My Life and Times. part 3: The Box
This entry follows directly from the Oct 30 entry, so I encourage you to go back and read it first if you have not done so. In 1966, my family moved from Cliffside Park to Whippany, which was our migration from the city to the suburbs. My parents were having a house built there, in what was a very cheap location at the time, since the great explosion of Morris County was on the verge of happening.

My father had no interest in my books and comic books though. I do not think he ever understood my obsession with them. So before we moved, he told me he would not pay for the moving men to take my reading material to the new house. I’m not sure what the problem was, since by that time all I had was 2 boxes of stuff. In any case, he was not a particularly flexible person. Fortunately, the week before we moved we made a car trip to Whippany to see how the house was coming along. There were still workers putting the finishing touches on it, and since the house was not finished, none of the doors were kept locked overnight.

I brought my 2 boxes with me on that trip, and put them in a room which seemed to be a safe location for them. But when we arrived the next week, I was horrified to find that one of the boxes was missing. I searched through the entire house, but there was no sign of it. I had no idea whether it had been stolen by one of the workers, or some neighbor had simply entered the unlocked house, but it was gone. For somebody whose life already revolved around my books, I was devastated.

I blamed my father, of course, but he was not the least perturbed by it. After all, they were only books, nothing really important. After 40+ years, I no longer remember the complete contents of the box, but some of them remain fixed in my memory:

● Ballantine Books had published Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoon novels in 10 paperback volumes, and I had bought them all. I had only read the first 3 so far–in fact I carried the third volume with me on moving day since I was still finishing it, but the other 9 were gone. I have since replaced the first two volumes;

● Leonard Wibberly wrote two hilarious books The Mouse That Roared and The Mouse on the Moon, both of which I loved. Both were gone. I have since replaced both books;

●When I started reading comic books at the age of 9, my very favorite comic was not a super-hero comic, but Tales of the Unexpected, which featured weird science fiction stories written on a young adult level. I had quite a few of those comics, and I still recall some of the covers: an alien spy is masquerading as a tv reporter from station SRAM (get it?); the New York football Giants are playing a game when a group of real giants suddenly loom over the stadium. It was Twilight Zone-type stuff, but totally addicting to me as a youngster. I have never tried to replace them.