When I was a kid my mom would pack me and my brother, with grandma along for good measure, into the car and plow up I-75 to Higgins Lake in Northern Lower Michigan. There was a ratty lakeside cabin that we would rent for a week or two from the American Legion that became our regular vacation spot over the years. I still don't know if this was because of the relatively inexpensive nature of the place, or because my mother's best friend from high school owned a similar, but nicer, cabin just down the shore. Probably a little of both.
The good things about the place was that it was right on the lake, had a sandy beach running a far as a 10 year old could walk in either direction, and there were usually a bunch of other kids around to hang out with. The bad things were that there were only two bedrooms for four people, there was no shower, and there was no cable. The bedroom issue was addressed by having my younger brother share the bed with my mother while I slept on a tiny roll away cot in the room with my grandmother; I guess we deferred to her age by giving her a bed to herself. The shower situation was not so much of an issue for a kid. Two weeks away from the rigours of personal hygiene was fine for my brother and I, but my mother and grandma would inevitably drag us a mile down the road to the state park where we would sneak into the public shower houses to scrub up well enough to last a day or two. As for the cable, well, there was no help for that. For those two weeks my brother and I, kids who had never known life with less than fifty channels, were seemingly thrust backwards in time to the days of the three national networks and PBS. But that was fine, after a day or two we got used to the idea of limited television.
Overall it was the kind of vacation spot where a kid was left to be a kid. It was miles from town, miles from the closest convenience store, and miles away from any of the things that conspired to make life complicated for the awkward, unpopular, ten year old that I was at home. My brother and I would swim, play in the woods, try to catch chipmunks in hastily rigged traps that would make Wiley Coyote wince, spend endless hours redirecting the flow of a small ice cold spring that ran into the lake next to the cabin, and try our level best not to kill each other arguing about all the previously mentioned things. My mom would sit on the beach and read cheap romance novels. My grandmother would knit or cross stitch. We would all take it easy and enjoy the sun.
The problems came with the rain. There was absolutely nothing to do in that tiny cabin, so we would load into the car, at this point spattered with sap from the pine trees that surrounded the place, and head into Grayling to shop. To be truthful, shopping is not a an accurate description of what we would do. There really weren't any stores to speak of. Grayling is not really a resort town, or at least is was not back then; I couldn't say how it is now. It had, as far as I remember, a grocery store, a Ben Franklin (sort of a craft/discount/general store) a K-Mart, and a Big Boy restaurant. Maybe a McDonald's; I can't recall for sure. Sometimes we would take a little longer drive and head to Houghton Lake where there was a huge craft store. Mostly though, we trekked into Grayling for groceries, dinner out and for something to do in the rain.
It was on one of these trips to the grocery store that I bought my first comic book. Breaking away from my mom and grandmother, I wandered over to the magazine rack to look at the comics. At this point in my life I may have had a few comics to my name; Batman and Superman were as familiar to me as any other kid. But I can't really recall ever picking one out for myself before this point. As I scanned the jumbled rack of Ladies Home Journals, Better Homes and Gardens, and People magazines I finally came to the small selection of comics presumably placed there to keep unruly out of town kids like myself from tearing up and down the aisles of the store. The comic that grabbed my attention was Uncanny X-Men #251. I remember this because I am a nerd, but I also remember this because of the cover; a drawing of Wolverine, crucified on a giant X, atop a mountain of skulls. Maybe it was the quality of the artwork. Maybe it was how different it was from the tame, kid friendly comics which were all I had ever seen up until then. Maybe it was the way that the drawing of a crucified superhero clashed with the Catholic imagery I had always been told was sacred. Whatever it was, I had to have that comic.
I really don't know how I managed to convince my mom to buy it for me. She is perplexed by comics and superheros today, and this is after my brother and I have spent the last twenty years stuffing every spare inch of her house with comics, action figures, sci-fi novels, and all other sorts of nerdy paraphernalia. However I did it, and it most likely involved whining and subtle threats of a mid-market meltdown, I left the store with the comic book and a new obsession that would stick with me well into adulthood. I spent the rest of the day reading and re-reading its multi-paneled pages trying to figure out just what in the hell was going on. It wasn't like the kidcentric Batman and Superman books I had read in the past; with their self contained stories and simple plots. No, this was a comic that demanded my full attention and intellect (such as it was at ten). It wasn't until later on, when I had some money of my own and a comic book store to spend it at, that I was able to collect all of the issues leading up to that one and finally figure out what the hell was going on in that one book that had grabbed my attention.
I still have that comic. It sits in a Mylar bag, compulsively organized and catalogued along with hundreds of others. My brother seems to have been more partial to DC Comics Titles, where I have maintained a fascination with the X-Men series and Marvel comics in general. Between us we have thousands. He has many more, having parlayed his love of comics into a career. But, despite all of the various titles and issues that I have bought and read and loved over the years, that issue is special.
You always remember your first.
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