Silly and Comic Seduction of the Innocent Fiasco of 1954: Our Senate in Action

I would like to address something I have never mentioned to or discussed with anyone. From a very young age all the way through high school I had out of body experiences. This is an area under study by science and there have been people of note who experienced and even attempted to induce such events, such as Thomas Edison and Salvatore Dali. Some researchers have estimated as many as 35% of people have experience this at least once, although the more acceptable figure is 1 in 10. I do not see these as being in any way supernatural. There are several perfectly rational and natural theories explaining the phenomena. Unfortunately there are as many therapists and theories about the cause of out of body experiences as Dr. Carter’s proverbial pills. A couple of things of note concerning myself might include studies in the 1980s that concluded people who had OBEs had fantasy prone personalities. Keep in mind I was a professional horror writer and you'll soon find out about some fantasies concerning pirates that I became prone to. Another curiosity related to me is as far as I recall these OBEs began while I attended West Whiteland Elementary School, the institution I can remember nothing about. Whether there is any connection between the two I don’t know. The experience did continue, though, all the way through high school. These experiences happened to me quite frequently is all I know.

I would be sitting at my desk and have this very strange feeling come over me. My body would feel very relaxed and I felt it bending forward toward my knees. Then I would have the sensation of floating upward. Soon I was looking down at myself from somewhere in the air. I could see I was still sitting at my desk looking very still, but perfectly awake, yet I knew I wasn’t really there in my body. I saw everything in the classroom, heard the teacher and others if they spoke all while floating overhead. After a time I would feel a tugging, like the pull of the tide in the ocean, and I would float gently down and everything was normal again.

These little excursions came over me all during my school years. Usually it occurred in a classroom, but sometimes it would happen to me at home. There were times I was able to induce it. It never frightened me. It was enjoyable, pleasant and peaceful. There were even times when I regretted rejoining my body. 

In the 1950s the human body was considered a bit too risqué for human beings to consider. It was not, putting the introduction of the Bikini aside, so openly displayed. There were cracks in the coverings enforced on sexual matters and bodily displays beginning to appear. A magazine called “Playboy” had appeared in December 1953, for instance.

Meanwhile, McCarthyism had begun its decline in April 1954 during the McCarthy-Army Hearings. As the focus of the political spotlight on Communist Sympathizers was beginning to fade, the politicians didn’t take long in finding a new target, Juvenile Delinquency and its cause.

In the spring of 1954 the U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency: Comic Books, “Soda-pop”, and Societal Harm chaired by Senator Robert Hendrickson was called in session by Hendrickson saying this is “not a subcommittee of blue-nosed censors”.

Thus began an all-out assault on comic books.

The highest visible member of the committee was Senator  Estes Kefauver (pictured right), so much so the press and public often referred to it as the Kefauver Committee. Kefauver was the most known man on that committee having gained fame in the early 1950s for his investigation into organized crime. He had campaigned to be the Democratic presidential candidate on the strength of that fame, but lost the nomination to Adlai Stevenson. Kefauver believed the attack on comic books would revitalize his fame and gain him the 1956 nomination.

The Committee claimed it was investigating the rising problem of juvenile delinquency after World War II. Being politicians they did what Congressmen always do, look for an easy answer to a complex problem so they can garner publicity and give the appearance of doing  something while actually doing nothing. First they surveyed a large number of people with backgrounds in the area, including comic book publishers and cartoonists, juvenile court judges, probation officers, psychiatrists, and social workers. The overwhelming conclusion of this survey was comic books and juvenile delinquency had no relationship with an even higher percentage agreeing banning comic books would have no effect.

When the experts concluded this in disagreement with the Committee’s premise, the Senators simply ignored their opinion, kept the results quiet and continued their worthless quest. Failing here to get the answers they sought, they turned to the Postal Service and ordered an investigation into how many comic books had been found breaking the Postal regulation on suitable mailing material. The Post Office failed to find any such violations and the Postal investigation was dropped.

The Senators carried on anyway. They had targeted comic books as the cause of juvenile delinquency and nothing such as the truth would dissuade them, any more than it would their future political replacements, who blamed societies ills on Rock ‘n’ Roll, music, movies, violence and sex on TV, right up to video games, the Internet, sugary soft drinks and Global Warming. This is typical of our so-called leaders; give easy answers with little substance and maybe a new nuisance tax.

Eventually the committee made William M. Gaines (pictured right with some old friends) the biggest villain of their attacks and many of his EC comic line ended. The only real result of all the fuss was a voluntary adoption of the Comic Book Code in September 1954 by the major comic book Publishers, Dell, DC et al, and on the positive side the introduction of Mad Magazine.

Somehow juvenile delinquency continued to exist unabated.

I followed some of this bladder at the time because of my love for comic books. Much of it was downright silly. Dr. Fredric Wertham (pictured left), a psychiatrist and long time campaigner against comic books, received kid gloves treatment from the committee. While the Senators made Wertham the hero, they portrayed Gaines as the villain. Wertham presented what he called the “Superman Complex” as a leading cause of juvenile delinquency, despite the contradiction that  its effects were not  upon the street hoods, but on “primarily the normal child”. Superman supposedly “aroused in children phantasies (sic) of sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again while you yourself remain immune.” He also stated in his testimony the most “morbid” children were unaffected by comic books “because they are wrapped up in their own phantasies [sic].”***

He went on to claim that Superman epitomized the Nazis.

“Actually, Superman (with the big S on his uniform — we should, I

suppose, be thankful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of ever new submen, criminals and “foreign- looking” people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible. It is this feature that engenders in children either one or the other of two attitudes: either they fantasy themselves as supermen, with the attendant prejudices

against the submen, or it makes them submissive and receptive to the blandishments of strong men who will solve all their social problems for them — by force.” – Fredric Wertham, M.D., Seduction of the Innocent, Rinehart & Company, 1954

Wertham supplied what he called “seductive images” placed in comic books. These were more a reflection of his imagination and own dirty mind than reality. In this sample (above) he claims it depicts explicit female anatomy. Since I

had no idea what a woman looked like in this area this did not work for me. However here is the full panel (left) that he cherry picked from.

This is similar to the technique I used to illustrate the mind’s ability to assume something that isn’t there with my book cover to, Knowing My Essay from My Elbow (1969) a collection of my essays). First of all the title is a pun off an old cliché used to imply someone was stupid. The picture was designed to then play off the original expression with the title running from an “ass” to my wife’s elbow. In reality the perceived rear end was just another elbow on a woman in a Best Buy newspaper ad. Or maybe Best Buy was employing subliminal placements of “explicit female anatomy”.

There were also claims from Wertham and these Senators concerning Batman and Robin. The psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, he of the “Superman Complex”, wrote a book called  Seduction of the Innocent in which he claimed the comic books portrayed Batman and Robin “as lovers”. It was said the comic book’s “homosexual overtones” promoted homosexuality in young boys.  They portrayed the comic book story line that Dick Grayson was the ward of wealthy Bruce Wayne as perverted and that actually Batman had an illicit relationship with The Boy Wonder. They said here was this young boy living alone in the mansion of a rich older man not his father. 

These ridiculous allegations were easier for politicians and Senators to embrace than the more  logical explanations of the comic’s creators. The publisher gave two reasons for the debut of Robin in the April 1940 issue of Detective Comics. One was it gave the young readership a character they could identify with. The other came from Bob Kane’s collaborator who said he created Robin to be a Dr. Watson to Batman, because Batman needed

someone he could talk to. The sales of Batman comics doubled after the introduction of Robin and spawned several other young superhero sidekicks, including Green Arrow and Speedy, Captain America and Bucky, and The Human Torch and Toro. Apparently to the Senators and Psychiatrist Wertham this was part of a wide plot to turn the youth of America into Homosexuals. What utter balderdash!

Comic books had no more influence on my indiscretions during childhood than comic books were the cause of Ronald Tipton’s homosexuality. In my own case, Wertham was correct when he stated, “they are wrapped up in their own phantasies [sic].” My behavior resulted from a repressive society that did not prepare children for their sexual maturation and the denigrating abused both at home and at school. The absent of information and care led to me becoming wrapped up in my own fantasies.

***In case anyone wonders about Dr. Wertham constantly spelling “Fantasies” as

“Phantasies” here is a possible explanation. Dr. Wertham was a psychiatrist and the words Fantasies and Phantasies have a slightly different psychological meaning.

Fantasies in our common layperson usage is akin to daydreaming, an imaginary but unreal world or event that anyone can create in their mind. We can fantasy about the life we wished we lived or use fantasy to look at what we think our future might be. It is a conscious endeavor.

Phantasies has a deeper, more ingrained and unconscious quality associated with it. As usual with psychiatrists and psychologists there is no one clear definition for this. For Melanie Klein (left), who did a lot of study of children, phantasy was the child’s mind state in the early stages of their being, therefore more symbolic. She believed they greatly influenced the intellect and emotion of the child early on, but then become stored in the mind and thereafter exerted themselves on all intellectual aspects of the adult. Sigmund Freud, on the other hand, did not view Phantasies as quite the mental movers that Klein did, but considered them “as imagined fulfilments of frustrated wishes.”

Anyway, Wertman was not a poor speller; he just used a word most of us wouldn’t encounter in our daily lives.

Comic Books, Baseball Cards and Other Tools of War

I am not sure how far my new friendships had developed by the end of Fourth Grade. It is difficult to pinpoint many of the experiences I remember from my youth as to the exact period they occurred.

It may be that my friendship with Stuart Meisel developed from those puppet shows. It may have been that commonality which drew us to each other.

The earliest photographs I have of Stuart and me together (on right) were in 1952-53, but these were taken of an event at East Ward School. The earliest picture I have of me at Stuart’s home was taken in 1954 (left, in the Red Room). But that would have been during our junior high years and we would have been 12 or 13 years old depending if the photo was before or after the last week of June. I was born on the 27^th and he on the 30^th of that month.

I can’t trust photographs to pinpoint such things as exact dates. I was interested in photography as a child. I had a Kodak Brownie camera and took a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what year I got that camera and the photos I took as a child have disappeared. The first photograph I have of Ronald and I together is the same 1953 event where Stuart appears. (Ronald is on the far left of the top row and I am on the far right. Stuart is kneeling directly in front of me.) The first picture I have of Ronald taken by me is 1956. I do know when and how Ron and I met and that was 1950.

I am certain Stuart and I as friends go back to 1950 or ’51, but remembering my being together with my childhood friends is like seeing a large and glorious garden. I can see the individual beds of flowers, but I can’t distinguish just where the garden path begins. However, in the case of Ronald, I know the blooms of friendship blossomed over those Third-Fourth Grade years.

Ronald Tipton and I were trading comic books.

I don’t have a photograph, but I have a picture in my head of us sitting on the sun porch at 417 Washington Avenue bargaining over those books. I carried a large cardboard box, one of those they had packed groceries in at the market, out to the porch. He would be waiting with whatever he could carry in his arms or brought in a shopping bag.

Ronald says I was tough. I was a natural born hoarder. It was difficult for me to give up certain things. I wanted to get the comics he had that I liked best, but not lose too many favorites of my own in the deal. Scrooge McDuck and Marge’s Little Lulu were probably the most difficult to yank from my hands. Or maybe they all were. I am sure I grumbled over giving up a Plastic Man or Green Lantern or Captain Marvel. I probably offered up things like Submariner or Captain America. I was never very fond of those.

I though Submariner was a little fishy (yes, pun intended) with his strange pointed ears on his pointed face. Namor the numbskull!
I much preferred DC’s Aquaman. I still might have been willing to part with some Aquamans; although, I not certain he had his own comic book that early. He was still appearing in "Adventure Comics", as was The Green Arrow at the time. He didn't get his own publication until much later. 

 I imagine I was also freer with Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Oswald Rabbit and Andy Panda comics; probably most of the Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies line and Mickey Mouse was never a big favorite, though I bought every new issue that appeared when I could afford to.

I am not certain what happened to that big stack of comic books in the storage room at the Swamp House. I obviously brought back a carton full pruned from that collection, but many of them simply disappeared, especially some of the older ones like Famous Funnies or Funnys on Parade My folks probably felt there wasn’t enough room for them all at my Grandparent’s and told me to pick out those I really wanted. Maybe those comics really had been in that house when we got there and so they just left them.

Ronald would have some comics in his offerings I had no interest in whatsoever. They had

words like “Love” or “Romance” in the titles. Who wanted those things? I didn’t know why he wanted to read that stuff. He did
have some of the EC titles, such as The Vault of Horror and a number of Archie Comics.

I was a big fan of Archie and collected most of the spinoffs as well, such as Jughead, Pep and Laugh Comics. Laugh was kind of a

seasonal collection in the Archie series and an anthology that featured stories centered around different characters in the Archie Family, such as Katy Keene. Pep also featured characters other than just Archie and his gang, such as Li’l Jinx and The Shield, a superhero.

Speaking of Archie spinoffs, Ronald had Katy Keene comics. I read her in Laugh, but seldom would buy her own comic. Katy Keene had a fashion element to her stories. There was a page of cutout paper dolls included in each issue. I had clipped pictures from magazines to play grocery store once upon a time, but I never had much interest in paper dolls.

Now looking at Katy in her underwear, I may have taken an interest in her comics a few years down the road. There would come a period when I traced over drawings of Betty and Veronica and left off their clothing. We’ll talk more about that chapter of my youth in the section of this book when I reach Junior High. At this stage of life, I had no interest in Katy Keene.

Ronald use to submit dress designs to the Katy Keene Fashions. It was a regular feature and contest. You too could create a gown for Katy’s semi-nude paper doll body to sport. Ronald was a good artist. He told me at one time in our childhood he wanted to be a designer when he grew up, not of women’s fashion so much, but of rooms. He could draw rooms well also. He talked of being an interior

designer. I don’t know if he still remembers that desire or what happened that he never pursued it. I thought he was quite good. In more recent times he has confessed to me he really wanted to be a fashion designer, but in our youth boys didn’t speak about such things publicly.

I was interested in art myself, but not in being a designer. (Painting left: “Night Flowers”, age 7.) I just liked to draw and sketch, especially trees. (Right, one of my bare trees in “Awakenings, done in colored charcoal.) In Fourth and Fifth grade some of my drawings were going up on the boards and displayed for any open house affairs at the school. My art was one of my few saving graces in Junior High, too. It was one of the few things anyone praised me for. I had developed my own ambitions in the field by then, but it wasn’t to be a portrait painter or a designer of any stripe. I wanted to be a cartoonist.

There was another trading activity I got into by Fourth Grade, but I don’t think Ronald was as much into Baseball Bubblegum Cards as I was. I could be wrong and maybe we did trade players or gamble for them.

Stuart may have been more involved in this activity and Michael Myers and some of the other boys on the street. I had bought (well, my mother bought for me after some wheedling and whining) my first few cards in 1948. I believe the modern cards only appeared on the market in 1947. I got a few more in 1949 and after that the floodgates opened. I was on my way to filling a couple of shoeboxes with cards.

It was a great deal. You got a large square of bubblegum and a card for one cent, and I even

liked the gum. There were nickel packs where you got a stick of gum and six players’ cards, even more cards during a time Topps and Bowman’s got competitive. Bowman’s was the leader in producing bubblegum baseball cards during the early ‘fifties, but was eventually surpassed by Topps.

Ironically, in 1947 when I had first began to buy Bowman bubblegum, one of their vice-presidents, Edward P. Fenimore, founded his own company in Havertown, Pennsylvania called the Philadelphia Gum Company. Twenty-two years after I purchased my first Bowman card I would go to work at the Philadelphia Gum Compay, but more about that will come much later in my tale.

There were certain players every boy wanted to get in his collection. I wanted Richie Ashburn and Stan Musial.

Ashburn was center fielder for the Phillies and I pictured myself as him. I had been a fan of

Stan Musial ever since my grandfather gave me his large bat in kindergarten. (The photo of Richie Ashburn on the left is not a baseball card, but a photograph taken inside the Phillies locker room by Mary Lou Marple. The year was 1958. Mary Lou was one of my wife-to-be’s best friends. The picture on the right is of my future wife and her friends looking over the program from the game the night they took the photos of the players. That is my wife-to-be, Lois, seated left, then Mary Lou Marple and Lynn Martin They were all attending Upper Darby High School together.)

 A lot of the kids wanted Mickey Mantle. Mantle was very difficult to get. I really think the gum companies only put out a limited number of the top name players to keep you buying all summer. You would get a lot more of Ted Kazanski (don’t confuse him with the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski) than of Ted Kluwzewski.

Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial seemed impossible to get. It took me years to get one card of Musial. We would trade all those “doubles” of Kazanskis in the bubblegum world to get somebody we were missing. It was the Kazanskis we most often gambled with as well.

 (Photo on right is Mickey Mantle, 1951. Not impossible, but then that is a Bowman Card. Topps was more difficult.)

How did we gamble baseball cards? The way we did it where I was involved was simple. You selected a card and your friend selected one from his pack. Now one or the other of you might reject an offering because they already had it or didn’t think the player was equal to their own. This didn’t happen very often. We usually just flipped. We didn’t flip a coin; we flipped the cards. We kind of wrist-snapped them against a wall or hard surface. If one card fell face up and the other didn’t, the owner of the face up card got both. If both cards fell face up or face down, you went again.

To tell the truth, I didn’t like to gamble very much. I am a born hoarder remember. I would

trade duplicates though.

I invented a lot of games with bubblegum cards. Some actually had to do with baseball. For instance, I would take a team of players and spread them out on the floor where their positions would be, First base, second Base, etc. My other team would bat. I would throw a little wad of paper with one hand and swing the batter card at it with the other.  Where it landed, if I hit it, determined how many bases the hitter took. If I missed it was a strike. If it landed on a fielder card the batter was out. I would play an entire nine-inning game doing that.

Or I would take a team, Phillies cards versus Cubs cards for instance and do a player match. In this I made two piles, one team in each or sometimes just various players. (I always separated pitchers out.) I would turn over a card from each pile and compare batting averages. Highest average won and that side took the player. The object was to capture one of the piles in total. It could take hours.

Another game I played was League Standings. I would mix up all the cards in my shoebox

and then put them back in order by team. I would lay a card face up on the floor; lets say it was of a Cardinal. I would then take the next card and lay it down. If it were a different team, say the Cubs, it would go to the right of the first card. If the next card were another Cub, then the Cub pile would leap over the Cardinal pile into first place. Eventually all teams would be in this game. (We only had eight teams in each league at that time.) If a team was in first and the next card was that team, I would set it next to the pile on the left. If the team in second was then drawn, the spare card for the first place team kept them in first, but it then went on top of their main pile.

Finally, I might just play a war game with my cards. This had nothing to do with baseball. I would pick certain face cards as the good guys, a little team of warriors to battle a hoard of cards with action poses. I would have battles, somewhat like the gambling. I would take a “Good Guy” and a “Bad Guy” and fling the two cards together. Whichever landed face down was dead. Being right-handed I always threw the Bad Guy with my left. That way the Good Guy usually won. Yeah, I cheated a little in my games.

Routine Life of a Swamp Rat

Photo is the Swamp Rat by the schizophrenic house in 1948.

I remember a time

when I was a lad

and all of my life

was wonderfully sad.

I had no friends,

all I knew were some ghosts

who would haunt my night.

I waited upon them

during the twilight.

I remember a time

when I was a lad

and all of my life

was excitingly sad.

Despite no friends

There were baseball cards

and motion picture shows,

while at home I had

records and radios.

I had some friends.

“At the Age of 8 or 9”

By Larry Eugene Meredith (1967)

“Personal Poetry”, 1970

Davis Ross, editor

Winchester, Va.

"N-A-B-I-S-C-O,
 Nabisco is the name to know.
 For a breakfast, you can't beat.
 Eat

Nabisco Shredded Wheat!"

"Keen eyes fixed on a flying target... a gleaming arrow set against a rawhide string... a strong bow bent almost to the breaking point... and then... "

"STRAIGHT ARROW!"

"Nabisco Shredded Wheat presents Straight Arrow, a thrilling new adventure story from the exciting days of the Old West!"

"To friends and neighbors alike, Steve Adams appeared to be nothing more than the young owner of the Broken Bow cattle spread, but when danger threatened innocent people, and when evildoers plotted against justice, then Steve Adams, rancher, disappeared. And in his place came a mysterious, stalwart Indian, wearing the dress and war paint of a Comanche, riding the great golden palomino Fury. Galloping out of the darkness to take up the cause of law and order throughout the West comes the legendary figure of..."

"STRAIGHT ARROW!"

I hated Shredded Wheat. Shredded Carpet or Dried Straw was a more appropriate moniker for that stuff in my boyish opinion. I certainly wasn’t going to eat that horse food, but I talked my mom into buying it to get the box top for the Straight Arrow Mystic Wrist Kit containing a Golden Arrowhead. Straight Arrow always left one of these arrowheads behind when he rescued someone, much like the Lone Ranger’s silver bullet. I prized my Golden Arrowhead. It glowed in the dark, had a secret compartment for messages and a whistle to blow in case of danger. We often listened to that show during dinner hour too.

I thought Straight Arrow was much cooler than Superman.

I played Straight Arrow over and over during my life at Glenloch. There was an indentation along the edge of the swamp I used for my secret cave. I would go to my secret cave and change from ranch hand Steve Adams to emerge upon my horse, Fury, as Straight Arrow, Of course my Golden Arrowhead was always with me to aid in getting the bad guys.

Moving from town to the desolation of Glenloch might have been daunting to some. I found it a magical wonderland. When I explored the house after we moved in I discovered the storeroom, the extra bedroom across from my playroom. There wasn’t a lot stored there because my parents didn’t own much. Yet in the middle of this room were stacks of comic books.

There were a lot of comic books, two piles at least, and the one pile was taller than me. I assumed these belonged to my dad, but I’ve begun to wonder about it. A dime isn’t a great amount of money, but it had a lot more purchasing power in the

1940s than it has today. My dad was only making $11.67 a week. Whatever money he had made before I came along couldn’t have been much. Where did he get so many dimes? I wondered if those comic books had been left behind by whomever once lived in that house, the same person who left it half stucco, half cinder block?

There were not only every superhero comic created up to the mid-1940s, as well as all the various Warner Brothers and Walt Disney characters, there were some really old comics, historic comics. There were “Famous Funnies”, the compilations of Sunday newspaper strips. There were comics all in black and white. There was even “The Funnies Weekly”, the first original Dell comic book. I wish I had kept them all.

There were other stacks in the room, but these I knew were mom’s. There were about two-dozen Big Little Books. I think I read them all over the next couple of years. There were books based on comic strip heroes such as Dick Tracy or popular detectives like Bulldog Drummond. There was The Adventures of Tom Mix and even some classics such as David Copperfield (the Dickens' novel, not the magician).

Two attracted my attention more than the others. Both featured Frank “Bring ‘em Back Alive” Buck. Oh, wow, I read them and knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. It wasn’t a cowboy; forgive me, Roy Rogers. I wanted to be an explorer, go into the darkest jungles of Africa, capture wild beasts, and discover new civilizations. I was going to be the first person to capture the Yeti.

This was an interesting goal given my fear of heights and that the Abominable Snowman lived in the Himalayan Mountains, highest in the world.

Living in the swamp gave me a perfect setting to pretend explorer and practice for the future.

Meanwhile, when indoors I had other diversions. I played a lot of board games alone. One of my favorites was a car racing game. The box said, “For 2 to 6 players”, but it was perfect for one. It consisted of a large board that unfolded three times to form a racetrack. The track contained six lanes divided into blocks. (The track design was similar to the board game pictured left.) There were six little metal cars of different colors. 
I always used the green car. Green was my favorite color. I learned later that most race drivers avoided driving a green car; they considered the color bad luck just like the number 13. I didn’t care I liked green.

There was a plastic container shaped like a banjo, a large circle at the end of a long neck. Inside this odd tube were six colored balls, one for each racecar. You shook the plastic with the balls in the round part and let them roll down the neck. You placed the cars at the starting line in the order the balls fell.

You repeated this procedure each turn. You then threw a die for each car in the order

the balls were and moved it the number of blocks in its track. You could try to get to the inner track, since it was the shortest, but you had to use one count to move sideways before moving forward again.

I made up drivers for each car, not imaginary names, but kids I knew in Downingtown. I drove the green car, Billy Smith the red, Tim Mahan the Black and so forth. I did this with everything I played. It was only I making every move or acting every part, but I always pretended my friends were involved.

I became quite good at pretend. Living alone develops imagination. Everything I played had a plot. I never just played; it was always a story. The swamp wasn’t a marsh; it was a vast wasteland fraught with dangerous pools of quicksand and alligators. The distant cows in the pasture were prehistoric beasts or aliens from outer space. The hill behind the house was a mountain, the woods to the east of the cornfield an Amazon jungle. Sometimes the risks I took were not imaginary, but all too real.

I was alone and isolated. I may even have felt lonely at times, but I don’t remember ever getting bored. I could imagine myself surrounded by friends, but what I couldn’t do was learn the skills of dealing with the real thing. That was to be a problem when I had to intermingle with my contemporaries, but that was two years away.

Easter came on March 28 in 1948. There would be no stroll up to St. James Presbyterian Church (left) for pony rides this year. I sat in the kitchen with my mother Saturday evening as she helped me dye hard-boiled eggs. My grandmother had a method of removing the contents from fresh eggs through a tiny hole leaving only the shell. She painted funny faces on the shells and dressed them in little cardboard hats. She made an Abe Lincoln egg and a clown egg, etc. But this was just mom and I and we did nothing quite so fancy. I enjoyed the simplicity of dipping eggs in the various dyes.

Easter falls on Sunday, so my dad was home. He was usually home on major holidays anyway. He was home on Thanksgivings for the four-day weekend, something I was not thankful for. On Thanksgiving we would go to my

grandparents after noon for the big feast of a dinner. (Pictured right, Thanksgiving with my father and grandfather showing.) My grandmother went all out. The centerpiece would be a great golden turkey with her homemade bread stuffing. Her recipe for that stuffing went to the grave with her. There was so much food on Thanksgiving, mashed potatoes and gravy, candied yams with cherries and marshmallows, cranberry sauce, green beans, macaroni and cheese, Cole slaw, pickles and olives. I never had room on my plate for everything at once. She usually baked pumpkin and mincemeat pies; I loved pumpkin, but disliked the mince.

This was a meal repeated on Christmas.

On Easter we also went to grandmother’s for dinner in the afternoon. No one went to church, even on those high Holy days. The meal was lavish enough, but the meat was usually ham, which I wouldn’t eat. There was enough other food on the table for me. I was full of candy by dinnertime anyway.

On Easter morning I woke early. I didn’t allow my parents to sleep late on Christmas and Easter. We came downstairs and before any breakfast, other than coffee for my father, which he salted Navy style, I searched the house for those dyed eggs from the night before. Mother hid them hither and yon throughout the house. She counted the eggs in my basket. One did not want to find an overlooked egg come the heat of July.

I saw what the Easter Bunny left, but wasn’t allowed to touch until after our egg hunt and breakfast. I generally received a large woven basket of jellybeans, coconut crème eggs and yellow marshmallow peeps. There was also a large chocolate rabbit and maybe a giant crème egg as well.

Seven years of age may strike some as old for such a belief. I believed the myths of the Bunny and Santa Claus much longer than I suppose modern children do. Perhaps this was due to my isolation from other children who might know and tell me the truth or maybe it was just more innocent times with less public media to spoil the magic of childhood.

It probably helped that someone in a giant bunny costume didn’t come to the department stores in those day as Santa Claus did. (Photo left is my son about four years old with an Easter Bunny impersonator.) Kris Kringle was human looking after all. A fat man in a red suit with long white whiskers was certainly plausible to see. A giant rabbit was a bit different. If such a beast didn’t frighten a child, it certainly stretched even a kid’s credulity.

Anyway, I had eyewitness proof such beings existed.

March of 1948 had been fairly mild in the Philadelphia region. Temperatures averaged in the mid-sixties during the last half of the month, even having a one-day high of 84. There was a lot of light rain, drizzle and fog. Still, on the morning of the 28^th there was a light snowfall and some snow lay in the shade near the house when I went outside after breakfast. As I walked about the house I saw the tracks.

There were rabbit tracks in the dusting of snow and in the mud of the drizzle. They came

across the yard from the back garden. Snowball was still in the hutch, so it had to be a wild rabbit or…

I followed the tracks and they curved along the side of the house right up to below the dining room window. They went from there down to the lane. It must have been the Easter Bunny, I thought. He entered through this window and left my basket of goodies on the dining room table. How a rabbit of normal size could have carried these large objects or reached the window sill never crossed my mind. I simply accepted these were the foot prints of The Easter Bunny.

It was on one of the Christmases at the Swamp House that I got my evidence that Santa existed. I think it was the second Christmas just before we moved again. I lay in bed awake on Christmas Eve, unable to sleep as usual, too full of expectation and excitement. It grew late and then I heard it, a whoosh, like a strong wind, circle the house and something thud on the roof over my head. Santa and his sled had arrived. I shut my eyes and pretended sleep.

To this day I don’t know what I heard that Christmas Eve, a sudden and single wind puff that blew a branch upon our roof perhaps? It sounded just as Santa’s sleigh should sound and confirmed my trust in Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick, at least for a while longer.

I will tell you how I lost my belief in Santa, even though it didn’t happen until we moved back

to Downingtown and into 417 Washington Avenue (pictured right). I must have been 10 years old by then. Denny Myers would tease me for believing in Santa. “It’s just your parents, you know,” but I didn’t believe him. Town kids were always trying to bring me down in those days and Denny, once a friend, was one of the leaders in teasing and bullying me.

It was getting near the big day and Iva Darlington (pictured left with Judy Baldwin on her left, 1952) and I were playing. No one was home at my house. Dad was on the road and

mother was working again at the Five ‘n’ Dime. Iva and I went into my house for a while. We began to snoop. I don’t know if it was her idea or mine. We were trying to find what my parents got me for Christmas. Normally I got clothes with perhaps a small toy or two from them, but we snooped anyway.

In the back of the closet in the spare bedroom we found a cache of

toys, the very things I wanted for Christmas. Oh, I was ecstatic. I was going to have quite a haul this Christmas, what with the toys Santa brought and all these from my parents as well. I could hardy wait. On the right is that spare bedroom, with Peppy on the bed and Chessie and her two kittens picture on the wall.

On Christmas morning I dashed downstairs and there about the tree were the toys Santa had left in unwrapped display. The same toys Iva and I had seen in the closet. I got the usual clothes from my parents and although I never let on to them, I now knew the truth. Another illusion on childhood was gone.

It is hard to distinguish time during the swamp years. The days remained so consistently the

same. There are several events I remember with great clarity, but not precisely when they happened or in what order. I can separate some by season, but not to a month or day.

We came in the beginning of 1948 and by Spring I was exploring further from the house. I had free reign to wander. The only restrictions were to stay away from Rt. 30 (the Lincoln Highway) and not to go over the crest of the hill behind us. I understood the first admonition well enough. I knew a truck or car could squash me just like the dog I had seen. I didn’t understand the second, but I was to hear the warning more than once over the months. Eventually I would discover why.

For the time being I was content to play my Bring ‘em Back Alive fantasies closer to the house. The swamp was only several yards from our front door and in the spring it blossomed with life. Redwing Blackbirds sailed into the reeds and cat o’nine tails of the marsh. They came in the mornings to breakfast on the water skimmers and mosquitoes. It singled the wetland was again swarming with awakening life.

I would amble along the shoreline with a butterfly net and Mason jar. I was stalking the ferocious tadpole. These baby frogs were massive, dark in color and shaped like sperm. They wiggled about in schools just below the water surface. I snatched up a bunch in my jar and toted it to my room. I wanted to watch these creatures turn into frogs, but when mom saw my captives she made me turn them loose. It was cruel, she said. “They’ll just a die in that jar.” So I returned them to their home and family.

I caught a snake down by the water one day. It was three feet long and probably a Garter Snake. They were fairly common in our part of the world. It isn’t poisonous. I doubt there were any poisonous snakes in our swamp, which was a good thing the way I pursued such things with my bare hands. I ran toward the house calling for mom excited by my catch. She came out the front door and saw what I carried, knowing I had every intension of taking it to my room as a pet.

“You put that down right now,” she yelled. “Don’t you be bringing that snake in this house. Let it go.”

Mom didn’t like snakes. She didn’t have the phobia toward them my grandmother had and she wasn’t going for a hatchet, but she still didn’t want that snake near her. She went back inside and I stood staring at the porch with indecision. I hated to lose my prize, but I dropped it. It wriggled up the yard and under the front stoop. I didn’t tell mom where the snake went. I didn’t think she’d be happy it was close to the house.

Things were little different when I explored the cow pasture across our lane. Sometimes there were cattle in the field, but most of the time there wasn’t. I would walk across the pasture when there wasn’t following this narrow stream that ran through it. The stream twisted about, sometimes doubling back on itself. It had high banks and a rapid current. It also had its own wildlife, but I never tried to scoop it up in a Mason jar.

The water was full of Crayfish as we called them. It some parts of the country they are known

as crawfish or Crawdads. I didn’t like the look of them. They reminded me of big bugs. They had these claws and I was afraid of being pinched. I left them alone.

There was watercress aplenty on the banks of this stream. I had heard of watercress sandwiches, Lord knows where. I plucked a few handfuls, took it home and plopped it between two slices of bread. A couple of bites were enough; I never had another watercress sandwich in my life.

The marsh disappeared into woods to the southeast end of the property. I went into this woods a couple times. Skunk cabbage covered the ground, which I was sure you didn’t put in sandwiches. I never went too deep into the trees for fear of getting lost. There was enough to interest me in the other fields about our home.

There was behind our house another home. It looked better than our place. It was all stone with no scaffolding. It didn’t have people though, except one summer a family came up the lane one day and stayed in that house for a month or so. I never spoke to them. At summer’s end they went away and I never saw them again.

I stayed away from that house.

I found our door locked arriving home from school one day. We used the back door as our main entrance and seldom locked it.  I walked to the front and found that door also locked. It was winter at the time and cold. I rapped on the door, but nothing. The house looked empty. I panicked. I found a large rock out in back and used it to smash out a cellar window, crawled through the frame and went up the steps to the first floor. My mom came down from upstairs as I entered. She was now the one in a panic. She had fallen asleep and not heard me come home.

I wasn’t punished for breaking the window. My mom was relieved I hadn’t cut myself to ribbons on the broken glass and I guess my dad admired my act as some how manly.

There was a long slopping hill behind the house and garden. Corn covered its surface. In the

fall trucks came up our drive. One pulled an odd contraption with a long shoot rising above one side and pointed funnel shaped tubes to the front. The farmer had come to harvest his crop.

I stood by the back of the yard watching and one of the men asked if I would like to ride in the truck with him. Sure, I would. I clambered up into the high cab and off we went. I discovered what the odd looking contraption did. It plucked the ears off the stalks. The pointy funnels pressed down the cornstalks and stripped off the cobs. The snipped off ears were somehow propelled up that long tube where they flew out of an opening into the bin of the truck I rode in. They spewed out fast and furious and occasionally an ear or more would sail through the open side windows of the cab and I would have to duck. The driver laughed at this. It was great.

The farm hands came that one fall for harvest and I never saw them again either, just like those summer visitors to that other house.

It snowed a good bit one of our winters there. That hill was great for sledding as long as I kept to the wagon path running along side the fencerow. If I moved too far into the field I would catch the sled runners on the broken stalks. I pulled my sled up the track by an old clothesline tied to the front. At the top I would sit on the sled and push with my hands to start. I never lay down facing forward to sled. I don’t know if I didn’t know how or was afraid.

As I trudged up the hill I saw something dark in the field. It was a bright morning. I assumed it was a shadow, but then it moved and I saw a second object, then a third. There were some kind of animals running out of the cornfield into the fencerow. I was a little nervous, but I continued on and didn’t see anything anymore that day.

At supper I told mother I saw groundhogs up on the hill.

She was a little dubious about this. I’m not sure she believed I saw anything. I made up so many stories she thought this was probably my imagination. She told me there were groundhogs in our woods, but they would be hibernating this time of year.

The next day I saw the spots again. This time I ran up the wagon track to get closer, my sled bouncing behind. The objects took off and ran into the fencerow as before and I followed them. The animals were nowhere in sight, but the ground was crisscrossed by tiny paw prints. There was an old fallen log in the center of the fencerow with a hole in the ground at the near end. The prints converged at the hole. It must be the groundhogs’ burrow, I decided.

As I stood there something moved in the brush nearby. Suddenly a puppy scurried from the brush and skittered down the hole. Another followed it. I got down on hands and knees and tried to see down the hole, but it was too dark. I picked up a stick and stuck it in, wiggling it about.

By now I was lying on the ground. I heard a low growl behind me. Rolling over I saw a large Collie up on a small rise of dirt. It was bearing its teeth and the fur stood up on its back. I didn’t even think. I jumped to my feet and ran. I grabbed my sled and belly flopped upon it, riding it down the hill into the yard. It was my first face forward sled ride. I rolled off the sled and ran up the back steps screaming for my mother. There was no sign that the dog had chased me.

My mother calmed me down and heard out my story. This time she didn’t question my truth. She called the Chester County SPCA and reported the incidence. An hour or so later a van came slowly up our driveway and mom went outside to meet it. She talked to two men and came back into the house. The men had some kind of pole and a cage, which they carried with them up the hill. They were up there for a time. When they came down they had the Collie, the mother dog, in the cage. After sliding this into the van they drove off.

“What about the puppies,” I asked her.

She shook her head. “I’m sure they’ll come back for them,” she said, but the men never came

back. She called the SPCA again. The men couldn’t get the puppies because they were down a groundhog hole she was told.

“Couldn’t?” she muttered, “Wouldn’t more like.”

Mother kept cans of dog food in one of the kitchen cabinets for feeding Peppy. I led my mom up the wagon track to where I found the log. She dumped some of the dog food at the edge of the hole.

We did this for a couple of days. My dad came home for the weekend and mom told him about the puppies. He got a pick and a shovel and carried them up the hill. Dad dug the pups out of that burrow and brought them all down the hill in an old picnic basket. My dad found a home for each of the pups with his truck driver buddies. The runt of the litter was the only one left and dad said I could keep him. He was the smallest of the group, but I named him Topper. (To the right that is Topper and I playing by the doghouse dad built for him out behind the swamp house.)

Topper was the nicest dog. He was also very handsome. He grew to look like a German Shepherd, which must have been the father, but with the sleeker more elongated muzzle of a Collie. Now I had two recruits for my explorations, Peppy and Topper.