The Poor Little Rich Boy

So I was struggling for a topic to write about today and then I came across this guy's February 21 post. And there it was - an icon of my childhood. Richie Rich, the lead dog of the Harvey Comics empire, along with Casper the Friendly Ghost, the Sad Sack, Hot Stuff the Devil, Little Lotta and Stumbo the Giant. Richie Rich, emissary of a happy world that featured a boy who had more money than a kid could imagine, who wore a sunny disposition and an enormous bowtie.

And the memories came flooding back. Not the stories in the comic books so much, but the thrill of the chase.

The summer of 1973 was when my great friend Mark Miller and I did a lot of chasing. He had turned 10 in March and my 10th birthday was approaching. We had finished 4th grade at St. Therese School and now summer was here. We would clutch our quarters closely, waiting for the delivery of the new comic books at Unmuth's Drug Store, which had a small but mighty magazine rack with many of the latest comics. We had to move fast, though, because they usually only had one copy of each of the Harvey comic books on offer. It was easy to get beat out by the other kids in the neighborhood if you didn't move quickly. You didn't want to take the chance of getting aced out of the latest exploits of Richie Rich. In those days Harvey must have published about 10-15 different Richie Rich titles every month and it was our goal to get them all. Richie Rich, Richie Rich Jackpot$, Richie Rich Dollar$ and Cent$, Richie Rich Bank Book$, etc., etc., etc. They always substituted the $ for the "S" -- Harvey Comics wasn't especially known for subtlety, not that a 9-year old would have noticed. We moved quickly and we usually got our quarry, but sometimes we'd lose out and we were bummed out.

Since it was 1973 and I was growing up in a small city (Appleton, Wisconsin), young guys like Mark and I were able to run the streets pretty freely without our parents worrying too much about our whereabouts. Unmuth's was only a few blocks away but by this time our parents were letting us expand our boundaries a bit. We were even allowed to wander downtown from time to time. We knew that there was the best place in town to find what we wanted -- Jerry's Pipe Shop, with a magazine rack that ran along the entire wall of the store. There you could find out-of-town newspapers, specialty magazines involving just about any discipline you might imagine, and yes, a healthy supply of porno. We knew that was dirty stuff, but we didn't exactly know why. But the key was that they had comic books. Oh, they had them all. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Aquaman, probably even Aqua Velva Man. We didn't care. They had Richie Rich and in vast supplies. We were always up to date when we went to Jerry's. Unmuth's was left behind.

Still, it wasn't enough. 35 years on, I can admit it -- Harvey comic books weren't exactly challenging literary fare. You could easily plow through a jumbo 52 page edition of Richie Rich Dollar$ and Cent$ in no time at all. And when you are 9 or 10, you have a lot of time. So we needed something more. One day, we made another discovery that changed our summer.

We were walking down Appleton Street on our way downtown and we happened to walk by a storefront in an turn-of-the-century building a few blocks north of downtown. The name on the building was Anderson Resale. We'd walked by it dozens of times without even noticing it. One day, for no good reason, we decided to stick our noses inside. What we saw was the Mother Lode.

Old man Anderson, or whoever the slightly seedy looking dude was behind the counter, had lots of somewhat antique furniture, somewhat disreputable kitchen gadgets and other bric-a-brac scattered around the place. None of it held any interest. But just as we were about to leave - we saw it. A long table in the back of the store. On top of the table, piled at least six feet high? Comic books! And not just any comic books - Harvey comic books, going all the way back to the 1950s! We asked old man Anderson how much the comic books were. A dime, he replied. Well, we had dimes. We spent the rest of the summer cadging as many dimes as we could. One day we managed to come up with 26 dimes and brought home 26 comic books. We'd take them back to our houses and read them for hours. One time, after some especially strenuous pawing through the stacks at Anderson's we stopped at my grandmother's house on the way back. She gave us a glass of milk and we sat down to visit and promptly fell asleep in her living room.

I had a transistor radio tuned to the local rock and roll station and we'd revel in the tales of Richie Rich and all the other Harvey heroes, while "Brother Louie" and "Little Willy" and "Natural High" and "Half Breed" wafted in and out of our ears. Sometimes we'd put the comic books down and break out my beloved ABA basketball, firing up jumpshots across the street at the playground at Jackson School, pretending to be Rick Barry and Billy ("The Whopper") Paultz. Other days we'd break out the wiffle ball equipment, or sometimes we'd just sit on the steps and watch the world go by. Every day we were busy and we were able to find our own adventures. Every kid should have a summer like that.