I loved that shirt, that did look a lot like a country-style table cloth. We are standing in the alcove, each of us holding that small pumpkin, so it's obviously before Halloween. We are standing behind the organ mom bought for us, though neither Ann nor I figured out how to play it. Mom eventually bought a piano instead, but the organ looked nice in the alcove.
Mom annotated the back of the lower photograph with "Dec 65. Southeast Escrow Xmas Dinner Dance." In the den in the background was our prize possession. One afternoon after work, mom announced that she had bought us an RCA color television set which was delivered that evening. We were stunned and excited. From 1964 until even after I started college in the fall of 1967, I became a TV junky. When the fall TV schedule arrived each year, I would pour over the nightly programming to see what I wanted to watch all week long.
The Beverly Hillbillies, The Munsters, The Addams Family, Honey West, Get Smart, My Mother the Car, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., Bewitched, That Was The Week That Was, Laugh-In, The Defenders, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Hullabaloo, Shindig, The Monkees, Lost In Space, The John Davidson Show summer replacement series, and, beginning in September of 1966, Star Trek. Even when I stopped watching most other TV shows because I had to make time to study, I continued to set aside an hour each week for Star Trek.
Not long after we moved to Cypress, I rediscovered comic books from the neighborhood market on Long Beach Boulevard, just a couple of blocks from our house. The little store had a bin of used comic books for sale at a nickle a piece, when the regular price was 12 cents. There I found copies of Adventure Comics, featuring The Legion of Super Heroes. When we were still living with dad and Willene, I had read an imaginary tale of The Death Of Superman. Three teenage legionnaires had journeyed back in time to pay tribute to the great fallen hero. I was fascinated by them being teenagers. So when I came across used comic books about the Legion, I grabbed them up, hoping to acquire all of them in time, which I eventually did.
Some weeks, I would hike all over South Gate to find the latest haul if the drug store across from the little supermarket was tardy in opening their shipment or had missed some of the titles that I started buying regularly. I found a used magazine and comic book store on Tweedy Boulevard. I also came across another one in Huntington Park when I finally had to buy that last early issue of Adventure Comics that I did not have, #305. I had to pay the princely sum of 50 cents to complete my collection. The owner also casually mentioned that he had a mint copy of Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman. He would gladly sell it to me for $75.00. Considering that mint copies of Action Comics #1 have sold for over $1 million dollars in the last year or so, it would have been a steal to have bought the copy he was offering me. However, $75.00 was what mom paid in monthly rent for our little two-bedroom, one-bath house in those days. Even when, as a senior in high school, I started working for $1.25 an hour, he might as well have asked for a chunk of moon rock from me as payment because I was never going to be able to afford that kind of money for a single comic book. Mom would have killed me had I spent that much for a comic book, regardless.
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