THROUGH THE PAST VAGUELY...

I look at these pics, I'm in '66

Time for another reflective reminiscence from yours truly,

o panting Criv-ites, on the nature of memory and association.

"Oh not again!" do I hear you cry?  Don't be like that - if you had

anything more interesting to do, you wouldn't be here to start

with.  So let's get down to it before you bail out on me.

The year was 1966 and I was standing outside a depart-
ment store called HENDERSON'S of Sauchiehall Street
while my mother was engaged in conversation with a friend we'd
run into.  Before me was an oval-shaped fountain which, a couple or

so years later, would remind me of the one at the beginning of The

CHAMPIONS, although that one was on a far grander scale.  In

my hands I held that week's issue of SMASH!, which I'd just had
bought for me in R.S. McCOLL on the other side of the pe-
destrianised street of my town's main shopping centre.

An aerial view of the fountain, emptied for cleaning

As my mother chatted away, I studied the second part
(the origin) of a new strip called The FANTASTIC FOUR.
I say "new", but the strip had first appeared in its own American

mag five years earlier, although most readers of the ODHAMS'
comic most likely wouldn't have seen it back then so it was new to
them.  Oddly, the strip was simultaneously published in WHAM!,
sister publication to Smash!, but I wasn't aware of that until
many years later, not that it matters much to my story.

Six years on, in late 1972, The MIGHTY WORLD Of 

MARVEL reprinted the story yet again.  I was off school on

Thursday 5th and Friday 6th October because I was ill, and on

the Thursday, I recall my mother bringing me a bowl of tomato

soup while I lay in bed re-reading the FF's origin for the ump-
teenth time that week.  (MWOM #1 had only come out on
Saturday 30th September, five days before, so the thrill
of the new comic hadn't yet worn off.)

From the early '60s, when the HENDERSON'S side
of the shops was still under construction

Anyway, as I perused the pages of the FF tale, my mind

wandered back to that day in '66 when I had first experienced

the strip, and familiar images of Hendersons, the fountain, and

R.S. McColl, all of which then yet existed, resurfaced.  (Hender-

son's may have changed their name to BAIRDS by then, but

was still a HOUSE OF FRASER store.)  So what's all this

got to do with memory and association you ask.

Simply this.  When I look at this story today, often (but
not always), it's usually my 1972 experience of the strip that
my mind first returns to, but it depends on what page I'm look-
ing at, and whether it's in black and white or colour.  However,
even when I'm recalling that long ago Thursday, the memory of
my 1966 encounter isn't far away.  Curiously, although I can
access the '66 recollection via the one from '72, it's not
quite so easy to do the same thing in reverse.

When this page I view, I'm in '72 

Could it perhaps be that, because I'm mentally reliving that
moment  in '66 and (from that perspective) '72 hasn't yet hap-
pened, my mind finds it harder to make the jump forward?  It's
easier for the mind to jump backwards to a previous event, than
forward to one that, from a past point of view, is yet to occur -
even when one is recalling both instances from a future
point in time when both are distant memories.

Anyway, no doubt I've expressed myself in my customary
vague and incoherent way and failed to fully convey what I was
trying to say.  Nevertheless, I think there's enough there for the
intellectuals among you to work with, and even if you don't reach
the finishing line I was pointing to, hopefully the journey itself
     will prove interesting, whatever your stopping point.   

Posted in: Cartoons