A week or so ago I read MAD Magazine was ceasing publication (of its monthly magazine) after 60 years. Wow. My first thought was “Aw, what a shame” and my second thought was “They still publish MAD Magazine??”
From April 1971; if MAD only knew what was coming!
Aimed mostly towards 11-16 year olds, I can’t imagine any boy growing up in the 1960s-70s not reading this awesome magazine. I always felt like I was getting away with something when I was reading it.
Filled with politics, hilarious satires of movies & TV shows, comic strips of rebellious teens, snarky housewives & grumbling middle-aged men, nothing (and no one) was sacred. Even the advertisements inside were phony.
(At the time, I assumed the mag was so rotten that no one WANTED to advertise in there!)
I remember in 1975, my older brother Duke & I attended a Boy Scout Jamboree in Wheeling, WVa. Troops from the tri-state area were gathered there, some with circus-sized tents and rows of boys in uniform standing at attention, and smaller troops, with 6-7 pup tents and matching t-shirts. The first night there, one of these smaller camps must’ve had 50 boys clustered around their tents. Our own scoutmaster (Mr. Scott) warned us not to go over there, he suspected some of those “lesser Scouts” had sneaked cigarettes or worse into the Jamboree.
So of course, as soon as Mr.Scott left to meet with the other scoutmasters, we high-tailed it over there as fast as we could—and learned some kid had packed his gear with a hundred Mad Magazines! I think that was one of the 10 most fun nights of my life.
Speaking of Washington… and the Seventies
In the summer of ‘74, about two months before President Nixon resigned, Mom & Dad took us to Washington DC for our summer vacation.
My brother Duke & sister Donda, me in the Superman shirt, Shawn looking like a young Jackie O & our brother Steve, in our hotel in Washington DC
Duke was in seventh heaven. (He didn’t know it yet, but in 10 years this was going to be his home—well, for most of the Eighties, at least.) As for the rest of us, we were left scratching our heads. “When do we go swimming? We want swimming!”
We were there because Duke had been after our parents for months to visit our nation’s capitol that summer. I always suspected it was because he thought he could talk some sense into President Nixon, if he could just get him alone. “Stay strong, Mr. President! Don’t let Congress take you down!”
I wish I could remember more about this trip, other than the few blurry photos and odds n’ ends tucked away in my noggin. We visited everything, from the Capitol building to the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington Cemetery to Ford’s Theater, my mom snapping pictures the entire trip—only to come home and learn she’d left a couple of film cartridges behind.
In the second pic of us on the Capitol steps with our mom, people are staring as Mom shouts to Dad “Don! You’re too far away!”
What I remember most about our time there is probably something I shouldn’t even share here. Whatever, I’m old now! Shortly after we’d gotten to our hotel in downtown Washington, Shawn & I were itching to go exploring. Mom said it was okay if we went downstairs and ask where their indoor pool was located.
When we got on the elevator, Shawn asked what would happen if she pressed every button. I said I didn’t know but she should go for it. (When we stopped on the next floor down and a woman got on & saw the rows of lit buttons, man the look she gave us!)
After we (finally) reached the lobby & asked the front desk for directions, we found the pool. It was empty of people & GARGANTUAN. I told my sister I was going to use the nearby men’s room before we went back upstairs.
I go inside, and there’s a middle-aged man standing at the sinks. He must’ve just come out of the pool, he’s carefully combing his few strands of wet hair across his bald head. He was very round, hairy— and naked as a jaybird. I stood there for a few moments, unsure of what to do. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
After heading back upstairs, Mom asked if we found the pool. We said yes, then I said “Well, I saw my first naked fat man today.” My dad said “Your first?” and Mom said “For the rest of this trip NO ONE is allowed out of my sight!” She turned to my older brother who was just returning from his own excursion. “And that goes for you too!”
Sorry about that Duke, I guess Nixon was on his own.
It's not with rose-colored glasses that I think of Mom every moment, but when something is so decent and true (like this that you wrote), God there was nobody like her in my life then or now. She was inherently decent and always for the underdog. I'll tell you the one and only thing I remember about that trip. Dad went down to the restaurant of the hotel to bring us lunch and it was a giant round tray of all these smaller triangle sandwiches with toothpicks in each one (with the brightly colored plastic fringy tops) and Mom had a STROKE over what it cost. But my eyes were big as a kid in a candy store looking at it!
ReplyDeleteShawn, thanks so much for sharing this here! Like I said yesterday, I TOTALLY forgot about that giant tray of club sandwiches Dad brought upstairs until you shared that memory with me--but I loved your description (so well put) and yep, I remember Mom's reaction too! Thanks again :)
ReplyDelete