A Most Holy Aardvark

Clouds and yuck all day. The sun set, the clouds left, and the temps started dropping. A foot-long trip down the Subway and I'm all better. 
I promise to set aside my pontiff's tiara when I post in the future. Yesterday's was ... OK, don't read it. Please.
I worked in a comics store for eight months. I was the manager, chief sales clerk, bathroom washer, floor mopper and backstock counter. I was king of this street-level triangle cut out of a building laid down in a old tobacco town's odd angle. There was an air conditioner in the transom, but no heat. The old coal furnace had died, and the owner refused to replace it. My boss, who rented the space, brought a clunky portable kerosene heater when autumn set in, and he said I'd need to buy the kerosene myself. He left me a little plastic hand pump as well. This was still the American South, right? Winter was a cool breeze or two ... no problems. Except we got more snows that winter than any ten previous. We got more actual snow on the ground than the previous ten years total. One was a 14-incher with one inch of ice on top of it. The weather that followed was subfreezing for two weeks. The mail stopped. City services stopped. Anybody caught without enough oil in their home heater reserve tanks either found shelter or froze to death. I had a half-inch left on the heating oil measuring stick when the snow and ice finally began to melt. Before that, I would run the heat for an hour a day, just to try and hold out. I was renting two rooms in an antique house with walls you could blow air through with your mouth. The heater was a basement (or cellar) model than was at least fifty years out of date. To boot, (this is a pun I intend, grimly) I owned one leaky pair of cowboy boots. That, and a worn pair of Clark's Wallabee Weavers, was all I owned to put on my feet. I damn near died.
Why did I damn near die? Fanboys. All stores, restaurants, and nearly everything else was closed. But that didn't stop the fanboys. The store owner, who lived in a city many miles distant, called me at home the day after the snow fell for eight hours straight that night, and demanded to know why his store was closed! I tried to explain to him that this town was not prepared to cope with winters made for Buffalo, New York. He said he found me my apartment within a few blocks of the store for a reason, and I'd better get going! When I finally stumbled over there, who should be waiting but a line of fanboys six or seven deep. They had gone to a pay phone (this was ten years before cell phones) and called the owner at home to demand their comic books! For those who may be a little clueless, fanboys are not 12-year-olds -- physically. They are adult males, some in their 30s and 40s, who are obsessed with comic books. Not adult-oriented graphic novels or Japanese imports, no. Comic books. They are not collectors, either. No, they only want new comic books, but in mint condition, in case they ever become collectors. They were all bigger than me, and I don't carry a sidearm, so I opened the *#%^@*(!ing store.
You see, I had gotten the weekly shipment (the owner ran his own distributorship), complete with unsorted special orders (that was half the shipment) the evening before as it started to snow, but after store hours. These fanboys were not at work the next day because of the snow, and they were bored. So, they all got in somebody's Rachero Deluxe (again, this was many years before passenger SUV's were common) or whatever the thing was called, and somehow made it to the store.
They didn't even let me get the heater running. They wanted their damn comic books, and they wanted them now!
In a way, I am to blame. I took the job, thinking it would be fun for a while. I had enjoyed comics as a lad, and some even in college, as I've mentioned. Before I knew about the job, I'd begun reading some of the newer ones of that time, and enjoyed many -- American Flagg, Journey, Love and Rockets (in my faves list posted earlier) Mister X, and several others I don't recall. I took the job, believing I would sell Marvels and DC's to 12-year-olds and the "alternative" titles to single adults like me. I did not know what a fanboy was. I learned. I learned the hard way. I stopped reading comic books of any kind. Except one.
Cerebus The Aardvark. It kept me alive.


LJ orig.: 11/08/06