The Big Show Time Machine

This week's post is a look at the past, in two ways. The article below was originally written back in 1998 for the third issue of John Hudson's excellent video fanzine, The Rewinder.   (You do remember when you had to "rewind" movies don't you?) Due to complicated circumstances issue three never saw the light of day, so here it is at last.

I had originally wanted to write a full history of The Big Show, but I couldn't find anyone that worked in programming for WLAC in the seventies. My only sources were memory and microfilm (remember that too?) of TV schedules from the Tennessean.  Still, I think the piece turned out rather well and hopefully, can be enjoyed by anyone that grew up with a weekly afternoon movie on local TV. So grab a can of Pringles and a grape Nehi and enjoy!

AFTER SCHOOL MONSTERS, GANSTERS & COWBOYS

A REMEMBERANCE OF THE BIG SHOW

            Okay, here's the deal. The bell rings at three o'clock on the dot. Fifteen minutes to get on the bus before it pulls out, that is if they don't hold it up for some stupid little kid that's messing around. The ride home takes about 35 minutes -- in the house throw the books down, ten minutes to go. Mom bugs you about your chores and you promise her to do them later. She's in a good mood, so she lets you slide. A big glass of Kool-Ade, some chips, and on the couch, shoes off -- crank the volume up. It's four o'clock and time for The Big Show.

            For more than twenty years, The Big Show was a weekday ritual for kids in the Nashville television viewing area. Growing up in the sixties and seventies meant rushing home from school to catch the latest showing of Son of Frankenstein, Commanche, Tarantula, Pinocchio in Outer Space, A Night at the Opera, Tickle Me, or any of the other hundreds of movies that would come blasting out of WLAC-TV, Channel 5 every afternoon at four.

            While syndicated movies were a staple of most local television programming -- filling up time on weekends and late nights -- WLAC did not begin programming weekday afternoon movies until October 29, 1956 with Screen Hit Theater. The afternoon movie continued under that title until February 18, 1957 when it changed to the name it would carry for the next twenty years, The Big Show. Unfortunately, the Tennessean and the Nashville Banner did not list the titles of individual movies in their programming guide at that time, so the debut title of The Big Show is lost to history. Judging by the movies listed in 1958 and 1959 it's likely the first Big Shows were comedies, dramas, and musicals from the thirties and forties -- titles like Words and Music, Damsel in Distress and A Likely Story. Add to these, series films like Henry Aldrich and the Bowery Boys, and various horse operas.

            As the sixties began, movie producers learned what a valuable market television presented, and more and more films poured into syndication. WLAC also seemed to learn that its main audience in the afternoons was kids, and kids wanted to see action. Westerns, gangster films, and horror and science fiction epics soon became the mainstay of The Big Show. The comedies, musicals and dramas didn't disappear from the schedule. They were mixed in, making for some breathtakingly eclectic weeks of viewing. A look at one week's worth of Big Shows from October, 1966 reveals the 1958 Fred MacMurray western Day of the Badman on Monday, followed by 1959's monster and hot rod epic, The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow on Tuesday. The Jeff Chandler 1958 adventure yarn, Raw Wind in Eden, followed on Wednesday, with Hedy Lamarr in the 1958 drama The Female Animal on Thursday. Closing out this already mixed-up week was the 1959 Roger Corman beatnik-horror classic, A Bucket of Blood.

            Of course, rare was the kid that watched all these movies, every day. But part of the charm of The Big Show was its demonstration of the diversity of American film. Can't stand Lucille Ball in the Fuller Brush Girl?  Well, tune in tomorrow for Brando in The Wild One. Can't handle Doctor Blood's Coffin?  Just come back the next day for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.

            As The Big Show moved into the seventies, the size of WLAC's film library continued to grow and, despite the occasional theme week, like John Wayne, Frankenstein, Elvis, etc., the bulk of The Big Show's programming remained wildly diverse. One new wrinkle was WLAC's weatherman, Bob Lobertini, becoming the host of the show. First appearing as a kiddy host in the guise of "Captain Bob," and later hosting the "Dialing for Dollars" segment during the movie, Lobertini became a face and name known to every kid in Middle Tennessee and South Central Kentucky. You had to trust the forecast given to you by the man that had just introduced Gamera that afternoon.

            Probably one of the most exciting experiments with The Big Show's format came in the seventies when WLAC aired the complete 1944 Republic serial, Captain America, showing one episode after each movie for three weeks in a row. While the experiment may have not been successful, since WLAC never showed any other serials in this manner, I can testify from personal experience that kids at my grade school were hooked. Even if the movie was boring, you just didn't miss Captain America.

            The end was coming for The Big Show, however. In the fall of 1976, WLAC moved The Big Show from its traditional 4:00 time slot up an hour to 3:00. This made it impossible for most kids to make it home for the start of the movie. After one year in this new time slot, The Big Show came to an unceremonious end on August 12, 1977 with the 1958 Van Heflin Western, Gunman's Walk. The following Monday, WLAC began showing standard afternoon rerun fare -- The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, Gomer Pyle USMC, and The Doris Day Show.

            The Big Show may be gone, but it left an indelible imprint in the hearts and minds of the kids that grew up with it. Not only did its eclectic schedule introduce a wild mix of American movies, but it was a lesson in creative anarchy. Where else could you see a movie like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies on the day after Thanksgiving, or rest assured that Christmas would bring another showing of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

            For many people in the Nashville viewing area, The Big Show fostered our love of movies, and we felt a loyalty to it. I remember watching the 1966 Batman movie on late night television several years after the demise of The Big Show. I was shocked and dismayed to find out there were several scenes that I had never seen on The Big Show presentations. How could The Big Show have betrayed me?  But of course, with only ninety minutes minus commercials to show movies, The Big Show frequently cut films to ribbons. Another failing was it tendency to show the same films over and over. Frankenstein week almost always consisted of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The other Universal Frankenstein films were seldom seen even though WLAC held the syndication rights to show them.

            Despite its shortcomings, The Big Show still served up fun movies every day, and for that, a lot can be forgiven. There was a specialness in having random access to a variety of movies every day after school. When I started researching this article I called WTVF, the successor to WLAC. No one I contacted had any information on The Big Show or programming from that time, but Mark Benda, the current programming manager, described in affectionate terms the afternoon movie show he grew up watching in New Jersey.

            Today, with cable, satellite TV, and videotapes, The Big Show may seem like quaint nostalgia, but it was an important part of many kids' lives. You knew if you missed The Curse of the Fly on The Big Show, you were looking at least a year before you would see it again, if then. But even if you did miss it, you knew the next day there'd be another movie probably as equally cool and as equally unmissable.

A Message from the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion

Just a quick post to plug the new issue of Twisted South that has my feature article on Wanda Jackson and the first installment of my new column - Hillbillies, Hepcats & Honky Tonkers – “Charlie Feathers and the Sound From Another World." For a list of stores that carry Twisted South (nationwide!), just check out their website at: http://www.twistedsouth.com/cms/index.php?page=stores

My Autumn of Aliens, or Why a Swiss Hotel Clerk Owes Me $1.25 (Plus Tax!) – Part 3

So as the seventies rumbled on my interest in UFOs and all manner of weird stuff continued. But along with my interest in the “weird stuff” came my growing interest in “slightly less weird stuff,” such as more conventional science (mainly astronomy and space exploration) as well as science fiction. While I was still a comic book collector, the number of titles I was buying began to slack off as I turned more of my budget to buying science fiction novels and magazines. Not to mention the explosion of movie magazines that began to appear in the aftermath of the release of Star Wars and the growing popularity of Star Trek.

In the fall of 1977, I started high school, and one my best friends was a big time science and astronomy geek. This association would only push me more in the direction of “conventional” science. Also, that fall the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released. At the time absolutely loved it, in some ways even more than Star Wars. It struck me as great science fiction with a really positive message about “man’s place in the cosmos.” (I should interject here that my opinion now is less glowing, but no need to get into that...) So I was rather surprised when one of my main literary heroes of the time, science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, came down so hard on the movie – criticizing it for promoting “pseudo-science” over “true science.”

And Asimov wasn’t the only one. I had also discovered astronomer Carl Sagan through his many appearance on television talk shows and documentaries, and he was fast becoming a hero of mine. Sagan was not only a brain, but he had a lot of natural charisma and really understood how to use television to his advantage. He was a staunch supporter of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial life, but could also be an incredibly harsh critic of UFO reports and many of the self-proclaimed “experts” in the field.

So for a while I was torn between two masters. Even though what people like Asimov and Sagan were saying made sense in a logical way, flying saucers and all the other associated weird stuff were just so darn cool. I finally settled on a middle ground where I felt it was good that someone was too skeptical, because that would be the only way the real truth could eventually come out. Yeah, that's the ticket...

"Just the facts, ma'am..." 

And Close Encounters had done its job well on the pop culture scene. Following the movie there was an immediate explosion of UFO books, magazines, documentaries and even TV shows. One my new favorites was the Jack Webb produced Project U.F.O., even if the show was a bit of a cheat at times. The typical episode would start off with some person witnessing an incredibly detailed sighting, often with occupants, but by the end of the episode Major Gatlin and Staff Sgt. Fitz would demonstrate how they had actually seen a flock of birds, swamp gas, or maybe a runaway balloon animal. Still, the Dragnet-just-the-facts formula worked for the show, and eventually the writers starting ending most episodes with some small bone that seemed to show what the person had seen really was unearthly.  (They just needed a big “THE END?” before the credits to make it complete.)

But the end to my days of high strangeness was approaching fast. As part of my new fascination with hard science I had discovered the truly excellent PBS documentary series, Nova. In March of 1978, Nova produced the special episode, “The Case of the Ancient Astronauts.”  While I expected some serious debating of von Däniken’s theories, I was not prepared for the epic smack-down that Nova delivered.

Point by point, the calm, collected narrator ripped the arms off ancient astronauts and beat them to death with their own detached limbs. The one that still stands out in my memory, and what I think was the tipping point for me, was the examination of the famous “spaceport” photo.  In Chariots of the Gods? von Däniken had presented the photo with the caption, “Another of the strange markings on the Plain of Nazca. This is very reminiscent of the aircraft parking areas in a modern airport.” Nova showed the lines from the exact same angle and then had someone walk down the “landing strip” to show that it was about two feet wide, and then pulled back to show that the lines were plainly the leg of a giant drawing of a bird!

What the TV Guide had to say about the smack-down of the millennium!

I was furious. This wasn’t just a matter of debating the interpretation of evidence. This was out and out fraud. And I had sacrificed six comic books for this? After the episode concluded I yanked my copy of Chariots of the Gods? off the shelf and took a black magic marker to spine in order to black the “Non-“ in the word “Non-Fiction.” Take that you lousy Swiss hotel clerk!

But my fury wasn’t totally reserved for ancient spacemen. Even though I didn’t take the magic marker to the rest of my library, the fun of UFOs, bigfoot, ghosts and the like seem to have vanished. Although there was not as clear of dividing line for the rest as there had been for ancient astronaut theories, the old thrill and appeal, not to mention the creepiness, just wasn’t there anymore.

Skip forward to the late nineties. Although my interest in weird stuff was occasionally sparked by episodes of Unsolved Mysteries or Fox’s incredibly goofy Sightings, not to mention the “Alien Autopsy” shell game or The X-Files, I never experienced a real temptation to return to my UFO “research.”  The skeptic in me was pretty hardened, not to mention the mythology that had developed since the seventies – abductions, the elevation of "Roswell" to scripture, “Grays,” government conspiracies, anal probes and the like – struck me as boring for the most part, and quite frankly, just not any “fun.”

It was on a road trip to Chicago in 2002 that my friends Jack Daves and Dave Conover got into an extended discussion about John Keel’s classic tome of weirdness, The Mothman Prophecies and the movie that had just been released based on the book. At the first mention of the word “Mothman” they had my attention – the old favorites never fail, and even though the book had been published in 1975 I had never encountered it.

When we got back from the trip I tracked down a copy and made several great discoveries. Keel was one of the first researchers to completely reject the extraterrestrial theory in regards to UFOs. Instead he postulated the UFOs were merely the latest “form” of a phenomenon that has been going on since the dawn of recorded history – and the way the phenomenon is perceived is determined by the culture and prejudices of the time. Of course this is a much oversimplified version, but the point is that both the skeptic and, even more important, the 10-year-old boy tucked away inside of me could accept this as a possibility.

But even better than a palatable theory was the fact that the book scared the crap out me.  Now, I love horror fiction and horror movies, but I’ve reached a point where they don’t scare me.  Maybe a small scare at the time I’m reading or watching, but not of the good old lying-in-bed-at-night-staring-at-the-ceiling-waiting-for-the-boogerman-to-get-me kind of fear. What I discovered was reading books about UFOs, bigfoot and the like really got under my skin – even in a case when I knew what was written was mostly B.S. It still gave me that old exquisite feeling of irrational terror.  And so my hobby of collecting pre-1980s UFO and bigfoot books began. And fortunately, I also found that a new generation of weirdness writers, who probably cut their teeth on books with “the font,” are rejecting the anal probes (can you blame them?) and conspiracies of the eighties and nineties and writing some fun and funky stuff.

But when it comes to von Däniken’s books, I won’t touch ‘em!  Us crackpots got to have some standards!

My Autumn of Aliens, or Why a Swiss Hotel Clerk Owes Me $1.25 (Plus Tax!) – Part 2

“A mild curiosity about UFOs can turn into a destructive obsession. For this reason, I strongly recommend that parents forbid their children from becoming involved. Schoolteachers and other adults should not encourage teen-agers to take an interest in the subject.” — from Operation Trojan Horse by John A. Keel

So my course was determined. I had to own a copy of Chariots of the Gods? no matter if the cost was equal to six comic books and a package of Wacky Packs (the preferred currency of the day…) 

Now of course, living in Dunmor, Kentucky, my only access to paperbacks were what happened to be in drugstores in the surrounding area. Even though the sought-after tome had been a bestseller, it had been out a couple of years, and that meant a trip to an actual bookstore. So the next time my mom made the fifty-mile trek to Bowling Green, Kentucky I was ready. Not even the always tempting stock of Aurora monster models at Woolco could distract me from my quest to secure the knowledge of ancient astronauts.

Grabbing the book from the wire rack in the bookstore I discovered that von Däniken had authored more than one book – Gods from Outer Space, The Gold of the Gods (which had awesome gold embossed letters in “the font” – but I knew I needed to start at the beginning, more advanced studies could naturally follow. Paying a grand total of $1.31 I left the store as a possessor of great knowledge. The photo section in the center of the book alone confirmed that my purchase was wise, and I wasted no time diving into the text.

And things were going fine until I hit Chapter 4: “Was God an Astronaut?” Being a good little Southern Baptist boy meant that I was no stranger to Sunday School, and Training Union, and Wednesday night prayer meetings, and revivals in the spring and fall, and church camp for a week in the summer and so on. I was totally hip to some ancient mythological Egyptian or Mayan “god” scootin’ down to Earth on a space scooter, but the mere suggestion that GOD could be anything other than, well, GOD was deeply disturbing to me in a way I couldn’t articulate.

Fortunately, I was soon able to resolve this conflict by using the same method that mankind has used to resolve religious contradictions and conundrums throughout history – I ignored it. Skipping over the chapters on biblical matters, I found myself back in the realm of faraway lands and religious beliefs not endorsed by my mom and dad – more comfortable territory. And although I was firmly convinced that aliens may have tampered with the history of mankind, the disturbing feeling I came away with in regards to any biblical hanky panky by alien angels sapped my desire to follow-up with any of von Däniken’s other books. Instead, I refocused my attention to current alien intrusions.

"That's the way it was" in 1973!

And the media of the day was only too glad to oblige me. Even though the massive wave of UFO sightings in the fall of 1973 began to subside, magazine and book publishers were only cranking into gear. Weekly Reader, the small magazine distributed to grade-schoolers kept the weirdness torch burning bright, but my biggest discoveries of 1974 would be the wonderful little book, Living Monsters: True Stories of Real Monsters by Ann Marie Drozd and the Gold Key comic book UFO Flying Saucers.

Living Monsters was pure B.S, but it was wonderful B.S.  Basically it was a quick cash-in book for kids that drew from the seventies craze for UFO and mysterious beasts. Ms. Drozd took a few bare facts about bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. and turned them into short "gotcha" stories.  While not great literature, it did introduce me to two concepts that I loved dearly and still do to this day.

Weekly Reader and school book club books, all purchased
"off budget" of course!

The first was the cover story – “Mothman.” While the story in the book had more in common with “hook killer” urban legends than with the bizarre incidents and sightings that took place in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966 and ’67, the big concept of “Mothman” got under my skin and burrowed deep into my psyche. Just the idea of the big bugman became a favorite of mine and remains so to this day.

The other story that got me was “Momo: The Missouri Monster.”  Basically it was the story of bigfoot sightings in Missouri and Illinois, but this one connected with me because those were both border states to Kentucky, which meant the odds of Momo in showing up in Muhlenberg County were much better than those of his northwestern cousin making the cross-country trip. And even better was the tidbit that Momo sightings were tied in with UFOs. Because, as everyone knows, alien mysterious hairy primates trumps plain ole Earth-based mysterious hairy primates any day of the week!

On the funny book side, Gold Key had some of the most erratic and nonsensical publishing schedules of any comic book publisher, and the title UFO Flying Saucers had only squeaked out three issues between the years 1968 to 1972. But after the UFO wave of 1973, the title returned and managed to keep a pretty regular schedule through the rest of the decade.

UFO Flying Saucers #4

The first issue I encountered, in the fall of 1974, featured a not-too-accurate but still chilling portrayal of the Pascagoula, Mississippi abductions from October of 1973. While the earlier issues had mainly focused on visual sightings of UFOs, the sheer number of occupant encounters from the 1973 wave gave the comic book plenty of creepy material to draw from, and Gold Key’s stilted artwork and strangely detached style of writing made the stories even more effective.

Looking through the back issues now, pretty much every major UFO case from the 1940s to the 1970s was adapted into the pages of UFO Flying Saucers (with the exception of the Antonio Villas Boas case, but since that one is all about boinking an outer space babe, I can see why they let it slide…) The comic book also inspired me to start my own career as a “UFOlogist” as I compiled records of sightings – mostly drawn straight from the pages of the comic book and supplemented by a few tall tales told to me by schoolmates.

So here I was, amateur UFOlogist, monster hunter, true believer. As the seventies continued, so did my love for this wacky stuff.  Little did I know that I was on a collision course with a disappointment of cosmic dimensions, but that’s what we’ll be getting to in Part 3.

My Autumn of Aliens, or Why a Swiss Hotel Clerk Owes Me $1.25 (Plus Tax!) – Part 1

Before I launch into this entry, a disclaimer of sorts: This blog entry is about weird stuff.  I mean really weird stuff.  Not just funny books, or scary movies, nope, we’re talking about UFOs, bigfoot and other such foolishness (or foolishness perhaps not?)

Yes, I admit I love reading about this stuff. Do I believe in all of it? I didn’t say that. I said I love reading about it. If you mention that you’re into this stuff people tend to automatically think you’re (1) crazy, and (2) that you must believe all the popularized stories – extraterrestrial invasion, abductions, probes (ouch!), Roswell, etc. etc. While number one may be the case, number two certainly is not the case. It’s kinda like the reaction I used to get when I mentioned I enjoyed watching Professional Wrestling –  “It’s all fake!”  Well, yes, perhaps a good portion of it is, but what does that have to do with my enjoyment of it?

UFO writer, researcher, and yes, B.S. artist, Gray Barker used to say, “I believe in everything and I believe in nothing.”  And that very zen statement pretty much sums up my current feeling on the subject. But there was a time that I truly did believe, with no disclaimers…



1973 was the year that aliens invaded America.

Sure, the “modern UFO age” began in June 1947 with private pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of several mysterious objects flying at supersonic speeds over Mt. Rainier blah, blah, blah ad infinitum. But when the little alien buggers really took over and let their presence be known was in 1973, culminating in a mass orgy of WTF-ness during the months of October and November of that wonderful, screwed-up year.

It was the year of the year that a Vice-President would resign over scandal; that the word “Watergate” would enter our language, lead to the resignation of a President, and forever and change the way Americans thought about politics; the year the U.S. pulled combat troops out of Vietnam; the year of the OPEC oil embargos and gas lines; and the year of Yom-Kippur War between Israel and Egypt which we now know brought the U.S. to very brink of using nuclear weapons in the Middle East.  In other words, it was a VERY scary time to be an adult in America – everything that had falling part since the sixties suddenly seemed to be shifting into overdrive.

And then, just to spice up all this worry and stress, came the aliens. America had experienced UFO waves before, most notably in 1947, 1952, and 1965, but we had never seen anything like the year of 1973. Concentrated mainly in the southern and eastern U.S., reports of mysterious lights, strange aircraft performing impossible maneuvers, and best of all, sightings of all manner and variety of creatures – ranging from dwarfs, to reptilians, to hairy giants were popping up like some type of cosmic whack-a-mole game. (This was the “good old days” of UFOology before those wimpy-ass, little “Greys” became the accepted norm for saucer pilots). It’s hard to imagine what it was like now, but during the peak period of August to November that year UFO reports were on the nightly TV news, both local and national, several times a week.  And these weren’t just “here’s a funny story” fillers, they were quite often lead stories.

None of those panty-waist Greys in Mississippi, no sir!



I suspect that for many adults it was just one more sign that America was going to hell on a sled, but to be a kid, especially a ten-year-old boy who was already hooked on science fiction and fantasy, it was an awesome experience. Here was some anxiety that I could relate too. Incomprehensible wars in the “Holy Land” or political scandals in Washington were not something I could dig, but the chance to see a flying saucer taking off from a nearby pasture, or to be kidnapped by eyeless, claw-wielding alien-robots – that was the stuff of exciting times and exquisite nightmares.

At this point I can’t remember for sure when I first got turned-on to the notion of UFOs. My first exposure to the concept may have come much earlier (and in fact I have some vague memories of seeing the TV show The Invaders during its original run of 1967-68), but the magic autumn of 1973 was when the obsession took hold. And the pop culture machine of the time was only too happy to encourage me and millions of others. 

With most of my allowance going to my growing comic book addiction, I had to be very selective about what paperback books I bought. At that time most paperbacks cost between 75 and 95 cents – the equivalent of three to five comic books!  But I had discovered a method of getting around this budgetary problem thanks to the Weekly Reader and Scholastic book clubs. Since these were paperback books that were ordered through school I had managed to hoodwink my mom and dad into believing they were all “educational” books that I needed for school.  Nevermind that the selections I was making were limited to all titles related to the paranormal, monsters, Peanuts comic strips, or science fiction and fantasy.

Although this plot covered anything that was available through the book clubs, there were a lot of really cool looking books that were beyond my means.  Fortunately, the bookmobile that would visit our school every few weeks (Dunmor Elementary was a very small school – library? Ha!) kept a good supply of the latest paperbacks on UFOs, ghosts, bigfoot, the Bermuda triangle, and so forth.  And they were easy to spot.



1970s Paranormal Books with "The Font"



In the early seventies books about the paranormal were all the rage, and somewhere along the way block letters with shadows became the “official font of foolishness.”  I think Bantam Books may have been the first publisher to use this typeface, but many others followed. Even the Christian publisher that was printing Hal Lindsey’s books of Biblical prophecy (y’all remember the U.S. being wiped out by nuclear attack in the 1980’s don’t you?) jumped on the block letters bandwagon. I learned pretty quick to look for that type of lettering on the spine of a paperback book and creepy goodness would follow.

 But even with the bookmobile subsidizing my connection to weirdness, there were some books that appeared to be so important, the knowledge contained within so earth-shattering, that I must own them!  That was the case when I discovered an ad in a UFO magazine for Chariots of the Gods? by former Swiss hotel clerk (and convicted embezzler) Erich Von Däniken. Electric batteries thousands of years old ?! Cave drawings of ancient astronauts in space suits?!?! Landing fields for alien spaceships in South American deserts?!?!?! Holy crap, this was a book that most be owned!  I would need to consult the knowledge contained within over and over again!

However, the cost of this important tome was a whole $1.25!  But of course that just spoke to the value of the knowledge. I must secure a copy! 

Little did I realize that I was heading for the first spiritual crisis of my young life and eventually a spectacular fall from faith that would take me twenty years to overcome.  But we’ll get to that in Part 2…

Mr. Sandman, bring me a slithering, gibbering thing…

I love really wacked out dreams. The weirder the better – even if they turn into nightmares that’s okay. If the subconscious is running wild it’s worth the cold sweats and twisted covers. And last night paid off in spades…

Maybe it was the apocalyptic winter storm that was marauding across the Midwest last night, maybe it was repeated listening to the Louvin Brothers’ album Satan is Real last week, or perhaps it was the viewing of a Roy Rogers movie right before bedtime (those singin’ cowboys will get you every time), but last night was a lulu.

All night long I was swinging between Keelian visions of Mothman and shadow people and Lovecraftian slithering, gibbering, mind-blasting horrors. What does it mean? I’ll leave the interpretations and symbolism to others. I like to think it just means I’ve got some weird stuff in my noggin’, and it’s a blast when it all comes spewing out at once.

He sees you when you're sleeping...

Here’s the one dream I remember the most vividly:

I was in a very large movie theatre. The lights were dim, but you could still see fairly well.  I thought I was alone at first, walking up one of the aisles. Suddenly, I hear a voice behind me.

“Cough drop,” it says.

I look back and see a man, hard to make out, but he kind of resembles the old comic book horror host, Uncle Creepy.  I say, “I don’t have one,” and start walking faster.

“Cough drop,” the voice says again.

“I said I don’t have one!” not looking back this time.

Suddenly the man comes speeding past me, too fast to make out.  As he passes me, he shouts out, “IT’S TOO LATE!”

Looking back I see a slimy, amorphous blob that is gaining on me fast, making obscene sucking and slurping sounds. I take off running and wake up in a panic.  After a minute to re-orientate myself to reality, I think, “Good one…”

Lewisburg, Kentucky – Gateway to Adventure!

Let’s talk about drugstores. Yes, that’s right, drugstores. There was a time, not that long ago, when drugstores were full of wonderment and delight – doorways to all sorts of exciting worlds and  mind-expanding adventures, and it had absolutely nothing to do with pharmaceuticals.

I think about this every time I walk into the massive crackerboxes of crap that pass for drugstores now days. (Usually built at the busiest intersections possible to maximize traffic clusterf*cks and if possible, on ground where historic buildings previously stood – but I digress…)  Even though these miscarriages of modern architecture are ten, twenty times larger or more than the drugstores of my youth there is nothing in them you really want, stuff you need and have to have sure, but nothing that you want.

It didn’t used to be this way. Not only was going to the drugstore each week something I looked forward to with excitement, but any chance I had to go into a previously unexplored drugstore was even more exciting. The attraction of these pharmacies of yore, could be primarily expressed in terms of three – magazines, paperback books, and comic books.  Maybe you could find these in newsstands or bookstores in them there “big cities,” but out in the rest of America, drugstores were where it was at. For me, my primary source during the formative years of my life was Gower’s Drugstore in Lewisburg, Kentucky.

Like a lot of smaller towns in America, Lewisburg had been an “Average Deal” (not a “Big Deal” just “Average”) in the days of passenger railroads, but by 1972 the days of folks traveling by rail in western Kentucky were long gone.  The “main” street of Lewisburg was about three blocks long with the businesses still stuck in decaying building that all faced the train tracks and the empty field where the depot had once stood. In addition to the drugstore there was a bank, a barber shop, a hardware store, a feed store, and a few other businesses and that was it.  For a supermarket we had to drive another 10 miles to Russellville.

Although my parent’s original plan in having me take piano lessons was to make me the next Liberace (but without being gay, which of course, they had no concept of anyway…), the real result was that it fed my growing and eventual lifelong addiction for comic books, monster magazines, Mad magazine, and science fiction paperbacks. My piano lessons were on each Tuesday in Russellville, on the way there Mom would always make a stop in Lewisburg to go to the bank and drugstore. And that’s where my downfall began.

At Gower’s Drugstore they had wooden shelf racks (much like what magazines are typically displayed on today). The top section was magazines, the bottom section was paperback books stacked vertically with their spines facing out, but the middle section was all comic books. The very first comic book that I can remember buying with my own money was Flash #210 in September of 1971 – purchased at Gower’s of course. Although I loved it and re-read it many times, for some reason the funny book bug didn’t get a bite on me.

American history according to funny books! 

But the bug got another chance in the following April when I bought Justice League of America #99 and from then on I was off. Piano lessons didn’t really matter; it was getting to Gower’s each week to see what new comic books were on the stands. I had to have that fix! And even if I couldn’t afford to buy everything, there would be those days when I could at least look through, or maybe even read whole issues that I didn’t purchase.

Early on I realized that Jack Kirby's work was just too much for me.  His stuff was just too powerful and totally creeped me out in a way I couldn’t understand. I very rarely worked up the nerve to buy any of his books, but I looked at them. (Of course, now he’s my favorite comic book artist of all time, ah youth…) I can still vividly remember standing in Gower’s reading Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth #1 every week until it disappeared from the shelf.

But even though the local drugstore brought wonderment and joy it also brought frustration.  Comic book and magazine distribution back then was crazy and unreliable.  Even though I was in Gower’s every week, it was not unusual to miss issues, just because they never showed up for sale. This drove a kid crazy, because back then if you missed an issue it was gone, daddy-o. The only hope you might have finding a back issue was trading with someone else, or the coverless, three for a quarter packs you could pick up at country markets (and there’s a whole blog comin’ about those babies). That’s why anytime I had the chance to duck into a “foreign” drugstore I took it.  It was better than hopping over the Berlin Wall to check out the types of shampoo available in the West, you never knew what treasures you’d find. 

Not me, not Gower's, not 1973, but you get the idea...

This catch as catch can method of distribution also shaped my buying habits in a big way. For example Grower’s Drugstore never had a copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland on the shelf. So I was reduced to buying only the occasional issue when I would find one at a drugstore in Russellville or Greenville. My friend John Hudson’s regular drugstore was the one in Greenville.  They did carry FM  (but not every issue of course, grrr…), so his collection of monster magazines quickly exceeded mine.

The “golden age” of Gower’s came to screeching halt in the spring of 1975. One week I walked into Gower’s and noticed there was nothing new on the shelves. The books were the exact same ones as the week before. The next week it was the same. The next they were still the same. Panic really had me in grip its by this point, so I had to ask what was going on. They explained they were changing distributors and the new ones hadn’t started showing up yet. In the meantime I had to find another source and started frequenting drugstores in Russellville that I had only hit occasionally before. Even though Gower’s eventually did get some new product on the shelves, the bloom was off the rose. I had moved on.

Finally, all the comic books, magazine and paperbacks disappeared from Gower’s. In just a few years Gower’s would relocate out on the main highway that runs through Lewisburg, next to the new IGA supermarket and across the road from the new Lewisburg Bank building. Nowadays when I drive through Lewisburg on my way to visit my parents I pass right by these businesses without giving them a second thought. Now Lewisburg is just a small rural community where you make sure to slow down a bit and not get caught in the local speed trap, and perhaps stop for some gas and cup of coffee at the convenience store. But there was that time when it was my own private gateway to adventure.