Page A4 The Joan De Arc Crusader / Friday, June 18, 2004
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Garage swimming at 3219
by J. Bueker
The ultimate summer status symbol for a child growing up in the arid wasteland of central Arizona in the 1960s was naturally an actual, honest-to-goodness, concrete backyard swimming pool. Only the supremely privileged youngsters of the day were so blessed of course, primarily the hopelessly spoiled offspring living in the socially rarified strata of Paradise Valley and Scottsdale. For us mere westsiders, the realities of summer home recreation were somewhat less resplendent.
Sure, we had a Water Wiggle, which was a whole lot of fun for approximately one to two minutes. There was the ever available and time-honored option of the yard sprinkler through which to frolic mindlessly. Yes, Slip and Slide was kind of fun, though curiously unrefreshing.
Naught but a pool, it seemed, could truly suffice to fill those long hours of summer vacation idleness and its accompanying sense of ennui. Although we did enjoy occasional forays to the public pools at Washington and Sunnyslope High Schools, these alone were no replacement for the cool and convenient fun of a swimming pool in one's very own yard. Since real pools were economically out of the question for most families, kids usually settled for the far cheaper alternative: the ready to assemble, above ground vessel wrought of vinyl, metal and plastic.
The Bueker kids at 3219 vociferously campaigned for a pool of their own, making but a brief token appeal for a built-in pool. In view of their father’s austere financial proclivities, such ideas were of course but the stuff of wondrous fancy. Yet the determination was reached that a pool of some sort was indeed justified given the exceptionally warm climatic conditions on Joan De Arc Avenue, and so purchase was made of a predictably inexpensive and inadequate pool measuring approximately 6 feet across by 2 ½ feet deep.
The blue vinyl lining of the pool was contained within a dark blue corrugated metal frame, to which it was affixed by means of a series of metal braces around the entire circumference of the structure. The metal braces were in turn covered with white plastic braces to create a safer edge as the young ones entered and exited the water. Not exactly the Clampett’s cement pond, but hey, it was far preferable to nothing at all, which happened to be Carl Bueker’s original inclination in the matter.
And so the Bueker girls and boys had their very own pool. Yay.
The story takes here a fairly peculiar turn. For reasons that still remain a bit obscure, Barbara Bueker insisted that her children’s new pool be constructed and maintained not in the customary, obvious and supremely logical location of the backyard, but instead within the shaded confines of the family garage.
Mother’s ostensible purpose in consigning our aquatic fun to the garage was of course to protect our tender young milky-white flesh from the searing ravages of the merciless Phoenix summer sun. Yet meanwhile, she seemed to have virtually no objections to our running about and playing for hours outside during the hottest part of a July day. Perhaps she reasoned that a swimming pool presented a particularly pernicious temptation for children to spend too much time with skin exposed to the burning rays of Sol. Worry wart.
Everyone but dear Mother thought the idea of the garage pool was thoroughly ludicrous of course, including my father. However her judgment prevailed, and the little pool of metal, plastic and vinyl was soon erected on the northern two-thirds of our garage floor, just within the inner edge of the outside garage door when it was closed.
There immediately emerged a number of significant issues associated with the garage pool, as one might expect. One of the consequences of keeping the pool out of the sunlight was that the water was consistently very cold. The concrete floor of the garage made for a very hard bottom considering the shallow depth of the water, and in any case the thing was simply too small to be occupied by four Bueker-sized kids simultaneously.
Mom regularly and liberally treated the Bueker garage pool water with generous amounts of Clorox, since the shaded and semi-enclosed environment made pool bacteria somewhat more problematic than it would be in the out of doors. She also issued grave and solemn warnings against the practice of swimming within a half hour of eating, lest her little ones risk disaster from some unthinkable yet vaguely defined consequence of such wantonly reckless behavior.
The Bueker garage pool went up at 3219 for two consecutive summers in the mid-'60s before it was finally stored away for good in a forgotten corner of the garage. It left behind a rusty, circular impression on the garage floor that probably still persists to this very day. My sisters lost interest in the pool early on, owing to its small size and embarrassing location, but brother Charles and I enjoyed many hours of fun inhaling heavily chlorinated water and gazing out at Joan De Arc Avenue baking in the heat of the endless Phoenix summer.
Heckle and Jeckle reloaded
By J. Beaver
There can simply be no doubt that Bugs Bunny is the greatest cartoon character creation ever conceived and brought to life on the animated screen.
Bugs cannot in
principle be improved upon. His hip, smart aleck panache and effortless facility
for wreaking havoc in the lives of his hapless adversaries long ago rendered the
wascally wabbit a timeless icon of American culture, nay, world culture. Bugs
Bunny was nothing less than an
Everyman for the 20th century.
Yet there was a certain pair of wandering, violence-prone cartoon magpies who I suspect, had they ever met the irrepressible rabbit in their animated travels, would have gleefully and soundly kicked poor Bugs's sorry bunny ass. For pure cartoon mayhem, sadistic sight gags and cheerfully delivered cold-blooded revenge, Heckle and Jeckle were a very difficult act to top.
Heckle and Jeckle first emerged in 1946 with the release of The Talking Magpies, a six minute short produced by Paul Terry’s Terrytoon Cartoons and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The initial installment of the series chronicled Farmer Al Falfa’s thoroughly unsuccessful attempts to deter an obnoxious group of squawking magpies from disturbing his hard earned rest. Interestingly, the chummy magpies were originally cast here as husband and wife.
Terry’s simple but surprisingly novel idea was to create twin characters who were completely identical in both design and movement, distinct solely by virtue of their slightly differing names and contrasting English and Brooklynese accents. Exactly which of the two was Heckle however, and which Jeckle, remains an enduring mystery of cartoon lore.
Heckle and Jeckle's most memorable adventure was probably "King Tut's Tomb," arguably one of the great cartoon shorts of the era. Our heroes fly their personal magic carpet, complete with steering wheel, to the sands of Egypt in a quest for the tomb and treasures of the famous pharaoh. They immediately disturb the local spooks, who trap the avaricious duo deep inside the tomb where they see a mummy marching band, Harpo Marx, Frankenstein and a beautiful harem girl cat dancing to an exotic Egyptian melody playing on the royal juke box. "Tomb" has a hypnotically eerie quality to it that is matchless.
If any H&J cartoon tops "King Tut's Tomb," it could only be "House Busters," where we find our beloved magpies enjoying a stint in the building demolition business. A pair of desperate prison escapees (inept bulldogs, a typical Heckle and Jeckle opponent) have the great misfortune of hiding out in the very same rickety old house that the birds have been assigned to destroy that day. They terrify the canine criminals by making the house appear haunted, culminating in a fantastic chase sequence of magpies, bulldogs, levitating bodies and inflated gloves zipping in and out of rooms across a hallway of the decrepit house. Timeless work.
By the time Terry sold his studio to CBS and retired in 1955, a total of 43 episodes of Heckle and Jeckle had been produced. CBS sporadically released ten more episodes over the ensuing decade, ending with Messed Up Movie Makers in 1966. The talking magpies also reappeared briefly in 1979-80, in The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle.
Most fans though recall the show from the many Terrytoon cartoon packages that aired on local stations throughout the '60s and '70s. Those venues gradually dried up, and with the lone exception of Mighty Mouse, the Terrytoon cartoons have been generally absent from the air waves since the late '80s.
__________________________________________________________________________________________JDA
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