around town Nuts and Bolts
A Comic Superhero Saves A Family Institution
n Gene Pedrotti The office was closet-sized. Squeezed inside sat an old gray filing cabinet topped by a black desk phone with no dial; these were the days of operatorassisted calls where the caller lifted the handset and waited for an operator. The phone number was 262. Crammed next to the cabinet was a rolltop desk so old and weathered that, though made of oak, it had a soft, furry surface. Tucked underneath was an iron pedestal wood stool that could spin endlessly if desired. And there, on a hot summer afternoon in that tiny office, was a ten-year-old boy spinning the seat round and round. Until the boss said, “Stop that!” The boss was my father and he grew frustrated watching me spin the seat… round and round. Sensing my boredom, he reached over my head, where, between many catalogs was a hardbound book the size of a yearbook; it’s cover gray with black text. He grabbed it and handed it to me. Looking it over, I grew excited. “Wow, this is a comic 20 • Benicia Magazine
book!” I said, as I immediately began reading. And a love affair with hardware began. From a comic strip. Titled Forty Years With Mr. Oswald, the book was a compilation of monthly comic strips writer Russ Johnson had been creating for Hardware Retailing, an industry trade magazine. In 1925, while working at his father’s hardware store in Gibson City, Illinois, Johnson began crafting cartoons for the magazine. Two years later, he formalized this with a monthly series in a twelve-panel format known as big-foot style. It featured a bespectacled Oscar S. Oswald, a hardware store operator who eagerly raced around to help customers and handle daily operations. It had plenty of drama and comedy provided by the exaggerated antics of its characters – townsfolk asking about everything but purchasing nothing or whose mischievous behavior and insistence that “the customer is always right” was apt to give one pause. Employees would frequently stand around and gossip. And then there was Higgins and Higgins Hardware, a stealthy competitor located across the street; they routinely caused Oswald grief. Written over decades, Johnson’s work captured the essence of each decade: chapters focus on eras like the
Great Depression and War in Europe, Rationing, a Post-War Recovery and then, Inflation! All sounds like modern times, right?! Fortunately, these are followed by Prosperous Times and an economic recovery. My favorite was the Chapter when Johnson introduces readers to shopping centers; in Oswald’s town it was called Dippy Center. Nothing killed American downtowns faster than the invention of cars and of shopping centers. Dippy Center became Oswald’s foil. By the 1980s and in my mid-twenties, I returned from college to work with my father, Larry, and Uncle Al in their 850 square foot shop. One day, while catching up on Hardware Retailing, I noted an odd article sharing the discovery of cases of Johnson’s book which had been put in storage. R e t u r n e d to Johnson, the article encouraged readers to purchase copies by writing him. Instead, I picked up the phone and called him directly, pleading for a dozen copies. Soft-spoken and very polite, he responded that with so many requests he could only spare six copies… at ten bucks each! Delighted, I sent him $120 and when they arrived, included in the three parcels of autographed books was a comic strip personally addressed to me. I have since
