Posted on by Phil Strawn

Intriguing News From The Cactus Patch


Some Of My Favorite Things…sort of like Julie Andrews sang about in that movie with all the singing kids

One of the better albums from 1960s Japan. Godzilla does a jam-up job on his Yokohamafuchi electric guitar, although when he attempted to sing ” It’s Hard To Say I Love You When I’m Breathing Fire,” with his backup singers “The Hiroshima Sisters,” he hiccuped and accidentally incinerated the girls, along with most of the studio musicians.

Kids with a few dollars in change will buy anything. I was one of the little suckers for these ads in the back of comic books. Charles Atlas training manuals, tea-cup monkeys, live sea horses, tiny submarines that ran on baking soda, and the above X-Ray Specs. I sent my five quarters in an envelope and a month later received my prize. They were more like those cheesy 3-D glasses than real glasses. Georgie, my buddy, was my test specimen. Nope, nothing there, still Georgie in his baseball cap, no bones, innards, or X-Ray vision. I should have ordered the genuine Super Man glasses. I tried them on a few of the tom-boy girls in the neighborhood. After I told them I could see their bones and guts, they beat me with a hula-hoop; although I tried to tell them I was kidding, the beating continued; I barely got away. I handed them to my mother; she put them on, looked at me, and said, ” I see you’re still wearing yesterday’s underwear.”

Back before we had NPR and educational television, we kids had Shari Lewis and Lambchop, Howdy Doodie ( who was a real kid with strings tied to his body), Mickey and Amanda, the mud turtle and Opossum, Soupy Sales, and White Fang and a dozen more. This album was somewhat educational, in a Dave Gardner, Rusty Warren adult party sort of way. The gal that sings songs about puppets is Shari Lewis’s half-sister, which tried to horn in on Shari’s gig by coming up with two repulsive puppets calling them “Clam Chop” and “Devil Baby.” My cousin Jok loaned me the album. He’s the one that blew up everything with cherry bombs and shot my other cousin, Ginger, in her butt with an arrow. He was not the best influence.

A picture of my Christmas display in my front yard from six years ago. I saw nothing wrong with having a rubber T-Rex and a few Raptors eating Santa and Barbie for Christmas dinner. I had colored solar lights at night, which looked like a professional display. I was feeling pretty darn good about it until a few old ladies in my neighborhood, the ones that drove Cadillacs, sported blue hair, and wore prune faces, complained to the association office, and under threat of arrest and seizure of my home, I removed the display.

Yep…I had one of those too. Imagine giving a kid a toy gun that shoots hard plastic bullets, and they hurt at close range. In the 1950s, folks didn’t see the harm in giving us kiddos potential leather weapons. Everything was good until my cousin, a little cherry bomb kid, forced a 22-caliber bullet into my rifle and blew the thing to pieces. I also possessed a real sharp full-size Jim Bowie knife and a WW2 Army Surplus hand grenade.

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9 Replies to “Intriguing News From The Cactus Patch”

  1. Your mom burned you on those glasses…that was classic!
    I tried the sea monkeys…they were specs of brine shrimp…I wanted what was on the picture… I still do…a race of sea monkeys to Lord over.

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    1. Yep, she 2was two steps ahead of me at all times. I believed her when she said that, but later on, I knew she was kidding, in a stern..mom..sort of way. I also saved for a year, ordered this full kid size rocket ship for five bucks. When it did arrive, it was made from the thinnest cardboard and fell apart while my dad and I were trying to put it together. Wonder if any of those hokey products sold in those comic were ever sued for false advertising?

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  2. Always enjoy reading someone else’s looks backward. Sometimes quite different from mine. At about the age of the lad in the Mattel capgun ad, I was in Beeville (Corpus Christie) Texas. Thanks for the great read.

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    1. I had some surfing buddies from Beeville, circa 1968, nice town. My son and his family live on Padre Island, just over the bay from Corpus. Going there next month for some fishing. I don’t surf anymore, but I watch my grandson who is darn good at it. Can I ask permission to use a few of your abbreviations and new words. Wont find those in Websters. Right?

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      1. Well, hell yeah. Short of reposting the whole of an installment of my drivel (who in their right mind?) you are free to reuse anything you find on spwilcenwrites. (Free to, but not advised to. To say otherwise would be like trademarking magenta, or insisting you “properly” write “a**ociation” or “D*ck.” Who am I, the *&^(*& Eagles? Factually, I’d be honored. Well, no, not honored, flattered mebbee.

        Ah, Beeville. Learned about sex (well, girls anyway), rattlesnakes and coral snakes, whiskey, hot peppers, scorpions, horned toads, fairweather friends, shooting rabbits, and how to drive a Chevy 3100. Wherever you are Mr. Green, thank you for your part in that education – whisky, peppers, 3100, and shooting a .22 caliber in Texas scrub.

        Later. Espie

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  3. Your mom sounds like a hoot! Yes, I was usually disappointed with the things I ordered from the back of the comic books, as well.

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