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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Kids had to amuse themselves in 1930s We kids of the Great Depression had our own heroes and heroines, mostly derived from radio shows. For junior high males, there were dramas like "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy," and the girls had "Little Orphan Annie." In the daytime, housewives could do their work while listening to such soap operas as "Ma Perkins" or "Our Gal Sunday," and there was even a nighttime soap known as "One Man�s Family." Radio and newspapers were not the only advertising media in the 1930s. Pulp magazines also appeared on the scene. There were pulp westerns and romances, and their advertising pages were filled with what the trade called "self-help" promotions. The leading practitioner was "Charles Atlas," a bodybuilder with arm muscles like huge ropes. His first ad came up with a formula that worked so well it was published virtually unchanged in numerous magazines month after month for years. The page looked like a comic strip with several panels telling the story of a "98-pound weakling" sitting on the beach with his beautiful girlfriend. Some ruffians appeared and kicked sand in his face. In the next panel, the hero sees a Charles Atlas ad and sends in the form to learn how he, too, can have bulging muscles. The last panel is titled "later." The hero � now weighing 200 pounds and full of muscles � returns to the beach with his girlfriend and puts the villains to flight. That one ad, repeated over and over, sold thousands of books on bodybuilding. Nowhere in the book was the reader cautioned that growing from a 98-pound weakling to a 200-pound bodybuilder would take years of hard work. One of the positive things about living through the Great Depression years of the 1930s was that kids mostly had to entertain themselves. There were no television stations to watch, and no such things as organized after-school sports. Little League baseball teams for grade schoolers were organized in 1954, a couple of decades later. Kids where I lived would choose up sides for two touch football teams of six to eight players each. The makeup of each team changed from game to game, so the first chore for the two team captains was to choose their players. Since we had no adult supervision at those games, the arbiter was usually the kid whose parents were rich enough to have given him a football for Christmas. This kid decided on when and where we would play, and set the boundaries of the field. For example, certain trees at either end of the vacant lot would mark the goal lines. This led to a lot of discussions but I don�t remember any fisticuffs. My biggest thrill came when I actually caught a pass thrown by the owner of the football. I can still remember the feeling of the football landing in my hands, and the burst of speed that surprised even me as I ran between the two trees for a touchdown. That one play was a confidence builder for a scrawny 10-year-old. I think I ran all the way home to tell my parents about my great feat as a football player, even though it was just a pickup game. At least my brother, who was almost three years younger than I was, thought I had done something worth bragging about. He made a tour of the neighborhood to talk about my prowess. Sometime later, another pickup group I had attached myself to somehow got a chance to scrimmage on the field in the big stadium where the university�s team played. This was not an organized event. We didn�t have permission to play there. It was early on a Saturday morning, and we may well have just found an unlocked gate to get onto the field. However we got there, I soon learned that pickup games on empty lots were different than playing on a real field. I found that I was capable of running at full tilt for only about 20 yards. Having 100 yards of turf rather than just a vacant lot on which to play showed me that I was out of my league. I remember going home, stripping to the waist, and looking at myself in the mirror. It was obvious that I really didn�t have the physical "tools of the trade," as coaches used to say, and probably no amount of bodybuilding would turn me into a Charles Atlas or a raging bull. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.