I am not sure what was more instructive or instrumental in
shaking me to the very core of my being as a boy: finding my first stack of Playboys in a
dumpster on the way home from my girlfriend’s house (circa 1969) or picking up
my first handful of underground comix from a San Francisco freak at my local
swap meet (circa 1972). The first one certainly improved my appreciation for
the female form (and oh, boy, those articles!) but the other really throttled
me and made me think much differently of the world that I was living in.
I grew up in a pretty conservative household, very Catholic,
very uptight. As far as I was concerned, Orange County, for all its agrarian beauty,
sparkling beaches, easy access to LA and Hollywood and acres of citrus groves,
was a pretty much was on the other side of the moon. My county was happy being
hard core Republican, the home of Richard Nixon, Disneyland and the John Birch
Society. My old man was a barber, my mom a stay at home haus frau. I was a pudgy kid,
goofy, not at all coordinated and a borderline loner. I had my pals to play
with so I wasn’t bored, but I had an active imagination as well, something that
kept me deep in the library stacks, into comics and actively writing stories, cartoons and poems when
kids didn’t bother to come around.
When you are young and impressionable everything goes
straight to your head. Movies ruined me like they must have ruined many a young
man. Adult fiction was something I dove into well before I could even begin to
understand what the hell authors were trying to get across to me. Music, well,
I couldn’t shake my booty no matter how hard those little black gals tried to
make me do it, but I listened deep into the night on my little transistor
radio, picking up stations and songs that brought both light and darkness to
my pre-adolescent soul.
But it was Catholic school that really redirected my life. I
avoided going to my local junior high because I felt it was going to be too
much like going off to gladiator school (let’s be fair here: I just didn’t want
my butt kicked). So instead of having my ass beat by local toughs my intellect
was pummeled for the next six years by a flock of psychotic nuns and a posse of bad ass Jesuits.
My abuelas, happy for my salvation, sent cash along to my parents to pay for my
tuition. I am sure that they felt that they had my course for life,
which for them would have been a straight and narrow teen life and college straight out of high school. And that vision just might have been if it wasn’t for the triple triad
influence of women, weed and work.
Standing on the sidelines of parochial school you might like
to think that we were all angels, but it really that was just not the case. Prior to 7th
grade I had never known let alone hung out with such a pack of hellions. Junior
high was where sex, drugs and rock and roll really got a hold of you if you were
so inclined. At that time I wasn't, frankly, all of that stuff scared the hell out of me. But
by degrees I began to see the light and then began to indulge. But first Hugh Hefner and his publishing
empire had to kick around my moral core, and then, thanks to girlfriends, the LA Free Press, Boones Farm Apple Wine and
endless triple bills viewed in the old grindhouses along Broadway in downtown
Los Angeles, I found my world view expanding to the point where I felt I needed if
not a mentor at least a tome that would make everything clear and come together.
Well, those black and white graphics jumped off the page and into my heart! I had no idea what the hell I was reading let alone seeing as I had no point of reference at all to refer it all to but whatever it was it spoke to me deeply. I felt like I had landed in a magical land that required the understanding of a completely new and different language to truly understand what I looking at. From that first comic on I went completely and totally native and began to scour the bookstores and second hands for more of the same. I had been reading Mad Magazine, Cracked, Marvel and DC comics for years but that one stack of gritty Frisco pulp changed not only how I viewed the comic arts but helped me see the world around me differently. Those people portrayed satirically in them lived all around me in my hyper conservative county and they all deserved a second look.
After reading that first stack of underground works I found myself hungry for more, not just more comix but for a taste of that world I saw portrayed in those cheap pulp pages. I wanted to find out what that dope stuff Freewheelin' Franklin was talking about! I wanted to know more about that poontang that Mr. Natural was after! I wanted to be tough like Trashman, I wanted to be cool as the Keep on Truckin' guys! I woke up and began my journey of defiance and experimentation in ways that shocked my peeps and made me the envy of my peers, I wanted more and those comix were the first visa stamp on my passport to a world that I had been seeking all along!
Where I lived I was surrounded by people of color struggling
to get on with their lives. I lived on the edge of a great Latino
barrio and suddenly I became very much aware of their problems and issues. I became aware of Brown Power, of marijuana, of local guys blowing off school and getting their education on the streets and in the can. I didn’t
look at my friends or my schooling or the County the same anymore. By the
time I finished Catholic school, which these days is still is a very decent college prep school, I wasn’t
ready to head off to college like my schoolmates, I was ready to join the
service and see the world. And boy, did I ever.
So thanks Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Spain, Rick Griffin, Von Bode and all the rest of you. You guys changed my life forever and I am forever thankful!
Salud!
A quickie history of underground comix!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_comix
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