7/15/09

SUMMERTIME and the living was easy


Raise your hand if you remember getting the Scholastic Magazine at school and pouring over the pages that advertised the books they had for sale. What I'm talking about are issues from the early 1960s. 

In the summer of 1963 my folks got me a subscription to Scholastic's SummerTime. I loved it! For 8 weeks I got real mail. Something to anxiously wait for each week. Something new to read. Pages of books being advertised to pour over. Stories, games, movie reviews. I'll deal with some of those books and the other content in a later post. For now I wanted to post the cover of the June 27, 1963 issue. Volume 10, No. 1. I believe the illustrator is Al Wenzel, but I'm not sure. He may be the same illustrator that did some work for D.C. Comics.

Yes, I kept every single issue I got that summer and whenever I find them they make me smile and I'm a kid again. This illustration is so very much summer. All the good things a kid imagines about summer. Well, maybe not today. Kids don't go outside to play as much. They're all tethered to technology and leave their imaginations I don't know where. I'm not sure they just get to really be kids anymore. This illustration shows you what summer should be for a kid. Enjoy. Another time ephemera takes me back in time.

Scholastic Magazine_June 27 1963_tatteredandlost

4 comments:

  1. Ahhh, the good old days when summers lasted forever and a day! I don't think I even put on a real pair shoes all summer long (with the exception of church shoes), only flip-flops. Those 69cent rubber ones that always came apart at the toe and you would stick it back together. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end...

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  2. Yes, you're right. Summer meant something to me then. Now I'm lucky if I get to experience even a trace of those memories because it's the busiest time of the year for work.

    I still go barefoot most of the time, especially the summer. Otherwise I can't sit cross-legged in my desk chair. And when I was a kid in Hawaii we called flip-flops "go-aheads" because they were always coming off your feet and going ahead of you. Good times. Good times.

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  3. "Go-aheads"! That's hilarious and exactly right! I forgot about that aspect. Of course, we didn't really call them flip-flops. I've had to re-educate myself in the age of "thong" underwear! lol

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  4. When I moved back to the mainland I was so confused by term "flip-flops" that I didn't even know what people were talking about. Of course when I said "go-ahead" they thought I was nuts. Same country, different terminology.

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