Fond memories of Melvin Monster

    My family recently suffered a very emotional tragedy. When my mother was a child, her parents bought a cottage on the Alton Bay Christian Conference Center grounds. My mother’s family developed a lot of memories there, and when I was born, I started 50 years worth of memories there as well. It became the single most consistent ‘place’ in my life, and I went there every year of my life. As you can imagine, my family and I had a lot of memories of great times there.

    The last few years, I had started to carry on the tradition with my son’s. They enthusiastically looked forward to the yearly trips, with my youngest starting just after Christmas with the ‘When are we going to Alton Bay?’. One of the things they would partake in is the rather wide range of comics that had gathered over the years, including a pile from a friend from my Sea Scouts days. Everything from early Superman, Batman, Spiderman and others, to Sad Sack, Little Lulu, Dot, many Richie Riches, and even some Dennis the Menace religious comics. I had even finally remembered to bring up a half dozen cardboard magazine holders to put them in, in an attempt to slow their deterioration from poor handling by my kids.

    On Easter Sunday, as the extended family was getting ready to say our goodbyes after dinner and games at my Aunt’s, my Aunt came out teary eyed from the bathroom, where she had taken a call. It was the call we always dreaded. You see, the cottages on the campground were built long before most of the current, safety driven zoning requirements were put in place, and they were grandfathered in. They were all extremely close together, in some cases with little more than space enough for some one to walk between. On top of that, most were summer cottages, made of very old pine which had long dried out. Basically a fire waiting to happen, and to some extent it often did. There had been a couple huge, disastrous fires in the campground’s history, and some recent fires that claimed just a cottage or so more recently.

    The call my aunt got was about another of these huge, disastrous fires, and this time our cottage was in it. It made national news, including this Yahoo News report, and this, this, and this (one of a series taken by a neighbor) are some of the YouTube videos of the fire and what little is left. We were devastated, and I shed some tears myself. I’m hoping to find a new summer tradition for the kids, but I’ll never get mine back.

    Hey, wait, what was this post titled? Oh yeah, something about Melvin Monster. As it turns out, this past Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, and we actually made it to our local participating comic book store. They had a small selection of Free Comic Book Day comics made specially for the occasion, and we were allowed 5 each, although we didn’t end up with that many. While there, we picked up the Killer Bunnies game, and I picked up Skrull Kill Krew #1 because I like Adam Felber on ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me’ and I wanted to see his handy work in print. Some of the special comic books are doubles, i.e. one side is one comic book, and the other side, upside down, is another comic book. I picked one up of old Nancy comics, not realizing it was a double, and when I sat down to read it tonight, I was in for a pleasant surprise. The other side was a Melvin Monster comic, which I wouldn’t have recognized until I started reading it, because the original I had as a wee child in the Alton Bay cottage had long since lost it’s cover. This is an Addams Family-esque comic, and I remember thinking it was a bit creepy when I was little, but it is one of the first comics I recall reading, and I have fond memories of it. Needless to say, my original copy was lost in the fire, but I now have it back. Yeah, I’ll carry on gathering comic books, including some I have here at the home front, and this one will be part of that collection, as a link to my collection lost, and a reminder of many happy memories.

Fond memories of Melvin Monster

    My family recently suffered a very emotional tragedy. When my mother was a child, her parents bought a cottage on the Alton Bay Christian Conference Center grounds. My mother’s family developed a lot of memories there, and when I was born, I started 50 years worth of memories there as well. It became the single most consistent ‘place’ in my life, and I went there every year of my life. As you can imagine, my family and I had a lot of memories of great times there.

    The last few years, I had started to carry on the tradition with my son’s. They enthusiastically looked forward to the yearly trips, with my youngest starting just after Christmas with the ‘When are we going to Alton Bay?’. One of the things they would partake in is the rather wide range of comics that had gathered over the years, including a pile from a friend from my Sea Scouts days. Everything from early Superman, Batman, Spiderman and others, to Sad Sack, Little Lulu, Dot, many Richie Riches, and even some Dennis the Menace religious comics. I had even finally remembered to bring up a half dozen cardboard magazine holders to put them in, in an attempt to slow their deterioration from poor handling by my kids.

    On Easter Sunday, as the extended family was getting ready to say our goodbyes after dinner and games at my Aunt’s, my Aunt came out teary eyed from the bathroom, where she had taken a call. It was the call we always dreaded. You see, the cottages on the campground were built long before most of the current, safety driven zoning requirements were put in place, and they were grandfathered in. They were all extremely close together, in some cases with little more than space enough for some one to walk between. On top of that, most were summer cottages, made of very old pine which had long dried out. Basically a fire waiting to happen, and to some extent it often did. There had been a couple huge, disastrous fires in the campground’s history, and some recent fires that claimed just a cottage or so more recently.

    The call my aunt got was about another of these huge, disastrous fires, and this time our cottage was in it. It made national news, including this Yahoo News report, and this, this, and this (one of a series taken by a neighbor) are some of the YouTube videos of the fire and what little is left. We were devastated, and I shed some tears myself. I’m hoping to find a new summer tradition for the kids, but I’ll never get mine back.

    Hey, wait, what was this post titled? Oh yeah, something about Melvin Monster. As it turns out, this past Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, and we actually made it to our local participating comic book store. They had a small selection of Free Comic Book Day comics made specially for the occasion, and we were allowed 5 each, although we didn’t end up with that many. While there, we picked up the Killer Bunnies game, and I picked up Skrull Kill Krew #1 because I like Adam Felber on ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me’ and I wanted to see his handy work in print. Some of the special comic books are doubles, i.e. one side is one comic book, and the other side, upside down, is another comic book. I picked one up of old Nancy comics, not realizing it was a double, and when I sat down to read it tonight, I was in for a pleasant surprise. The other side was a Melvin Monster comic, which I wouldn’t have recognized until I started reading it, because the original I had as a wee child in the Alton Bay cottage had long since lost it’s cover. This is an Addams Family-esque comic, and I remember thinking it was a bit creepy when I was little, but it is one of the first comics I recall reading, and I have fond memories of it. Needless to say, my original copy was lost in the fire, but I now have it back. Yeah, I’ll carry on gathering comic books, including some I have here at the home front, and this one will be part of that collection, as a link to my collection lost, and a reminder of many happy memories.