07/27/2025
I started collecting comic books in 1971 in Sesser, Illinois, just a few miles from Rend Lake. My first comics were from the Silver Age. They were the 10- to 15-cent issues from a small Main Street pool hall. They’d already been on the racks for a years and they sold them to me at face value.
In 1973, I got a paper route with the Mt. Vernon Register-News. I would load up my canvas bag full of papers and make my rounds through the neighborhood. At the end of each month, I went door-to-door collecting payments. After settling up with the newspaper and restocking my supply of rubber bands, whatever I had left went straight to comic books.
Most of the time, I bought them at Bryd Watson Drug Store in the Mt. Vernon Mall. The comic rack was always packed with new issues—bright covers, bold titles. If I were downtown, I’d stop in at B and B Newsstand. Between those two spots, I built up a decent collection of Bronze Age comics over the next few years.
I stopped collecting in 1977, probably like many kids do when other things start taking up more of their time. But thankfully, my mom kept them all. She didn’t throw them out, didn’t box them up and forget them in a basement—she saved them.
Now, flipping through those old books brings back more than just the stories inside. It reminds me of that paper route in all kinds of weather, of stretching a few dollars to buy what mattered to me, and of the quiet support of a mom who knew enough to hang on to something that meant a lot—even if I didn’t realize it at the time.