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3. The Super-Family from Kentucky - Part 2

Even the mightiest heroes have their weakness. Samson's was women.

Superman's is the radiation from fragments of his home world. Homer Robinson's was the steady barrage of his son's yapping for a funnybook all morning.

Of all our family's regular activities, my favorite was going to Tradewell supermarket in Chesapeake, Ohio, for groceries. The particular attraction there was the wooden periodical rack just the other side of the checkout counters. It was an excellent location for me. My parents would start shopping at the other end of the store, working their way up and down the aisles. At the end of their course they'd rendezvous with me. In between, I had plenty of time to peruse the colorful array of titles from several companies: Dell, ACG, Gold Key, Harvey, Archie, the newly branded Marvel Comics, and, of course, DC Superman National Comics. As Mother and Daddy began their search for bread and meat, I sprang into Action - not to mention Adventure, World's Finest, Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, and Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen.

I can hear young Carly Simon singing in the background, "An-tis-i-pashun, an-tis-uh-pay-ay-shun!" Ah, the Tradewell comics rack was my lip-smackin,' finger-tinglin' anticipation destination!

You can imagine, then, how disappointed I was to learn that this particular Friday... we were going to a different store! Some people had come to town to compete with Tradewell and just across the street at that. I don't know what the attraction for my parents was. Perhaps there was a free giveaway or cheaper prices. Hmph, free enterprise! Anyway, upon learning our destination, I became anxious that Pennyfare might not carry funnybooks. I voiced this concern to Daddy at the wheel. He assured me that they had funnybooks. I asked how he knew. He said, "Gary, they've got funnybooks." I said, "You don't know!" He sighed. "We'll get you a funnybook, Gary." But, at age eight, riding under cloudy skies to the wrong store, I was skeptical.

Unfortunately, I was right. To their credit, my parents gave me the run of the place. They knew I'd be out of their hair while they surveyed the new store's wares. I looked for a wooden rack like they had across the street. No wooden rack, not even for adult magazines like Look and True Romance. I looked for a spinner rack, like Mr. Edwards had at his Cut-Rate up the street. No spinner rack? Good grief, where were we, Russia? I spun into despair - or would have, had Daddy not promised me my weekly funnybook. It was a promise I meant to hold him to.

I kept it up through the checkout. I kept it up in the parking lot. I kept it up louder and with more anxiety as we drove past Tradewell. "Edward's, Daddy! Stop at Edward's!" I'm not sure now where Mother had been all this time. She seemed unaware that the world was in danger of heaving off its axis and spinning into the cold black, that this was a job for Superman! As Daddy pulled to the curb beside Edward's Cut-Rate, she asked, "What are you stopping for?"

The thirty-year-old mechanic from East Point, Kentucky drawled, "To get Gary a damn funnybook." A few minutes later, we walked out of Edward's. In my hand was the most beautiful book I'd ever seen. On the cover was a silver statuette of the Man of Steel, celebrating his 25th anniversary on our planet. I'll always remember that comic, one of those fabulous "80-page Giants." It cost twenty-five cents... and the patience of a good man.

Dad didn't know what to make of my ongoing affection for funnybooks. Oh, he'd read them as a child. I'd heard him speak of Captains Marvel and America ("And there was some Indian," he said. "Used to hide his horse in a cave." Any of you Golden Age fans have any idea who that might've been?). But, with the Apostle Paul, Daddy had put away childish things. Now here I was, shedding childhood, but not following suit. He didn't know what to make of his great strapping son sitting inside reading comic books while other boys my age shot baskets or worked underneath car hoods.

It rather embarrasses me now. I used to pump gas for Dad at the Gulf Station he ran on Third Avenue in Chesapeake - that is, when I wasn't running across the street to Edward's to spin the rack or, if there were no new comics there, up the street to Tradewell. Rather than learn the secrets of the internal combustion engine, much of the time I sat in the back room of the station, deepening my understanding of the Phantom Zone ray projector. I don't know why Dad tolerated it. I don't know why he didn't make me get a real job.

Like a lot of men who grew up during the Great Depression, my dad didn't express many personal thoughts and feelings to his children. Having raised a couple of my own, I'm sure I made Dad uneasy at times about my future. He didn't say much. When he did, it was usually short and to the point. I remember wangling five bucks from him for a collector's item comic, the first issue of The Fly. It was in near-mint condition with artwork by the great team of Simon and Kirby. When he saw what I'd bought, he spat, "You spent five dollars on that?" Yeah, Dad, I did - plus fifty cents postage and handling. I don't think it was the subject matter so much as the size of the book that bothered him. Why should any standard sized funnybook cost five bucks? Perhaps he'd be pleased to know that's about as much a mystery to me now as it was to him then.

The only other time I remember him showing anything like contempt for my hobby (a nicer word than compulsion) was in the early Seventies. I showed him a Superman featuring the ridiculous Terra Man. On the cover, this horrible hybrid of spaghetti western gunfighter and space traveler was raying Superman into senility with his six-shooter: "Yore as old as the hills, Superman!" Dad was disgusted - "Gary, that's just silly!" - as well he should have been. (It's a good thing I never showed him Action Comics #369, depicting Terra Man riding Superman like a horse, hollering, "Doggone if you ain't the most rambunctious bronc I ever rode!") As The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy might say, "Worst. Villain. Ever."

But Dad never really laid into me about any of it, not the unfunny funnybooks nor my lack of drive. From certain clues he dropped later on, I tend to believe he thought I was headed for something more, something better than a gas station or a factory. So he put up with his son's foolishness.

It took me years to realize it, but I was the son of a genuine, bona fide hero. Every morning, he rose early and went to work at his garage. For a man in as much pain as he was, it's a marvel. He suffered for years from arthritis in his neck and spine. Perhaps that's why he pushed himself, because he was afraid that once he stopped he wouldn't get started again. He bought my sister and me a car. He paid for two college educations.

He was painfully shy. When a local TV reporter interviewed him about some now forgotten matter, he was so nervous it hurt to watch. He sang softly and well, but never in public. The only time I ever heard him sing was in the car as we traveled to Mam Maw's. He sought no glory for himself. But he glowed when his kids were in the spotlight.

He died of a second heart-attack at age 48. I don't remember much of what was said or done at his funeral. I only remember a sea of cars shining in the summer sun. Everybody in town knew Homer, liked him, and missed him.

There was no deathbed scene between father and son like the kind envisioned for the young Clark Kent and his stepfather, Jonathan. I never heard my Dad say, "Use your powers for good, Son." He died too suddenly for that. But, eight months before, he'd shaken my hand and told me something I'd longed to hear from him: "You're doin' all right."

In Superman: The Movie, Jor-El gives a wonderful speech to his infant son: "You will travel far, my little Kal-El. But we will never leave you... even in the face of our deaths... the richness of our lives shall be yours. All that I have, all that I've learned, everything I feel... all this, and more... I bequeath you, my son. You will carry me inside you all the days of your life... The son becomes the father."

My Dad was never one for speeches. But in my own house, at my own door, a couple days after Christmas, 1980, my Dad bequeathed me the power I'd long sought from him - the exquisite, course-steadying power of a father's encouragement. And I do carry him inside me - his work ethic, his faith, his short bursts of disgust at my foolishness.

The son has indeed become the father. Thanks, Dad, for everything. I hope to see you again one day on that planet where men really can leap tall buildings at a single bound, where we shall know and understand, and nothing can ever hurt us again.

Love you, Dad.

Don't miss the next thrill-packed adventure: Dangerous Lit-er-a-toor!

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