our station wagon on a trip to Lake Placid around 1964.

Our trips were frequently to the Adirondack Mountains to places such as Lake Placid and Lake George. My mother would purchase new comic books for us to read, but we were not allowed to start reading them until we got to the New York State Thruway, which was a forever-drive to me.  My dad called me a bookworm. I could not wait to get through the toll booths so I could indulge myself in the new comic books. My father sometimes pointed out sights along the way, which was boring to me as a little kid; I appreciated the sights later as I got older. We visited places such as Santa's Village, North Pole on the side of Whiteface Mountain, Enchanted Forest, the Land of Make Believe, and Gaslight Village. Many of these places are gone now. That Dodge Dart held many memories for me. It was definitely a our family vehicle.  It came to an end in the early 1970's when my dad a car in front of him. Sadly to say, it was his alcoholism that was at fault.

My Out of World Experience

Not many people know about the time I was invaded by aliens. Well, it really wasn't quite so much an invasion as it was an opportunity to see the world from outer space. Last summer, I took a trip out west in my van just to see the scenery. One of the places I stopped at was Devil's Tower, which is well-known for being featured in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Well, I discovered in the middle of the night that some of what you see in the movie might actually be true. It must have been about 2 or 3 in the morning I got up to use the restroom. After I came back out, an odd-looking male figure approached me in the darkness and motioned for me to follow him. I did. 

We walked along a rock wall that shines very red during the day. Just around the corner in the very dimly lit night, there was a saucer-shaped craft with a few other similar looking characters hanging around the outside. One of them spoke to me in a very broken English and asked me if I would like to go for a ride. I said yes, so we boarded the craft. He told me he was from the planet Doonvomorzey. They had been watching TV signals from Earth for a long time and were perplexed as to why so many of our movies on Earth showed aliens as wanting to "invade" us. They are just as curious about us as we are of lifeforms beyond our planet. Their technology is more advanced than ours, so that's why they were able to travel here. They had seen "Close Encounters." They thought landing at Devil's Tower would be a fun way to visit Earth.

They were afraid that humans on Earth would freak out if they saw them. This is the reason they were hiding. When they saw me walking around by myself in the middle of the night, they felt safe enough to ask me if I would like to go for a quick ride with them. So I boarded the craft, and sat by a window. There were no noisy engines, fiery rockets or anything like that, the liftoff was just quiet and gentle. Some amazing technology! We quickly headed straight up and broke through the Earth's atmosphere. We took one orbit around the Earth and I was able to see much of what astronauts normally see from the International Space Station. Once around the world, we descended right back to the point were they had landed before and let me out. We waved goodbye to each other and I went back to my campsite to go back to bed.

Nothing dramatic, but that was my alien experience. Now you know.

Paul Pakusch, Respectfully Submitted, April 1, 2021