Elements of Time: Roman Soldiers Comic Book Ad

By Craig: Ok, where do I begin with this one. As some of my readers know, I have been a comic book guru since I learned how to read. My readers might also know that the comic books that I read are not typically of the superhero genre, although there was an occasional exception. For instance, I always enjoyed reading the Fantastic Four, and the old Marvel Two-in Ones starring Ben Grimm (AKA The Thing) who always managed to find trouble wherever he turned. I especially enjoyed it when he got his own comic book in the early 1980s. I don't think that it lasted that long, but I enjoyed it while it did. When I made it to high school I lost interest in comic books, and only returned to them a few years back when my son was in elementary school, and I started to live vicariously through them again. They seemed to transport me back to another time, a simpler time. At least simple for me. My parents might not have thought so, but to me it was a good time.

One of the things that always fascinated me about comic books back in those days were the ads. I previously wrote about the famous Sea Monkey ad a few years back in a post that you can find here https://crhipkins.blogspot.com/2014/02/elements-of-time-sea-monkeys.html
In 1976 my twin brother Jay approached me one day and said "look at this!" I can still remember the excitement in his voice. He handed me a copy of Grimm's Ghost Stories which in those days was published by Gold Key comics. I looked at the comic that he had given me. The cover showed an elderly man holding a knife over a ghost sitting in a wheelchair. The caption read "His brother was dead-but that wasn't enough! His ghost had to die too!" I remember looking at it and then Jay told me to turn it over. I was amazed at what I saw. It was a full page color add of a battle scene from ancient Rome complete with chariots, catapults and archers. At the top in bright red ink it said 132pc Roman Soldiers Set. Underneath this bold print it gave a vivid description of what you might be able to do with this set of soldiers.
2 Complete Roman Armies! Fight again the battles of the old Roman Civil War-Roman against Roman! Or mount your own attack against a town or city. Every piece of molded plastic-each on its own base. Two complete armies, one in blue, one in yellow! Your satisfaction guaranteed or full refund! 
Of course, I have no recollection of reading this fine print, especially the part where it states "satisfaction guaranteed." At eight years of age we hardly knew what this meant. No! Even if we did read this part of the add we merely glossed over it. It was not important. The fascinating battle scene is what had our attention. In the foreground was a muscular soldier holding a sword out in front of him, his mouth wide open as if he were issuing a command, or perhaps he was so intent on meeting an opponent that he was in the process of a barbaric yawp as he charged at his victim. For his opponent would surely be a victim as this soldier could never die. He was Julius Caesar or Augustus. He was too formidable a force to ever lose his life in battle.  I could only imagine how the next scene would play out! And wait! The best part was that Jay and I could decide the outcome if we rushed a filled out coupon along with $2.25 to Roman War Soldiers in Westbury N.Y!!

This was a no-brainer. We simply had to have this playset. The only trouble was how we would come up with the formidable sum of $2.25 to get it. I have absolutely no recollection of how we managed to get come up with the money. I do remember at about this time going door to door selling seeds and pens and hustling for cash so that I could buy comic books and baseball cards. Perhaps this is how we came up with the money, or maybe it was the dollar that our grandfather gave us every week when we went in to visit him in the city. I do not recall, but it doesn't really matter. What I do remember is Jay stuffing two well worn dollars and a quarter into an envelope along with the coupon and licking a stamp. We placed it in the mailbox, pulled the red flag up and waited. It was unbearable! Every day we would wait for the mailman Mr. Meagher, and then rush down to the mailbox to see if the package had arrived. One day, as if a miracle had just happened it arrived. The package was nothing fancy. A small white box that fit into the mailbox, but we immediately knew what it was. It had arrived from Westbury N.Y.! It was addressed to Jay Hipkins of Ragged Hill Rd. I tried to grab at it, but Jay was quicker and snatched it, and took off running toward the house with me in full pursuit. I remember the day as if it happened only yesterday because it was on a Saturday and we were going to Vermont. I followed Jay into the house and he was already attempting to tear the package open as if it contained the holy grail! Dumping the contents onto the counter we stared at it. I can only imagine the expressions on our face when we saw what the package contained. It must have been one of confusion and disappointment. 

"Is this it?" I can remember thinking. My twin Jay repeated this same question in his mind as the disappointment turned to anger.

"This is a rip-off!" I remember Jay saying. 

In front of us were these cheap thin yellow and blue pieces of plastic that fraudulently claimed to be Roman Soldiers! What we did not know at the time was that we had learned a valuable lesson in marketing. 

"Do not always believe what you see!"

What did we expect? Did we actually believe that the Roman soldiers would look like the heroic warriors captured in the ad? Looking at the ad today I am brought back in time over 4o years. As I stare at the ad some part of me still believes that it just might be able to come to life. The screaming warrior charging forth with his sword drawn rushes past the border of the page followed by other fearless helmeted soldiers slicing their way off the page until the colorful battle rendered in ink is finally complete, leaving a dusty blood soaked battlefield behind.

 I can still see my brother's disappointment and can still see him attempting to set the soldiers up on the counter in the kitchen. Half of them would not even stand on their bases. I do not recall what happened to them. I imagine that they disappeared in the closet and, eventually found themselves tossed in the garbage during one of our many moves. A quick search of E-Bay found these cheap pieces of my childhood memory selling for a lot more than $2.25. Today they are considered nostalgic items and I imagine that if my brother Jay were still alive today he would once again be anxiously awaiting the arrival of a small white package. This time purchased not under an illusion, but for sentiment and memory of a time now lost. 

Astrolabe: A Novel by Jay S. Hipkins

By Craig: I have been plugging away on a novel. I came up with the idea the day after my brother's death. It was an epiphany of sorts. A surreal moment, as if my twin brother Jay was speaking to me from another world. The novel is a sequel to his novel Astrolabe which he finished only weeks before his death. It will be called Adalbert. The setting is mid 12th century France and England during the reigns of Louis VII of France, and Henry II of England. It takes place twenty years after the events in Astrolabe, and focuses on the youthful adventures of Astrolabe's son Adalbert. It is chock full of action and adventure with knights, castles and even a sea voyage into the icy waters of the northern sea where our protagonist encounters a massive sea serpent. A few of the characters from Astrolabe return in the sequel including Robert de Langton, Asperia and the good priest Adonorus. I am almost finished with the rough draft. I hope to have it completed by June. If you are into reading medieval fiction start with Jay's book first. I promise you a good read! Please visit my website at www.hipkinstwins.com where you can link to our books on Amazon.

www.hipkinstwins.com

A Lost Moment in Time: The Humble Fisherman and Typhoon Dinah 1987

By Craig: He had seen the war. Not the recent ones in the middle east, but the big one that engulfed the whole world in the 1940s. He had been a young man then, but when I met him in the spring or summer of 1987 he was no longer young. I was in the Marines, on Okinawa, serving in a Medical Battalion as a combat lineman. My job was to help wire up the camp and tend to the generators that brought power to the much needed medical equipment in the field. I was a lance corporal then and would spend weeks on end in the bush. I lived in a barracks when not in the field, and therefore had ample time for liberty. I would often walk off the base into the town and out into the countryside. I didn't have a car but I did not mind walking. I could walk for miles and it wouldn't bother me. I loved walking...I still do. Sometimes I would walk down to the beach and walk along the shoreline. There were not too many Marines that far out in the country, so I would sometimes get strange looks from the locals, but all in all I did not feel all that uncomfortable. One time I chanced upon a small shack nestled in the dunes off the beach. A patchwork door covered the entrance. There was a small row boat outside of it. It was a fisherman's boat. Whoever lived here was definitely living a humble existence!  As I approached the shack which was half built into a dune like a dugout, a toothless old head peeked through the door and a skinny old man with bronzed skin appearing much like worn leather ambled out into the sunshine. He was wearing a pair of shorts and I doubted if he had worn a shirt in years. I greeted him with a friendly wave not wanting to intimidate him as I was fully aware of the reputation Marines had on the island.
I only knew a few words and phrases of Japanese so I acknowledged him in his native tongue. He spoke only a few words of English, but with sign language and strange gesticulations, coupled with the few words that each of us knew in the others language I was able to understand some of what he said to me during our short conversation. I took it to understand that he had worked on one of the American military bases after the war. He had no family, at least that is what I remember...unless my memory is faulty. It has been over 30 years since our brief conversation. I thought about my native country and the stark contrast between there and here. You would never see a humble fisherman allowed to sink a dugout inside of a sand dune on a beach. The tycoons of the world would lay claim to it and send this toothless survivor out into the streets.

A few months after this encounter with the humble fisherman I found myself on a remote guard post a mile or so from the main camp where our battalion had set up. For a few days word had been floating around the camp that a typhoon was approaching, (Typhoon Dinah) but its exact path had yet to be determined. It was finally concluded that the storm would either brush by the island or hit it head on. The decision was made pretty fast. We were to evacuate by mid morning. I don't recall how it happened, but sometime during the night I was ordered to the guard post which was at a junction of two muddy roads. A temporary gate had been set up to allow vehicles to pass or not depending on who they were. My companion this night was another lance corporal. I knew him only vaguely as one of the Motor-T marines. He was a native of Pakistan. The two of us got along well and were actually fortunate to get this post as it required very little work. It had rained in spurts during the day. Every time there was a downpour I was drenched to the bone, but then the sun would come out in a blaze of heat and dry me off. Another cloud burst and then the sun. It was a pattern that had kept up all day, but by night there wasn't a cloud in the sky and no wind. It was the calm before the storm! Throughout the evening, trucks carrying men and equipment evacuated in orderly fashion. Sometime during the evening we noticed that it had been a long time since we had seen a vehicle and began to wonder if we had been forgotten. At about this time we heard a rumbling of wheels and a truck's headlights appeared much to our relief. It was the commanding officer of the camp and his driver, a colonel whose name I have long since forgotten. He stuck his head out the window and he said.
"You marines need a lift?"
It was a comical scene that would never happen in this day and age. About a year after this in 1988 a young marine lance corporal was forgotten at a remote post in the California desert. By the time that his unit had realized that he was missing they had already returned to their base at Camp Pendleton. A search eventually found his body. He had died of exposure to the elements. A congressional investigation found the Marine Corps to be negligent and the procedures were radically changed to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

After returning to the barracks we prepared for the typhoon the best way that we could. We sealed the windows and tied down everything that had the potential to become a flying missile in the wind. To this day I can still hear the wind howling and whistling thinking that at anytime the roof might blow off. When it was over, there was surprisingly little damage except for some downed trees and power lines. Mercifully Okinawa received only a glancing blow. If it had hit us dead on it could have been catastrophic. Still, there was damage. A few days later I returned to the beach to seek out the old man to see how he fared during the storm. When I arrived at the location that I thought the shack had been located it was not there. At first I believed that I was in the wrong place, but as I walked further along the shore I realized that I was in the right area. The shack had obviously been washed away in the typhoon. There was no sign of his boat, only a well worn and battered oar half buried in the surf. For a while I can remember just standing there thinking about how fragile life was. What had become of the old man? Did he move to a place of safety, or had he been washed away by a wave? It was a surreal moment for me. If he had been washed away who would know about it? Who would care? He was a human being. To this day I often think of this old man. His smiling toothless weather beaten face looking at me as if to say "Don't forget me. I once existed." Sometimes I wonder if he really did exist, or if I just imagined the whole thing during one of my lonely peregrinations around the island those many years ago. Life is tenuous as is the conscious element that comes with it, which at the end of any experience, all that is left are the fragmentary images of a dream.

                                                             Typhoon Dinah 1987

Lon Chaney: Laugh Clown Laugh

By Craig: I have finally gotten around to updating this blog. It has now been nearly 5 months since my twin brother's death, and figured that it is time to get on with life. My 14 year old son has been spending the summer with me and we have been watching a lot of old classic movies from the silent film era. I have always been interested in the nostalgia behind these films which for the most part were made during the days of my grandparent's youth before 1930. My brother Jay was an avid fan of the silent film, so perhaps my interest of late is his influence coming through to me. Perhaps I am channeling a bit of him from beyond the grave! I have spent the past 5 months working on a sequel to my brother's novel, Astrolabe which he published a few weeks before his death. I am about a third of the way through it. This is part of the reason that I have not updated this blog, but I now find that it is time to keep it going.

The other day my son and I watched Laugh Clown Laugh. The movie was released by MGM studios in 1928. It stars Lon Chaney Sr. and a young Loretta Young. The movie starts out slow, but picks up its pace and has a climatic melancholic conclusion. Chaney stars as Tito, a performer in a traveling carnival show who goes by the stage name of Flik. One day Tito and his fellow travelling performer and friend Simon, who is played ably by Bernard Siegel find an orphaned girl who has been abandoned by the roadside. Tito adopts the girl whose name is Simonetta (later played by Young) and becomes a sort of father figure to her. As she grows older she develops into a fine performer in her own right. Tito admires her and his feelings for her change from being a father figure to one of love. However, he is afraid to tell her due to obvious reasons. The main one being that he does not want to risk losing her which he fears will happen one day. He is also a man nearing two score and ten, and could conceivably be the age of her grandfather.

Simonetta eventually meets the wealthy Count Luigi Ravelli played by Nils Asther. Tito meets Luigi in the doctors office. The irony of their meeting is that Tito is a clown who makes people laugh, but is himself a miserable wretch who is incapable of laughter due to his quiet and hidden love for Simonetta. Luigi has a condition that causes him to laugh too much. The two men become fast friends, believing that each can help the other. Of course, neither of them know about the others feeling for Simonetta. Luigi and Simonetta fall in love much to Tito's dismay who feels betrayed by his friend. After Luigi and Simonetta agree to marry the young woman returns to Tito, and realizes that he is distraught and finally comes to the conclusion that he has feelings for her other than fatherly ones. She does not want to break Tito's heart, and decides to call off the marriage to Luigi and marry Tito instead. It is a noble thing to do, and after she leaves to inform Luigi, Tito becomes morose and contemplative. He knows that Simonetta loves Luigi, and wants to see her happy, and that he is being selfish. He meets Simon for a rehearsal and Simon is surprised to see Tito dressed up in his clown outfit. Tito insists on doing a dangerous stunt and falls to his death from a tightwire. His last words as he lay dying on the ground were about Simonetta.

Laugh Clown Laugh is a movie about forbidden love. Chaney is superb in the part as Tito. One of the more poignant scenes in the film occurs when Chaney (dressed as Flik) becomes immersed in thought and is surrounded by scores of laughing heads. They are phantoms of faceless and anonymous people who are there to see him perform. But they are vapid, empty, and meaningless to him. They are nothing but images of some temporal existence which finds laughter for some brief moment on the linear plane of time. As I watched this part of the film I became engrossed with these phantom heads. Who were these people? What became of them? This movie was filmed 90 years ago. Whoever they were... one thing is certain. They are long dead. In all probability their descendants (if they had any) do not even remember them. Yet here they are...their jovial faces forever anonymous caught forever in one of the things that we all strive for...A little laughter and fun.

                                                                Lon Chaney Sr. as Tito

In Memoriam: Jay S. Hipkins (1968-2018)

By Craig: My twin brother Jay who was the co-author of this blog has passed away after a lengthy battle with GIST cancer. Jay fought the hard battle for almost 9 years before finally succumbing to the disease on February 21. Jay leaves behind his loving wife Tina, along with his mother and father and numerous friends, family and students. Jay was a teacher at the Fletcher School in Charlotte North Carolina before having to retire due to his illness 3 years ago.

Jay was born in Worcester Massachusetts on 03 September 1968. He grew up in Hubbardston, a small town in Worcester county where he attended the Center school, and then Quabbin High in Barre. He was a boy scout, and also served as an alter boy at Holy Spirit Catholic church in Gardner. As boys, Jay and I spent a lot of time riding our bikes around town, and at an early age we started delivering newspapers for the Gardner News. Jay and I started running shortly after being inspired by the 1976 Olympic games in Montreal. Although I am a decent runner, I could never match the speed of Jay. We entered a number of races over the years and I do not believe I was ever able to beat him! People could tell us apart by our posture and our demeanor. He would always stand erect, straight as an arrow, while I was content to sit back and slouch! Sometimes we would skip school. I would go off to the sand pit and shoot at cans with my .22, while he would go off somewhere and read Shakespeare or Dante!

Jay attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte graduating with a bachelors degree in English. Over the years he developed a mastery of the English language, and studied the classics. He was particularly fond of the works of Victor Hugo, and also took an interest in medieval history, Latin and the medieval church. He moved to New Zealand and earned a CELTA certificate and ended up teaching English to non-English speakers in Hamilton, New Zealand. He moved back to the United States in 2005 where he began teaching at the Fletcher School. He also served as the schools first cross country coach. Jay was a prolific reader and writer. In 2014 he published An Ocean of Stories which is a collection of tales and sketches that he had worked on over the years. Just before his death his novel Astrolabe was published. It is his masterpiece and shows the true genius of my brother. It is the story of a young man, the son of the 12th century scholar Peter Abelard and his lover Heloise. He battles the inner demons within himself, and the conflict of his emotions pertaining to good and evil. At the same time it is a love story that transcends the boundaries of time. Another collection of short stories called A Forest of Stories is forthcoming and should be available sometime in the next few months. It is a collaborative effort that I have joined him in, and he worked on editing the stories with his wife Tina and his sister in law Tracy up until he no longer had the capacity to do so. He has also left some unfinished writings which I will be working on to complete.  However, Jay's biggest achievement was nurturing the young minds of his students.

I loved my twin brother. I will find it hard to move on into the uncertain future without him. When he died, part of me died with him. I was there with him at the beginning, and I held his hand at the end knowing before he took his last breath when it would come. I cannot explain this except to say that I was his twin. We were inseparable, but I know that he will always be there as his essence is a part of my soul that can never be detached from me. I will plod onward toward my own destiny. The ghost of my twin helping me toward the finish line...

                                                                  Craig & Jay (1982)

A Lost Moment in Time: Wacky Packs: BeastBall

By Craig: It is been quite a while since I have updated this blog. There is a reason for this which I shall be revealing sometime in the next few weeks, but for now I shall say that I just haven't been in the frame of mind to write lately...or for that matter...to think. Every now and then I come up with an idea and then presto!...nothing...just a blank.  I was talking to my brother Jay the other day and he asked me if I remembered the wacky pack stickers that we use to get when we were kids. I smiled. I remembered them fondly. Anyone that grew up in the 1970s was familiar with wacky packs. This was probably more true for boys than girls, but I imagine that girls collected them too. Technically they were called "wacky packages", but kids where I grew up just called them wacky packs. I guess it was too much to add the "ages" to the "pack" but I don't really know how we bastardized the real name of them. I suppose it doesn't really matter. A generation of children who are now in the throes of middle age, and rapidly advancing toward old age remember "Crust Toothpaste" Brush teeth twice a month, tastes lousy, or "Beast Ball" Creepy Cards, with shocking bubble gum, or perhaps they might recall the "Weakies," "The breakfast of chumps" or "Blunder Bread,"" Extra heavy bread, build your body just by lifting package"

Wacky Packages came in a pack with 2 or 3 stickers and a puzzle piece. I don't really remember if gum came in the pack like it did with baseball cards, but kids bought them for the stickers not the gum, or the puzzle that you could never find all the pieces for. My brother and I would stick them all over the place. On our bed headboard, our desks, our bureaus, on the wall and basically any place that they would stick. Our mother must have cringed every time we got a pack of this new art deco. I can imagine that a lot of mothers back in the 1970s cursed Topps Chewing Gum Incorporated for this marvelous invention. I can vividly remember attempting to remove a wacky pack from the baseboard on my bed. No such luck. The edges could be peeled back but that was it. It would have taken patience (which I did not possess) and a boy scout jack knife to remove it. Even then it would have been a tedious and laborious task. Once a wacky pack made its mark it was permanent whether your mother liked it or not. I believe that I was about 6 or 7 when I first started collecting them. Some of the artwork was morbid...almost disturbing.  As a child who was still getting use to the world and all its mysteries the wacky packs threw a wrench in it. I can remember pausing and reflecting on the unreal images as if I had entered some parallel universe that was similar, but not quite the same as the one we lived in. What if I fell asleep and woke up in the wacky pack universe? Was it possible? Would I wake up and find myself drinking "Kook Aid" rather than "Kool Aide?" Impossible...or was it? To a 6 or 7 year old anything is possible. The whole world is a mystery.

I was curious to see if there was a market in the 21st century for the ubiquitous 1970s wacky pack. I was amazed to find that they were still being made, and had been brought back on numerous occasions over the past 40 years. You can buy a whole box of them for about $20. Needless to say they are not the same wacky packs that came out in the 1970s. They are knock offs and a cheaper version. The original stickers fetch a tidy little sum if one wanted to start collecting them. Do I regret sticking them all over my bedroom when I was a kid knowing now that I could fetch a few dollars for them? Absolutely not! The memory is what matters, after all, the 1970s were the golden age of wacky packs. I am glad that I was a part of it! I asked my 14 year old son if he had ever heard of a wacky pack and got a blank look... "A wacky what dad?"

A Lost Moment in Time: Harry Truman and the Seedling

By Craig: Recently I sold my house and moved across town where I bought an old Tudor that was built back in the 1970s. This got me thinking about the number of places that I have lived during the 49 years of my existence. I came up with the number 10. I don't have a clue as to the average number of places that a person lives in a lifetime, but if I were to guess, 10 times would probably be on the high side. I have known some people that still reside in the home that they grew up in. I would think, however, that most people would at least move on from their childhood home even if it is down the street, or in the same town. My grandparents on my mother's side were both born in Worcester Massachusetts, which is where I was born. Neither of them ever left. They both died only minutes away from where they had been born. In fact, I don't believe either one of them ever left the eastern seaboard of the United States. Their grandson, however, since leaving Worcester county in 1986 at the age of 17, has traveled around the globe. I have been back home, but only to visit, and only a smattering of times since I left 31 years ago.

When I was born I briefly lived in an apartment in Worcester with my parents and twin brother Jay. We then moved to another apartment for a short while. I was too young to remember either of these places. However, I remember the 3rd place where I lived. It was on Queen Street in Worcester in my grandfathers house. We lived on the 2nd floor of a triple decker, a house that I have previously wrote about on this blog. As it was right across from City Hospital, I associate it with the sound of ambulances and death, as it is also the house where my grandfather died while shoveling snow on his back deck after the blizzard of 78. We had moved out of there when I was five, but the house has always remained in my mind and I think about it often. While I have many memories of going to visit my grandparents there after we had moved out, I have very few memories of actually living there. One of those memories came to the surface just recently after being dormant for a number of years.

A few weeks ago my son and I took a two week road trip across the United States, and one of our stops happened to be the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence Missouri. I had always been fascinated with Truman. He was the last President to not finish college, and seemed to have ascended to the nations highest political post very quickly and against all the odds. If I were to guess, Truman himself probably didn't quite understand how he managed to become President of the United States. My son and I also went on a tour of Truman's home on Delaware street. It was a humble place for an ex-president to live. The floor in the kitchen was linoleum, and the docent explained that Truman had used thumbtacks to hold the linoleum down in spots that had ripped. These tack were still plainly visible. Truman's library was also a humble affair. A small room with a chair and some book cases. It was about the same size as my library and I couldn't help but notice that some of the books looked familiar. While I was here I thought back to my childhood on Queen Street.

It was late December of 1972. I was four years old. A few days earlier my father had given my brother and I small clear plastic cups with soil in them in which we planted a seed. we were entranced by the small green sprouts that had suddenly appeared like magic. The television was on. It was an old black and white affair, a floor model that sat near a window in the living room. On the screen I recall seeing a flag draped coffin being carried by pallbearers. It seemed to be a solemn and sad procession and as a four year old I was not sure what it meant. I only knew that it was the end of something. I guess my instinct told me that. I must have asked someone what it was, and someone must have explained to me that it was the funeral of Harry Truman. It was a few days later when I looked at the plastic cups and noticed that one of the green sprouts had turned brown while the other was thriving. Death was a finality to this existence, and I guess it occurred to me that week back in 1972 that death was real. Harry Truman and my seedling had taught me this. However, I also perceived that life was quite arbitrary and indiscriminate. Why had one of the seedlings died while the other blossomed into a fine looking flower?

My son and I walked outside into the garden at the Truman Library. We were the only ones out there. As I stood over the burial plot of Truman and his wife Bess I couldn't help but think of that brown withered seedling from so long ago...but at the same time remembered the flower that had bloomed full of life.