This was the fevered declaration, every time my grandparents and I would travel down route 41 in southern Florida, circa the mid 1970’s. Ever since my grandparents left Chicago for the warmer climate in 1973, my mom would plop me on a plane (I was 11 years old) and send me down there every summer. I did love my gama and gapa.
Those were my nicknames for them almost before I could talk.
Florida in the summer. I’m trying to remember if my grandparents had air conditioning in their house. If so, it had to be pretty brutal out there before they actually used it. I DO know that they had the only house in the neighborhood with no pool. It would have been nice, but it seems like there’s a lot of upkeep and headaches that my grandfather wouldn’t want to deal with, and we’d never really been a big swimming family.
Heat’s always been my Kryptonite, but after a week or so, you kind of acclimate to your surroundings, especially as a kid. Mowing the lawn, riding my bike, actually, that was about it, as far as activities went. There were never any other kids around, as it seemed to be mostly old folks who lived around there.
It was a whole new housing community being built. Rotunda West! It was to be a grand experiment that, from above, would look like a big pie, with seven “slices” of neighborhoods, all pointing to the center where there’d be a huge shopping mall. The eighth slice was supposed to be a lake of sorts that fed into the Gulf of Mexico. There were also proposed golf courses, etc., but it all fell through, funding failed, so they only got as far as three slices. They might have completed a fourth slice in the last 50 years, not sure.
For the first several years my grandparents were there, there was no mail delivery to the houses in the community. So you had to go pick up your mail five miles away. Sometimes that was my job on my bike. Got heat stroke once. Maybe that’s when they started to turn the A.C. on….
I do remember passing time during those hot days. My grandfather and I would be watching pro wrestling or a baseball game on tv, my grandmother sewing. For relief from the heat, I think we had lemonade or Shasta cola, as the tap water was horribly smelly and there was no water purifier (1970’s), so no decent ice water. My grandma did have these ice cold pickles in the fridge though. When you’re ambling around a house constantly sweating, a cold pickle is truly magic.
I would usually be drawing–such as it was at 11 or 12 or so– and my supplies were mostly typing paper, and some pencils or pens. Unfortunately, if I came into contact with the paper in one spot for too long, I’d sweat all over it, it stuck to my arm, guh. Paper got soggy, thus rendering it useless. I wonder if that’s how I sped up my drawing time, keeping ahead of the sweat? Dunno.
The best thing about those summers though, by far, were the trips to the 7-11s.
We’d be driving down the main business thoroughfare to some friend’s or relative’s house, and I would be in the backseat, hunched forward, hovering directly behind my grandparents, scanning the road ahead for that wonderful convenience store. Yes, I was hanging on the backs of their seats because there were no seat belts being used, as it was 1973. There were also no bike helmets. Just sayin’. Oh, to have the telescopic vision of an eleven year old again. Scanning…scanning.
We were already familiar with some of the 7-11 locations from past trips, although my grandfather hoped in vain that I’d simply miss them, and he could keep moving. The *big* ask was spotting one on the other side of the street. This would be a huge pain in the ass, as route 41 had two lanes going both directions each, often with a median separating them. So the mechanics of finding an opening in the median, doing a U turn, then going back to said 7-11, then having to get back on track… well, sometimes I wouldn’t bother him. Who’m I kidding? Yes, even then, I was relentless.
Really, it was even worse without the median, trying to make a left hand turn in that mess, yikes. But if that 7-11 was on *our* side, easy-peasy, slam dunk, oh, yes.
YES.
oh, and another thing about the 7-11s?
Air conditioned. It was kinda more like Heaven-Eleven. It really was so beautiful an experience.
But what greeted you once you entered was the spinner rack full of comics.
Ah, the spinner rack, chock full of Marvel, DC, and other comics. Hopefully they had the next consecutive issue of the comics I collected, but there were no guarantees. They had what they had. I scoped out the situation quickly to see if there was anything I wanted or needed (couldn’t spend *too* much time in there–the grandfolks were waiting in the car, after all).
Sometimes, the comics rack was packed *too* full, with the comics getting jammed in there. The comic in front would be getting the Heimlich maneuver from those front pincers– and not in a good way. Trying to take it out could rip the cover off. It became a delicate piece of surgery to extract a comic from the middle of the bunch, to grab one hopefully without damage. This also helped future customers, as such an operation released a bit of the pressure from the stack and would slightly ease the Heimlich hold.
After picking out my comic book selections, I had to pivot to the magazine rack. Mad magazine, featuring the delicious art of Mort Drucker, Dave Martin, Dave Berg, Sergio Aragones and more. Cracked magazine, featuring the magnificent illustrations of John Severin. And finally, National Lampoon. For the foto-funnies. Because they had topless women. I doubt that the guy behind the counter ever knew that mag hid such things within. My grandparents certainly didn’t, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything.
But that wasn’t the end of my mission. Next was a dash to the Slurpee machine, to see what the latest superhero cup was! Captain America, Iron man, the Thing, you name it. My main goal was to collect each of the Fantastic Four, natch. Somehow, these plastic cups, with the great illustrations of my favorite heroes were some of the most important things in the world at the time.
I saw an article recently about them — I had no idea there were 60 total. No clue how many I had, but I wasn’t collecting them all, just getting the ones I liked. Hard to beat a nice, cold, sugary Slurpee on a typical Florida day. Of course, it being the technologically primitive mid ’70’s, all the beautiful artwork was destroyed the first time you mistakenly put the cup in the dishwasher.
So the rest of the day was spent on a sugar high, and reading comics. I’d read all this stuff until they were tattered. But the magazines would last longer, as Mad tended to have SO much going on in every issue. Sergio Aragones would fill the margins of every issue with tiny little doodles. They were very cool, and I even tried to draw some myself. There was the featured Al Jaffee fold-in on the back cover, and of course all the strips, comedy, art, you name it.
At the end of the summer. I usually had a nice little stack of comics and mags that I took back home with me. All thanks to that marvelous lil’ series of shops.
7-11. The most important sales establishment during the decade of the 1970’s. I salute you, Heaven-Eleven.
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