Nancy Classics by Ernie Bushmiller for May 13, 2019

What idiot would take a short cut through a barbed wire fence?

Nancy happened.

The soda fountain counter got me nostalgin’. When I was in elementary school, there were no fewer than four drugstores with lunch counters and soda fountains in the path of my walk home each afternoon. The image above shows Sluggo seated on a stool on the customer side. We see, from the server’s side, aka the soda jerk’s side, the ingredient bins that hold colored sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles, caramel syrup, chocolate syrup, pineapple compote, maraschino cherries, peanuts, bananas, and more. The syrup bins usually had a pump and spout, and some of the bins with perishables had a cold plate installed. Whatever ingredients you specified would go into your soda or milkshake or sundae or banana split or egg cream.

I would sometimes get one of those things, but my real reason for stopping in was to search out the new comic books, which arrived on the spinner racks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If Mac’s Rexall had “World’s Finest” but not “Spider-Man,” I’d buy the one they had and move on to Peele’s Drugstore. If I found “Spider-Man” there, but not “Jaguar” or “Dr. Solar,” I’d continue on to Katt Pharmacy… and so on. I managed to get pretty much every superhero comic being published at the time, bargain priced at ten or twelve or fifteen cents. Only after my shopping expeditions were over on Thursday would I consider spending my remaining nickels and dimes on an ice cream concoction.

I think comics sales are in the state they are in because their natural demographic, namelhy kids, usually don’t have easy access to them. They confronted kid me at every grocery store, news stand, drugstore, and such. Today, a kid has to get someone to drive him/her to the comic book store, which is pretty much the only place you find them. So there isn’t even the chance encounter with those colorful comics that started many kids off on the path to ruin.

She wasn’t lying – it was a “short cut (off her skirt)…”

and why is there a barb wire fence in the middle of town?

Alt Script: 1- NANCY: Well look at you. What’re you supposed to be? 2- OLIVIA JADE: I’m a Social Media Influencer. It’s a very important responsibility. I see that you don’t have internet at home… NANCY: Maybe not but let me give you something wisearse. Three seconds to get on the other side of that fence! 3- SLUGGO: Where’s Olivia Jade? She was going to sharpen my look and tell me how my parents, whoever they are, can get me into Stanford… 4- (Nancy is indirectly responsible for a new trend that replaces the played-out bicep barb wire tattoo with bikini line barb wire scars!)

Dumb blonde!