The other day, I saw this on the side of an AT&T phone truck.  I think everyone should be wearing masks in public except maybe these people.

I subscribed today to Apple TV.  And even if I don't watch Ted Lasso and Schmigadoon! and all those other shows that have been recommended to me, it's worth the five bucks a month for me just to see Jon Stewart's new series. A new one drops every other Thursday and here's an excerpt from the one that debuted yesterday. It's all about freedom and the odd ways people these days define it and what they will and won't do to defend it.

A rerun. This ran here on 10/26/14 and the only thing I have to add to it is that Henry Kloss died in January of 2002. If you'd like to know more about this man and his extraordinary career, here's a link to his New York Times obit.

Around 1982, I decided the time had come to purchase a projection TV — one of those big, wall-sized jobbies. The Advent was the best-selling brand but there were a few dozen makes and models on the market. Which one to buy, which one to buy?

Fortunately, I had by then developed my foolproof, never miss, infallible method of determining which item of audio or video equipment is the one to purchase. It involves careful and meticulous research, a comprehensive understanding of the technology and specifications of every product, a full and exhaustive working knowledge of all the manufacturers, their track records and — most crucial — staying close enough to the industry to be aware of what's in the pipeline and will soon be released.

My method involves all of this. But you'll notice that I did not say that I, personally, do any of it.

No. What I personally do is to call my pal Marc Wielage and just buy whatever he tells me to buy. He does all that stuff. Marc is a highly-respected video engineer and author of countless articles and reviews that cover not only consumer audio and/or video equipment but professional hardware, as well. I've known him for something like forty years and I've never known him to be wrong about anything except, obviously, the proper spelling of the name "Mark."

So I called him, told him what I had in mind and asked him what he said was the easiest question he'd fielded in months. The answer was: "The Kloss Novabeam."

I replied, "Kloss Novabeam? Not the Advent?"

"No," he moaned as if I'd asked him if I could get decent TV reception on a G.E. toaster oven. "The Novabeam is the best projection TV out today, by far." At that moment, I'm sure he was right.

He explained to me that the Kloss Novabeam was designed and manufactured by Henry Kloss, a legendary figure in the fields of, first, audio technology and, more recently, home video. Among many other credits, Mr. Kloss was one of the inventors of the acoustic suspension loudspeaker, the high selectivity FM radio, the first audio cassette unit to employ Dolby B noise reduction, and the first successful audio product to utilize transistors, the Model 11 portable phonograph.

In the area of home video, he had presided over the invention and marketing of the original Advent projection televisions. Then he left Advent — reportedly, not of his own free will — and began marketing the Kloss Novabeam in direct competition. It was, Marc assured me, superior in every way to the Advent.

"Okay," I said. "Any idea where I can buy a Kloss Novabeam?"

"Only one place you can get it in town," Marc responded. "Go to Federated Electronics. They have the exclusive in L.A. But one thing — if you go in there, they're gonna try to sell you an Advent. They have tons of them piled up in their warehouses but they sell the Novabeams as fast as they can get them in."

The next day, I walked into the Projection TV section of my nearest Federated store and, sure enough, the salesguy immediately tried to sell me an Advent. Marc knows of what he speaks.

"I'm interested in the Kloss Novabeam," I said, looking around. "I don't seem to see one on display here…"

"The Advent is a very fine piece of equipment," he proclaimed. "It's the best-selling make. In fact, I just had a customer stop in and tell me how happy he is with the Advent I sold him."

"I'd like to see the Kloss Novabeam, please."

"Just take a look at this Advent. I'll put a tape on and you'll see how vivid the colors are, how bright the picture —"

"Kloss Novabeam, please."

"Oh, and the Advent has some other great features…"

"Kloss Novabeam," I said.

"Another thing about the Advent. It's real easy to get parts for them and…"

It was only when I started for the exit that he sighed and led me into a back room. There, sure enough, a working Kloss Novabeam was on display.

"We keep it back here," he explained. "If we had it out there next to the Advent, we'd never sell another Advent."

"Fine," I said. "I'll take one."

— only I didn't take one. I had it delivered. Those suckers were big.

The Kloss Novabeam worked just as Marc had said it would, which is not to say I ever doubted his counsel. The unit was in two parts. One was a big, six-foot (diagonally-measured) screen which took up an entire wall of what, thereafter, I could only refer to as my TV Room. The image was projected onto it from three lenses — one red, one blue, one green — mounted in a console that stood in the center of the room, something like a small coffee table.

For months, my guests and I would sit by that small coffee table and enjoy TV shows and movies blown up with amazing brightness and clarity. The only drawback was that, outta force o' habit, I was always pointing the remote control at the TV screen to no apparent effect. One had to remember to point the remote at the small coffee table since that, not the screen, was the TV set.

All was peachy until one day, about eleven months after my Novabeam had entered my life. Suddenly, its picture became dull, blurry and overly green. When I watched The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather on it, it looked as if Dan and the newsmakers of the day were submerged in a big vat of lime jello. And now that I think of it, if Dan had actually done things like that, he'd still be on the air.

Amazingly — for when appliances go kablooey, you usually discover the warranty expired ten minutes before — my Novabeam was still covered. I called Federated and they dispatched a gentleman who knew approximately as much about fixing Novabeams as I know about fixing a ruptured aorta. Matter of fact, in a head-to-head contest, I'd lay serious money that I could learn and perform quadruple-bypass surgery before this clown could locate the Novabeam "on" button.

"Gotta take it into shop," he finally announced. And it was not until he put the coffee table half (only) of my Novabeam on his truck and drove off that something dawned on me. I had not heard him say anything about bringing it back from the shop.

Indeed, he did not. No one did. Days passed and I saw nothing of my Novabeam console. And when I tried calling Federated, the following happened…

1. I would wait on hold for 5-10 minutes before someone came on the line.
2. I would explain my situation to the person and they would take down my invoice number and name and say, "Let me check on it and I'll be right back with you."
3. They would put me on hold.

And that, by God, was it. #4 was me surrendering after a long, long wait and hanging up. Once placed on hold, I would remain there indefinitely, listening to tinny phone-Muzak. Not once did they ever come back.

I put one such call on my speakerphone and sat here working, waiting for Godot or a human being to get back on the line. Neither did. The first time, I admitted defeat after 45 minutes. Subsequent calls, I surrendered after 10 or 15 minutes of sitting there, wondering why a firm that specialized in high-end audio and electronics had such crappy hold music.

With each attempt, I would increasingly impress upon the Federated employee how I was always being placed forever on hold when I called, never to return. Each time, the person on the other end would assure me that they would be right back with me. They would then put me on hold and immediately retire and move to Florida — or something of the sort.

Finally, I had to act. I phoned Wielage again and asked him what to do. He gave me the phone number in Massachusetts of a Vice-President of the Kloss Novabeam Company. I called and explained the situation to the man who said, "Let me put you on hold…"

I yelled into the phone, "DON'T PUT ME ON HOLD! I never come back from there!"

But he swore he'd return…and that turned out to be a fib. I never spoke to that man again. However, less than a minute after he'd sent me to Limbo, someone else came on the line and said, "Tell me the problem."

I asked, "To whom am I speaking, please?"

"Kloss," the man said. "Henry Kloss." Well, that was impressive.

Amazed I'd reached the Head Honcho so quickly, I blurted out the story. I got as far as the third or fourth time they left me twisting in the wind on hold when he interrupted: "How long did they make you wait?"

I told him. He sounded politely skeptical. "You sure you're not exaggerating?"

"Mr. Kloss," I said, "I will give you the number and my invoice data and you call them. Pretend you're me and see what they do to you. But you might want to send out for pizza first."

"I've got a better idea," he said. "You call and I'll listen in. Give me the phone number." I did and he switched us over to three-way calling and dialed the service number of Federated Electronics. It was like I was phoning them again but he was eavesdropping.

A cheery young lady only kept me on hold about two minutes before taking down all my data, saying "I'll be right back" and putting me back on hold, where she thought I belonged. As we listened to the bad music, I said to Mr. Kloss, "My phone has a little timer. It's now been two minutes and —"

He interrupted. "— and forty seconds. I'm running a stopwatch on it." We made idle chit-chat about how much, apart from this, I loved my Novabeam…and we waited. And waited. And waited some more.

How long they would have left us there, we'll never know. After five minutes, Henry Kloss said, "This is unacceptable" and hung up on them. I was still on the line, feeling vindicated in my claim. He then told me, "Okay, just listen" and made another three-way call. This time, it was his turn to talk, mine to snoop.

I shall now attempt to re-create that call. I do not recall the name of the executive involved and I'm cleaning up the language but otherwise, this is pretty much what was said. The first voice you hear with be that of the switchboard operator…

WOMAN #1: Federated Electronics.

KLOSS: Peter Johnson, please.

WOMAN #1: One moment…

(short pause, bad music)

WOMAN #2: Peter Johnson's office.

KLOSS: Let me speak to Peter. This is Henry Kloss.

WOMAN #2: Mr. Kloss, Mr. Johnson is in a conference at the moment. Can he get back to you?

KLOSS: No. Interrupt his conference. No, wait. First, I want you to take down some information. Mark, give her your name, invoice number, all that stuff…

(I quickly furnish the requested info, then I shut up.)

KLOSS: Okay. Now, interrupt his conference. Tell him Henry Kloss is on the line and I'm furious and he'd better take my call right this minute if he knows what's good for him.

WOMAN #2: (a bit shaky) I'll tell him.

(another short pause, more bad music)

JOHNSON: (dripping with friendliness) Henry! How the hell are you?

KLOSS: Furious, that's how the hell I am. Two months ago, a customer named Mark Evanier had his Novabeam picked up by you for servicing and he's never seen it, never heard a word from you. When he calls up to inquire, you put him on hold and ignore him.

JOHNSON: Oh no, we don't do that…

KLOSS: You just did it to me.

JOHNSON: Well, we've had a little shortage in the service division…

KLOSS: That's not my problem and it's not his problem. I want him to get his Novabeam back immediately. Your secretary has all the information.

JOHNSON: I will personally look into it and make sure he gets it back in the next few days.

KLOSS: No. Not the next few days. You've had it for two months. You don't get a few more days. I'm phoning Mr. Evanier in one hour. If he does not have a working Novabeam in his home, I'm canceling every damn contract I have with you. I will not have my products sold by a company that treats a customer like that. My name is on that product.

JOHNSON: Henry, be reasonable. We may not be able to find or fix his Novabeam in an hour…

KLOSS: Then give him a new one. At your expense. Now, you have one hour. Goodbye.

He clicked off that call, then directed his attention to me. "Talk to you in one hour," he said. And he hung up.

Fifty-four minutes later, I heard a squeal of tires outside. I opened my door and two men were sprinting up my front walkway with a brand-new Kloss Novabeam. They were just hooking it up and testing the picture when the phone rang again. The entire conversation went as follows — and this one, I am quoting verbatim:

ME: Hello?

KLOSS: This is Kloss. You got it?

ME: I got it. Thanks.

KLOSS: Call me personally if you have any trouble in the future.

And with that, he clicked off and I never had to call him again. His product served me well for about another ten years…and while that's not as long as I might have liked, it did manage to outlive the Federated Electronics chain. Gee, I wonder how a big company like that could possibly go out of business.

Two weeks ago at the Tony Awards, they featured three wonderful duets. Here — in case you didn't see them or want to see them again — are those duets…

I have many an e-mail asking what I think about a current Superman storyline dealing with bisexuality. There are a lot of opinions out there, many from folks who aren't informed enough about this matter to know that it isn't Clark Kent who's "come out." It's Jon Kent, offspring of Clark Kent and Lois Lane in a storyline that will probably be forgotten in two years, if not sooner.

But what do I think about it? I think I don't really care about it. Haven't read it. Probably won't. It, like when Superman "died" in 1993 and other lucrative properties have "died" for a while to boost circulation, is temporary.

And I'm not a believer in the notion that super-hero comics need to deal with every aspect of our lives. What I do believe is that consenting adults should be free to marry, cohabitate, breed, adopt, whatever as long as — to use Ronald Reagan's old line which he didn't seem to believe in — they don't scare the horses.

But I don't think super-hero comics are a good place to discuss many aspects of The Human Condition. That's because they aren't about human beings. I don't think they ever deal with death effectively because, as noted, they're about characters who don't die…or if they do, they don't stay dead for long. None of the ones I read that worked 9/11 into their storylines seemed to be at all effective. In the DC or Marvel Universes, the Earth is saved from complete annihilation two or three times a week so how do you give a real sense of horror to a bunch of terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center?

I remember a comic which depicted New Yorkers running in a panic from Ground Zero, terrified of the smoke and dust and debris, understandably afraid a building was about to collapse on them. The real-world news footage of that was chilling. In the comic book, it was a scene we see so often, it was like, "Big deal! People ran in a panic from Superman on the cover of Action Comics #1."

Don't get me wrong: I love comic books. I've probably read way more of them than most people reading this and I love writing them. I just think the unreality of the world in which so many of them take place might not be the right venue in which to address every real-world subject. Human sexuality is a fascinating topic to me. Superhuman sexuality? Not so much. Do you remember those scenes where Superboy was sad because he couldn't get a date? I wanted to yell at him, "You're from another planet, you can fly, you can pick up a tank with one hand and you're invulnerable! Your life is very different from mine!" So is that of Jon Kent, whose father came from the planet Krypton.

So that's one reason I don't care about bisexuality in the DC Universe. Another is that I don't even know who many of those characters are these days. So many different people handle them with so many different ideas about how to make them hip and today and relevant that I often don't recognize Superman as Superman or Batman as Batman or so forth. But maybe that's another topic for another time.

I'll just recall a lesson from a writing teacher I once had who said, "A character is defined by what they do but also by what they don't do." When a character is controlled by too many diverse hands — writers but also producers and editors and marketing consultants and corporate officials — I wonder if anyone even has the power to say, "No, no! Our character wouldn't do that!"

Here's another veteran comedian on The Ed Sullivan Show. It's 1966 and the comic is Jackie Kahane. I knew Jackie a little bit and when he passed away in 2001, I wrote this about him here…

The last five years of Elvis Presley's life, his opening act was Mr. Kahane, a comedian who also, in his day, opened for the likes of Wayne Newton, Tony Bennett and just about every other singing headliner.

Amazingly, this was a side job for Jackie, whose main income then came from managing comedy writers. A lot of them were, like Jackie, Canadians…but he also managed American writers and was often urging me to join his stable. I never did, but I enjoyed lunching with Jackie and hearing colorful (often, unquotable) tales of Elvis and Wayne and Tony and Show Biz in general. He seemed to do well for his clients…and he also performed a special service for some. He was a "front." You see, TV shows produced in Canada like to hire Canadian writers because it qualifies them for special investment credits from the government which can make it a lot easier to produce something.

Sometimes, they'd hire one of Jackie's American writers but Jackie, who retained Canadian citizenship, would be the official writer of record. As a result, he got screen credit on an awful lot of shows that were actually written by other folks. (Bizarre, which starred John Byner, was one) I thought that was kinda sleazy but otherwise, Jackie — who died Monday at the age of 79 — was a class act all the way.

He told me stories about doing Ed's show, too. The show was done live on Sunday evenings and earlier in the day, there was a full run-through in front of an audience that, Jackie said, never laughed at anything. "During snow season," he said, "they were just derelicts seeking a place to get out of the cold for a few hours." After that, Ed himself would cut down your act because it hadn't gotten much response from the derelicts. I wonder what Jackie's act was like at the afternoon run-through.,,

For reasons I'm sure you can guess, I don't expect to go to Las Vegas — or really, anywhere — for quite a while. But I may now have a special new reason to travel there. Nothing has been officially announced but several sources are saying that the bevy of great restaurants in Caesars Palace will soon be joined by the first outside-New-York outlet of Peter Luger's Steakhouse. We shall be following this rumor with more than a little interest.

This one was first posted here on June 30, 2016…

Like everyone who's no longer in school, I had a lot of different teachers back when I was — some good teachers, some not so good. Quite a few of them had no impact on me at all other than to drag me through some class that I was required to take. I suppose the one whose teachings had the most lasting impact on me was Mrs. Grandholme, who taught me touch-typing. I have never used anything taught to me in the realm of Physics or Chemistry but at this very moment, I am using a skill I owe in large part to Mrs. Grandholme.

The runner-up would probably be Mr. Cline, who taught English and History at Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High. He imparted little useful info to me but he still left a lasting impression. It didn't have much to do with English or History and I'm still trying decide if it was for the better.

First thing I should do here is to give you a visual. He looked very much like Norman Lear, minus the silly hat. Here — study this picture…

Got him? Okay. Then I should tell you this about Mr. Cline: He was a very funny teacher and oh, how he loved to perform in front of the class. I think deep down, he wanted to be an actor or a comedian…and one year when he emceed a big talent show and fund-raising event in the school auditorium, he was terrific. Campus legend had it that years earlier, one of those events was hosted by Jerry Lewis. I wasn't there to see that but if it did happen, I'll bet Jerry wasn't half as funny as Mr. Cline. (Come to think of it, I've seen Jerry not be half as funny as cold sores.)

Third thing I have to tell you about Mr. Cline: A lot of kids in his classes really hated him and at times, I was one of them.

I found myself, not by choice, in a number of his classes over the years. He started each one the same way: "You can be a pupil or you can be a student." The difference in his mind was that a pupil just sits there and listens and does the work and waits to be taught. A student wants to learn and actively participates and does more than is expected. "I teach my classes for students," he said over and over, putting a special, revered emphasis on the word "students." To that end, he did things like this…

One Monday in History class, he assigned us to read Chapter Four in our textbooks and warned us there would be a test the next day. And indeed on Tuesday, there was a test — on Chapter Five. Because a student would have read ahead.

Another time, he assigned Chapter Six and most of us — by now, hip to the game — read Six and Seven. The test the next day was actually on Chapter Six but the test consisted of one line: "Write down five interesting things you learned from reading that chapter." That's harder to do than you imagine…and I failed because two of the five things I wrote down were actually in Chapter Seven. Because a student would have remembered which pages were which.

I mean, after all! What good is a piece of knowledge if you don't remember which chapter of one book it appeared in?

Yet another time, he assigned us to write an essay that was due on Friday and then on Thursday, he announced he would collect them then. Anyone who couldn't hand his or her essay in a day early would receive a lower grade when he or she did. Because a student wouldn't have waited until the last minute to complete it.

I'm sure his motives were good. I'm sure he thought he was encouraging us to become more inquisitive and serious about learning. But it sure didn't seem to me like that was the outcome.

It seemed to me like he was prompting us to think of everything as a big game where the person in charge — in this case, him — can change the rules whenever he feels like it. Life works that way at times and I suppose that could be a valuable lesson to keep in mind…but it got to be a terrible distraction from any possible actual learning. When I did read the textbook, I wasn't thinking "What can I learn from this?" I was thinking, "How will Mr. Cline screw with us over this material?"

I don't remember very much that I learned in those classes of his. What I do remember are his silly little gotchas like the one in an English class near the end of the semester. He passed out forms and told us to write down the names and brief summaries of all the books we'd read that term. No particular quantity of reading had ever been assigned to us but a student would have been reading many books all year. So we had to make out a list and then he graded us on the quantity of books and also on whether he thought we were reading at the proper level.

I got an "A" on that one, partly because I had read about five good books and partly because I was good at making up phony book titles and fake author names for about seven more. He couldn't very well fault my choice of books he'd never heard of so he gave me high marks for them. I had to resist the temptation to go to him and say that while a student might not have fibbed about what books he'd read, a good teacher would have gone to the school library and looked up titles with which he was not familiar.

I "won" that skirmish but I didn't fare so well the time he ordered us to hand in the notes we'd taken on his previous day's lecture. He hadn't told us to take notes but, he said, a student would have taken extensive, detailed notes. So he was going to grade us on how many notes we'd taken and how detailed they were.

I had taken almost none and what I had written down was in a shorthand style that only I would understand: Key words to jog my memory instead of full quotes and sentences. Mr. Cline had never lectured us on any "right" way to take notes but we were faulted if we hadn't written them the way he thought they should be taken. That time, I decided I had to actually confront him.

After class, while everyone else went to lunch, I went to him and said, "I don't understand why I'm getting graded on a basis other than whether I do the work you assign and understand it. I get the feeling you're going to flunk me because I'm wearing a green shirt and you suddenly announce that a student would have worn a blue one today."

I'll say this for Mr. Cline: You could talk to him like this. I couldn't have had this conversation with a lot of my teachers because many of them had this "Me Teacher, Me Know Everything" attitude. Not Mr. Cline. He prided himself on encouraging his charges to think and question and I respected him for that even though I often thought he was achieving the opposite of that goal.

He explained to me that day why he taught the way he taught and stated, as if quoting something in the Bill of Rights, "A student is someone who takes detailed, extensive notes."

I said, "How about this? A student is someone who learns. You know, a minimum-wage stenographer could have taken down every word you said and not retain one of them. Which of these would you prefer I be?"

I remember that moment. I remember several such moments in my childhood — moments that made me realize that grown-ups and adults and parents and people in power weren't always right.

They weren't always wrong, either. It was important not to fall into the trap of thinking that, too…but it was important to me to fully embrace the concept that they weren't always right and that I needed to question what they said. (Later, it was important to learn — or at least try to learn — to do that in a constructive, non-confrontational way. I still sometimes have trouble with that part.)

When I said that line to Mr. Cline about the minimum-wage stenographer, he looked like I'd slapped him. Then he stammered back a reply: "If you don't take detailed notes, how will you retain what you learn in my class?"

I said, "By listening instead of writing. Ask me a question about what you said in class yesterday."

He asked a question and I managed to answer it correctly with a close-to-verbatim recitation of his actual words. Some of that was luck but I do have a pretty good memory. It's not flawless and there are times when it simply doesn't record things in the first place. But it's pretty good now and it was even better then, especially when I was listening instead of writing things down. And no, I don't remember what question he asked me and I don't remember what I said in reply that day.

As I'm explaining here, I don't remember much of anything Mr. Cline taught me. Just these things I'm telling you now because the long-forgotten things were of no apparent use to me. This "lesson" was.

I think after I answered his question correctly, I pointed to my head and said something to him like, "I took my notes up here. Would you rather I'd taken them on paper instead? Because I can't do both and like every single student you ever had, the minute I'm out of your class, my notebook's going in the wastebasket. With luck though, I'll keep my brain with me for the rest of my life."

During my school years, I argued a lot with teachers and I lost a lot of the arguments, often (but not always) because I was wrong. In that same high school, I got into a nastier-than-it-should-have-been quarrel with an Art Teacher who was very nice and caring and who didn't deserve the crap I gave her over some assignments to design what they then called "psychedelic art." I was politically very conservative back then and really, really uncomfy with all the glorification I saw around me — this was the late sixties — of drugs.

Today…well, today I still don't like 'em but my attitude now is what adults do in private is their business as long as it doesn't harm others. Even if I'd been right in '68, I was wrong to connect that to Mrs. Nichols urging us to create designs not unlike those by artists whose work was then described as "drug-inspired." I lost that spat and I deserved to.

I was wrong about a lot of things in high school. In fact, as I came to realize, high school is a great place to be wrong about things. Get as much of it as you can out of your system then because it matters a lot less there than it will after you've graduated and you're trying to arrange the rest of your life. Now when I'm wrong, I usually pay a much higher price.

To this day, I still think though that I was right with Mr. Cline and his silly (to me) way of teaching…or maybe partially right because maybe his method worked for some of the kids in his class. Keeping us off balance the way he did though seemed counter-productive to me. It caused me to not think of the material and to try to figure out the catch, the hidden trick, the way in which if I did exactly what I was supposed to do, I was going to be told I'd done the wrong thing.

And to this day, I often have that suspicion in my mind. When someone gives me an assignment that's due on Tuesday, I think, "Do I really have until Tuesday or are they going to fault me for not handing it on Monday?" Sometimes, I even forget that I'll be a hero if I hand it in on Thursday or Friday but it's exactly what they want.

I still haven't decided if this is a good thing or a bad thing. But it's one of those and either way, I have Mr. Cline to thank for it.

Our pal Charlie Frye favors us with a little Four Coin Fosse…

The vaults of The Ed Sullivan Show are full of performances by comedians that few remember today. Here from 1956 is Myron Cohen…

What has been occupying me for the last week or so continues to occupy me…and longer than I'd expected. The reruns here will soon be displaced by new material but today, you get the one about the time I had Scarlet Fever. A bit of Googling tells me this disease is no longer as common as it once was but it still occurs here and there. I don't think I have a "worst enemy" or anyone I dislike enough to wish it upon and if I ever do get one, I will not even wish it upon that person. This ran here on December 27, 2015…

When I was about six, I came down with a very, very bad case of Scarlet Fever. A couple of other kids in my class at school had it and that's apparently how I got it…but I got it really, really bad. It was so bad that for a day or two there, there was a very real worry that I might die from it. [POSSIBLE SPOILER: I didn't.]

I do not remember everything about that time but I recall my pediatrician, Dr. Grossman, making a house call to our home late one night. That scared me. Watching TV shows as I did, I had heard any number of jokes about how doctors did not make house calls anymore. And this is how my mind worked even then: I thought that if Dr. Grossman and his little black bag were at my bedside, I had to be nearing death's door.

That was one of the two things that got me worried. The other was that for the first time, I saw my father cry.

My father was a lovely, kindly man who never in his entire life hurt another human being intentionally or failed to help out one — even a total stranger — who was in need. But he was also a very nervous man who worried about everything…and especially about illness. In later years if I had some minor ailment, my mother and I conspired to hide it from him. It just got him too upset. He was upset that night when Dr. Grossman came.  At that age, I figured that if my father was upset, I should be as well.

I was bright pink from the infection, absolutely covered in rashes. My throat felt like I'd tried to swallow a porcupine and I had a temperature so high, they wouldn't let me know what it was. I think my mother just told me I had an unlisted number. But I managed to get myself mostly unscared by remembering that Dr. Grossman was a great doctor. He would know how to fix me.

And of course, he did. First thing, he ruled out taking me to a hospital. I was not part of the conversation but later, my mother quoted him as saying, "Mark's too weak to be moved and if we take him to a hospital, he's liable to infect other children or pick up something else he doesn't need now. There's nothing they can do for him there that you can't do just as well here."

It was close to Midnight — and I think it may have been a Sunday evening — when he left our house, having written several prescriptions that had to be filled A.S.A.P. At the time, pharmacies that were open 'round the clock were not common even in Los Angeles. My mother worked her way through the Yellow Pages and found a few but none of them were well-enough stocked to have what we needed on their shelves.

Finally, she called a Horton and Converse out on Wilshire that was closed but the pharmacist was still there and had what was required. He agreed to wait around if someone could come right away for it.

My father was instantly dispatched in his car to fetch the drugs. One day years later, he told me the story of driving to the pharmacy but he turned pale as he did and his hands began shaking. He said that that night, they were shaking so badly he could hardly drive. After a near-collision, he pulled over to the side of the road and thought, "I can't do this."

Then he realized he had to do it. His only child's life was at stake…or seemed to be at stake, which in this case was the same thing. He finally drove to the drugstore and waited anxiously for the order to be filled.  Then he raced home, trembling all the way and probably hearing the Lone Ranger theme song in his head.

If you'd known my father, you would understand that he did not tell me this story to impress me with any heroism on his part. Indeed, he did not think he had been heroic. He told it to me to admit a certain weakness on his part and to tell me that as I went through life, I had to try to not be like that. I have tried to not be like that.

Once he was home that night — or rather, that morning — my mother gave me the pills, which I suppose were antibiotics. They may even have been precursor drugs to what I'm taking now for the infection I had recently in my knee.

There was also an external drug which had to be administered — a purple liquid that was to be applied to my forehead and chest with compresses. Pure cotton cloths were needed and we had no rags around or cotton sheets that could be cut up — and of course by now it was around 2 AM. There was nowhere to buy any so my father's handkerchiefs were sacrificed.

He had about a dozen of them and my mother, wearing the gloves she used for dishwashing, used them all up over the next few days. Each was soaked in a bowl of the purple liquid, then used to softly wipe my brow and chest. This went on most of that first night and apparently it along with the pills helped to bring my fever down and out of the danger zone by 7 AM. That was when my mother staggered off to bed and my father got up to keep an eye on me. He'd been trying without much success to sleep.

He didn't get much the next few days. He stayed home from work and he and my mother slept or took care of me in shifts. One was always at or near my bedside and when I was awake, I was read stories…but not too many because I was supposed to sleep as much as possible. Dr. Grossman phoned often and about three days after his late visit, he came by during the daylight hours, inspected the patient and announced that I was well on my way to a full recovery.

I don't recall hearing him say that. I do remember how happy my parents were and that's how I figured it out before they informed me.

I had missed enough school because of the illness and was so weak that it was decided I should skip the rest of that semester and build back my strength. I had previously skipped two semesters (one year) of elementary school so I eventually graduated one semester ahead instead of two. During my recovery, I had one interesting visitor whose visit I managed to sleep through. I wrote about that here.  And if you'd like to read more about Dr. Grossman, I wrote about him here and here.  The piece at the first of those links guest stars Jerry Lewis.

When I was awake, I read comic books. I read "real" books too.  A very inspirational one was Ventriloquism for Fun and Profit by Paul Winchell but I also read tons of comic books. My father almost never came home from work without a few, mostly Dell Comics featuring characters I also watched on television. I had read comics before getting sick but it was as the Scarlet Fever was departing that my interest in them became obsessive. Some would say I traded one illness for another…but at least I managed to turn the new one into a profession.

Finally, I was well enough to accompany my mother to the Von's Market where I could buy my own comic books, at which point my father was asked politely to cease bringing any home for me. I liked it better when I could pick them out myself. I got less Casper the Friendly Ghost and more Bugs Bunny that way. Also, though my father made notes of what he was buying for me, he did occasionally bring home duplicates.

The first time he brought me one I already had, I told him so and he got terribly embarrassed. He wanted to rush back out to the store and see if they'd let him exchange it for one I didn't have. Thereafter, I learned not to tell him. When he handed me a duplicate, I'd feign delight and if he asked, I'd lie and say I'd never seen that one before. Then I'd put it in a little pile I maintained of comics to be traded to friends at some future date.

Instead of giving me comics, he gave me money to buy my own…but I didn't spend every cent of it on issues of Looney Tunes and Yogi Bear. With my mother's help, I went to a J.J. Newberry's — a "dime store" next door to the Von's — and I bought my father a present. It consisted of two six-packs of fine cotton handkerchiefs embroidered with an "E" for "Evanier." These were to replace the dozen of his that had to be thrown away after they became permanently stained with the purple liquid. It was the second time I saw my father cry but it was a good cry.

Every time I post reruns here, I get requests to post this rerun which I've rerun before but it wasn't a rerun when it first ran on this blog on June 2, 2006. I have added a new addendum to the end and you won't want to miss that…

For no visible reason, I'm going to tell a story from my past. Back around 1970, our local comic book club would sometimes adjourn its Saturday meeting and then a band of us would car pool to a local movie theater and take in a cheap double feature. One time, we caravaned to the Meralta in Culver City for the parlay of Kelly's Heroes — starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles and Donald Sutherland — followed by House of Dark Shadows.

I think it was a buck to get in and I hate to think what they could have charged us to get out. The Meralta (seen below) had probably been a lovely theater at some point but by the time we got to it, it was the kind of place where the cashier wore No-Pest Strips for earrings and the ushers were just cockroaches in uniforms. The seats were shabby and one out of every four was either broken, missing or filled with a dead body. The curtains no longer operated so (and this is critical to our story) the screen was open between films. And out in the lobby was a refreshment stand that sold popcorn that was stale when you could have purchased it to munch throughout D.W. Griffith's latest.

There were about ten of us there, crammed in a section of two rows with a gap or two where the seats were unsittable. We watched Kelly's Heroes and I don't think any of us particularly enjoyed it. Then came intermission. Some of us went out to the lobby but one of our group (a guy named Gary) stayed in his seat — he may have become permanently affixed by then — and handed some coins to another of our group (a guy named Barry). Said Gary to Barry, "Hey, while you're out there, get me a candy bar. Any kind." Barry was annoyed at being treated like an errand boy so he decided to go out and spend Gary's money on the lousiest candy bar he could find.

The Meralta refreshment stand had many to pick from but when Barry spotted a display of Idaho Spud bars, he knew that was it. The Idaho Spud is a popular candy in some parts of the country but apparently not in Southern California. None of us had ever heard of it before and I've never seen one since even though it has been manufactured since (their website says) 1911. The site also explains that it's "a wonderful combination of a light cocoa flavored marshmallow center drenched with a dark chocolate coating and then sprinkled with coconut."

And maybe it is. But you know what it looks like, in or out of its wrapper? It looks like a chocolate-covered potato.

Isn't that the first thing you'd assume? It's called an Idaho Spud and it has eyes all over its packaging. So what's the first thing you think of? Chocolate-covered potato, right?

And the Idaho Spud people have no one to blame but themselves. No one forced them to call it that. There isn't even a logical reason to call it that except that they're made in Idaho where, contrary to popular belief, not everything is a potato. In fact, I developed a theory that the guy who invented it turned to his wife and said, "Muriel, I've invented a new candy bar but I don't know what to name it" and she asked, "Well, what is it?" To which he replied, "It's a wonderful combination of a light cocoa flavored marshmallow center drenched with a dark chocolate coating and then sprinkled with coconut."

Muriel said, "That's easy. Call it an Idaho Spud." And the inventor, who was drinking to celebrate his new invention, was so plastered by this point that it sounded good to him. Especially because people would think it was a chocolate-covered potato. "That'll be great for sales," he said just before he passed out, face down in a bowl of vodka.

Anyway, Barry bought Gary an Idaho Spud, took it back to where we were sitting and handed it to Gary. "Here's your candy bar."

Gary looked at it and said, "What the hell is this?"

Barry said, "It's an Idaho Spud. I think it's a chocolate-covered potato or something."

Gary recoiled in horror. "I didn't ask for a chocolate-covered potato."

Barry replied, "You didn't say not to get you a chocolate-covered potato." Gary had to concede the point. Sadly, he pulled the wrapper from his candy bar, took one bite, hated it and hurled the remainder of the Idaho Spud at the screen…

…where it stuck.

This was still during intermission and the curtains were open, the screen was exposed. We all saw the Idaho Spud sail onto the screen of the Meralta and just stay there, about two-thirds of the way up, slightly to the left of center. Then House of Dark Shadows started. For us, House of Dark Shadows starred Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Nancy Barrett and an Idaho Spud candy bar. And the Idaho Spud should have had top billing because it was in every damn scene. Prominently featured, in fact.

My friends and I paid no attention to the movie. We just stared at the Idaho Spud. Every time the camera cut, it had a new role in the film. Sometimes, it was a beauty spot on one of the actresses' faces. Sometimes, it was a fly on a wall. There was a shot of a door where it looked like the doorbell. At one point — I don't recall the exact dialogue — one of the actors said, "What is this thing?" And we all answered, referring to the brown lump on his face, "It's a chocolate-covered potato." This was years before The Rocky Horror Picture Show and home video made yelling back at a movie screen a national and annoying fad.

Other members of the audience picked up our fascination with the alleged candy bar and by the end of the film, I don't think one single person at the Meralta was paying any attention to what the actors were saying or doing; only to how the lump figured into each shot. At one point, there was an odd lighting effect that made it look like the Spud had fallen off and a moan of disappointment echoed through the theater. But then, in the very next scene, you could see it was still there and a little cheer went up. It was still there when we left, having little idea what House of Dark Shadows was about. In fact, it was still there three weeks later when I took a date to the Meralta to see Airport. On the sheer strength of superior acting ability, the Idaho Spud stole the movie from Dean Martin.

That's about all there is to this story. I'm not sure I ever went back to the Meralta so as far as I'm concerned, the Idaho Spud remained in place until they tore the place down, maybe even after that. It probably didn't but I'd like to think it did. Even now, when I find myself trapped in a particularly boring movie and my mind wanders from the storyline, I find myself wishing I had something of the sort to focus my attention on. A good movie, of course, needs no external help. But a bad movie can always use a chocolate-covered potato somewhere.

---

ADDENDUM: And whenever I rerun this article, someone asks me if the Idaho Spud is a real candy bar or is it something I just made up for a story? It's a real candy bar and you can order a lovely gift box of twelve of them from Amazon for only thirty bucks. And by the way, I've never tasted one because I'm highly allergic to coconut…

Here's the latest one of these — me 'n' Sergio down by the schoolyard answering questions from readers of Groo the Wanderer…

Another rerun. This one is rerunning from February 22, 2015…

Let me tell you about the photograph you see before you. It was taken in the backyard of the home in which I lived with my parents from age 1 to about 22. I'll guess I was about seven, maybe eight in this picture. The little girl was named either Roxy or Lee.

The reason I'm not certain is that Roxy and Lee were identical twins — and I mean identical. Their grandmother, who lived next door to us, could not tell them apart and she claimed that even their parents had trouble. Roxy and Lee liked this and encouraged their folks to dress them alike. When their folks didn't, they were known to swap outfits, just to keep everyone guessing. They would also sometimes claim to be each other. If you took a guess, they'd usually tell you you were wrong, even if you were right.

Every week or three, Roxy and Lee would come stay with their grandmother for a few days and when they did, we'd play games and I would make up little adventure stories for us to act out. Once, we put on a show in that backyard for my parents, their grandma and as many of the neighbors as we could bring there under duress. We opened with a magic act that utterly baffled the three people there who didn't know that my assistant had a twin. For a few seconds there, they actually thought I'd magically transported her from one big cardboard box to another.

The other seven people in our audience laughed because they knew the secret. Then we intentionally gave it away to the other three so Roxy and Lee could both be in the rest of the show together. They sang and danced to a record I played there in the yard thanks to a phonograph and an ungodly-long chain of extension cords. I did other magic tricks and a ventriloquism act that did not have Paul Winchell sweating the competition.

I liked Roxy and Lee a lot. One day, we learned that their grandmother was moving away. Actually, everyone in the small apartment complex next door was moving away.  It was being demolished to be replaced by a large apartment building.  I was quite sad because it meant the end of my friendship with Roxy and Lee.  I never even got to see them for a "last time."

In the above photo, one of them and I seem to be running some kind of mobile exhibit of rocks we'd found or something. I have no idea what we were doing but I do remember that wagon which served me well. It was at different times, a spaceship and a stagecoach and an ice cream truck and a door-to-door lemonade stand and I believe I even won the Indianapolis 500 in it a few times. Finally in my teen years, I gave it to a younger boy who lived down the street and he too found all sorts of imaginative uses for it.  He may even have used it as a wagon.

The main thing I would call your attention to in the photo is that little house we had in our yard. It was there when we moved in and I'm not sure of its original purpose. It had no plumbing or electricity, which suggested it was built as a tool and storage shed. But it also had big windows all around it which suggested people were expected to be inside it. Here's another photo where you can see it…

I don't know what caused me to make that face. Usually when I'm around females, they're the one making that face.

For a time, I used the little house cautiously as a playhouse — cautiously because many of the windows were broken, the floor had weak spots on it, there were portions of the ceiling that looked like they might come down at any minute, and there were a great many rusty nails in its walls. My Uncle Nathan, who was marginally handy with tools, occasionally went in and tried to remove some of the greater hazards but it finally came down to a simple decision: My father would either have to spend a lot of money to have someone come in and fix it up or it would have to be demolished.

A neighbor recommended a carpenter who came by and quoted a price to make it safe and inhabitable. The amount was clearly out of the question so my father asked, "How much to tear it down and haul everything away?" That fee was less but also more than he could spend at that time. Uncle Nathan boarded up the windows and the one door…and the little house just sat there for a year or two looking sad and maybe haunted.

During that time, the apartment complex next door was razed and a new, modern building took its place. As you might expect, we began finding termite droppings in our home. A bunch of them probably came in when they lost their residence next door and another wave probably arrived with all the lumber that was trucked in to build the new building.

An exterminator gave us a price to have our house tented and fumigated but, he said, there was no point in doing that as long as that little house was in the backyard. It was swarming with the little beasts and would re-attract them after any "kill."  He gave my father an estimate on what it would cost to rip the place down now. It was $300, which seemed like a lot at the time. My father thought about it for a few days and finally decided he had no choice but to pay it.

Then my mother had a thought. She asked our gardener Felipe what he would charge to do it. He said he didn't do that kind of work. Then she asked him, "If someone else tore the building down, what would you charge to haul away all the old wood and broken glass?" That, he said, he would do — for $40.

She came to me and said, "How'd you like to make $130?" That was half of what would be left if she and I tore it down and Felipe cleaned up after us.

I think I was ten at the time and $130 seemed like…well, less than a million dollars but not by much. The primary expenditure in my life was the purchase of comic books, most of which I bought at used book shops where I could get six for 25 cents. I did some instant arithmetic. $130 was 3,120 comic books.

But not really. There were many current comic books on the newsstand that looked so wonderful that I couldn't resist paying full cover price, which then was a dime. So maybe it was more like 2,000 comics. I remember thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I won't have a little house in the backyard to store them in."

My mother then said, "Now, don't think I'm going to let you spend the $130 all on comic books. Some of it's going to have to go for clothes and other expenses."

I asked, "Could I buy a pair of socks and spend the rest on comic books?" She said no. I could spend $30 on comics and then the remaining $100 would go towards, as she put it, "Necessities of Life." I tried to argue that Detective Comics was one but all she said was, "Nice try, kid. Nice try." I never could put one over on my mother. My father, yes…but not my mother.

Still, I took the offer. Thirty bucks worth of comic books was, after all, thirty bucks worth of comic books. Even at twelve cents apiece, that was a lot.

She presented the proposition to my father: "Give us the money and Mark and I will tear down the little house." He was skeptical but obviously, there was a value to keeping the dough within the family. "You've got a deal," he told us. "But for God's sake, be careful."

We were…and it was, up to a point, enormous fun. The little house was built like a real house but without a concrete foundation. We bought tools so I had safety goggles and gloves and a sledge hammer that was appropriate to my size and a big crowbar that I used to pry the shingles off the exterior. Once I did that, some of the walls beneath them could be knocked down with the sledge hammer, even by a ten-year-old boy. The little house turned out to be in even worse shape than we'd thought, plus we also had a big assist from those termites.

When we got the place down to the framework, Uncle Nathan decided to get in on the action. He went someplace and rented a gasoline-fueled power saw and then came over and cut down some of the upright beams, collapsing the roof. Boy, that was exciting. Many years later, I was outside the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas the night it was imploded with thousands of gallons of liquid explosives. Watching the little house come down was more memorable and astonishing.

Then Uncle Nathan sawed the roof and interior paneling into smaller chunks that Felipe the Gardener could fit into his truck. When the house was almost down, we paid Felipe to dig up the wooden frame that had formed the foundation. He then hauled the wreckage away and we were done.

My father was amazed. Absolutely amazed. He stood out in the backyard, staring at the plot where the little house had been and he said over and over, "I can't believe you did it! I cannot believe it!"

Between that extra cost of Felipe's excavation and what we spent on tools, we didn't clear $260. It was more like $200 but I still put aside $30 from my share for comic books and the rest went for clothes, shoes and some new shelving for my bedroom. I had to have a place to put all those comic books, after all. That was a Necessity of Life.

Only days after the little house was gone, we had to spend two nights at a nearby motel while our big house was covered with a tent. It was then filled with poison gas…which, the exterminator swore to me on the life of his children, would not harm my beloved comic book collection. As we were checking into the motel, the clerk noted that the address my father wrote on the registration card was less than a mile away. "You're not from out of town, I see. Might I ask the reason you'll be staying with us?"

My father was still reeling with astonishment at our demolition work. I guess it was partly that and partly to make a joke that he told the man, "My son here tore down our house."

The clerk gave me a look of incredulity and he asked, "Did you really do that?"

I said, "Yes." And motioning to the little suitcase I was holding, I added, "I packed my sledge hammer and my crowbar! If the TV in our room doesn't work, this place will be a parking lot by morning!"