In The Comic Book Corner

by Ben Robicheau ~ brobicheau@cogeco.ca

I’ve always been an avid reader; it’s something I inherited from my mother. Even in the midst of the hubbub and uproar of raising nine kids, she could always find time to get totally involved in a good book; it was probably her way of getting a break from all those diapers and runny noses! My mother had taught me to read even before I started school: when they handed out the Little Red, Blue and Green Readers on the first day of Primary, I polished off all three before the morning was over, then I found out that this reading material was supposed to last us for the next three months!

As I got older I would read anything I could lay my hands on. Since Westport had no library in those days, you had to get your reading material wherever you could find it. The comic pages of the daily Chronicle-Herald were a good source of entertainment for a young reader, and the colour comics on the week-end were a gold mine, what with the antics of the characters in Gasoline Alley, Major Hoople’s Boarding House, L’il Abner, The Katzenjammer Kids, Maggie and Jiggs, Mandrake the Magician, Terry and the Pirates and Dick Tracy to keep you either amused or in suspense. Two of my favourite strips were Andy Capp, the Cockney layabout who was always fighting with his wife Flo; and Smokey Stover, a fireman who drove a two-wheeled automobile and whose comic strip panels were filled with impossible machines, outlandish but clever puns and ridiculous sight gags. I don’t think Smokey Stover ever ran in the Chronicle-Herald, I happened to come across it in some old U.S. newspapers that had been used as padding in a shipping crate.

As I moved into the stage of reading more serious literature, I began working on longer books like the Hardy Boys series, then graduated to things with a little more weight, like Moby Dick, Ten Years Before the Mast, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. When I ran out of new material, I would go back to one of my old favourites and read it again; I must have read Tom Sawyer half-a-dozen times. For several years my mother belonged to the Reader’s Digest Classic Book Club and through this I was exposed to some of the great novels of the time. Between the gilt-edged pages of those thick books with the fake leather covers, I discovered wonderful stories like To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Grapes of Wrath and many others. At the beginning I wasn’t really aware that I was reading a condensed version of these stories and years later I read some of those books again in their complete form; but for many of them, the Reader’s Digest shortened version is all I know of what many consider to be some of the great writing of the period.

Anyone who grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s knows that it was a golden age for the comic book, and a lot of my afternoons were spent lost in the coloured-ink pages of comics like Batman, Superman, Archie, Sgt. Rock, The Lone Ranger, Lash LaRue, Hopalong Cassidy and even Donald Duck and Little Lulu. In addition to the regular comic book, there was also a Classic Comics series that tried to slip a little education and culture by the unsuspecting comic reader. These were thicker, more expensive comics that told the story of such historic events as the Civil War, the French Revolution and the building of the railroads across the Western frontier, all in the familiar comic book format. They also attempted to introduce some of the classics of literature in illustrated form with severely simplified and revised versions of stories like The Man in the Iron Mask, The Count of Monte Cristo, Robinson Crusoe and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Early on, I was lucky to have unlimited access to comic books, my father sold them at his little store near the breakwater: every month a new shipment of reading material arrived and I happily spent countless hours sitting on a nail keg or pop bottle crate over in the corner by the rubber boots and oilskins, reading up on the latest adventures of Chip and Dale or Richie Rich. Sadly this idyllic arrangement came to an end when I was about ten years old when my father decided to get out of the comic and magazine business. I was forced to go out and find a new supplier to feed my comic book reading habit. Fortunately, I knew right where to turn: Bowers’ Store carried the largest selection of comics on the Island.

I had visited Bowers’ comic book department many times before, but their comics were displayed in a rotating wire rack that was located right by the store’s front counter, making it very awkward to sit or stand there reading comics for any length of time without getting in someone’s way or running the risk of being stepped on by a customer. Fortunately, at just about the time I needed a new comic book source, they re-arranged the store and the comics were moved to a corner near the end of the candy counter. My first attempt at taking advantage of this new set-up didn’t go well at all. After perusing the comic book selection for a few minutes, I was just about to settle in with the latest edition of The Incredible Hulk when one of the men who usually occupied the bench at the back of the store informed me that if I wasn’t going to buy anything, I didn’t have any business being there. Apparently it was OK for these men to occupy space on the store bench all day, smoking up a storm and arguing a blue streak, but a kid sitting and reading quietly in the corner would be upsetting to the customers! I didn’t give up easily. I came back later when there was no one on the bench and kept on coming back until they finally decided to just ignore me after they realized I wasn’t going to go away. Interestingly, it was only the guys on the bench (some people called them loafers) who ever had a problem with me being there; I spent several years of my life in that corner, but I can’t recall any of the clerks, or even Mr. Bowers himself, ever giving me a hard time about sitting there for hours on end, reading all of his comic books for free.

The last few years that I was in school, the Bookmobile started to make the Islands a regular part of its route. This library on wheels was a great source of reading material, but it only showed up once a month or so and there was a limit to the number of books you could take out, so more often than not, you would finish off your selections in a couple of weeks, then have to wait a couple of more weeks before it returned. You could get around this problem by trading books with a friend, if you could find one who shared your taste in reading material, but the Bookmobile people frowned upon this practice and you ran the risk of getting in trouble with them if your friend wasn’t on time about returning the books you had taken out.

A couple of years after I left Westport, a movement was started to build a library on the island. Through the persistence and perseverance of several dedicated people, it finally became a reality and today the Westport Library is an important addition to the community. Through their own little library, Islanders have access to the thousands of books and other reference materials in Nova Scotia’s provincial library system.

Today I rarely sit in stores for hours at a time and read their books for free, but I still do enjoy a good book, and I am happy to say that both of my kids have inherited a love for literature; a gift from their grandmother that I am more than pleased to pass on.