Ellison Wonderland by Harlan Ellison Page B

lands of adventure and intrigue made themselves known to me in the pages of comic books that chronicled the adventures of the Sandman, Captain America and Bucky, the Human Torch, the Boy Commandos, Captain Marvel, Starman, Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Flash and (my favorite) Hawkman. My Saturday afternoons of quivering joy were secretively spent in the Utopia Theater, that stood next to the Cleveland Trust, where Kresge’s 5 and 10 now looms. And in that tiny movie house I saw my first Dick Tracy serial, starring Ralph Byrd. I saw the Shadow with Victor Jory. I shivered at The Clutching Hand and cheered Don Winslow Of The Navy and hissed as The Crimson Skull doomed the hero to a room whose walls came inexorably together. It was a golden time, before TV, in which the imagination and the need to be young were coupled with a world of wonders. In my world, at the corner of Harmon Drive and Mentor Avenue, was a wonderful dark woods, just like the one in

Gnomebody
    Did you ever feel your nose running and you wanted to wipe it, but you couldn’t? Most people do, sometime or other, but I’m different. I let it run.
    They call me square. They say, “Smitty, you are a square. You are so square, you got corners!” This, they mean, indicates I am an oddball and had better shape up or ship out. So all right, so I’m a goof–off as far as they think. Maybe I do get a little sore at things that don’t matter, but if Underfeld hadn’t’a layed into me that day in the gym at school, nothing would have happened. The trouble is, I get aggravated so easy about little things, like not making the track team, that I’m no good at studies. This makes the teachers not care for me even a little. Besides, I won’t take their guff. But that thing with track. It broke me up really good.
    There I was standing in the gym, wearing these dirty white gym shorts with a black stripe down the side. And old Underfeld, that’s the track coach, he comes up and says, “Whaddaya doin’, Smitty?”
    Well, anyone with 20/40 eyesight coulda seen what I was doing. I was doing push–ups. “I’m doing push–ups,” I said. “Whaddaya think I’m doing? Raising artichokes?”
    That was most certainly
not
the time to wise off to old Underfeld. I could see the steam pressure rising in the jerk’s manner, and next thing he blows up all over the joint: “Listen, you little punk! Don’t get so mouthy with me. In fact, I’m gonna tell you now, ’cause I don’t want ya hangin’ around the gym or track no more: You just ain’t good enough. In a short sprint you got maybe a little guts, but when it comes to a long drag, fifty guys in this school give their right arms to be on the team beat you to the tape. I’m sorry. Get out!”
    He is sorry. Like hell!
    He is no more sorry than I am as I say, “Ta hell with you, you chowderhead, you got no more brains than these ignorant sprinters that will fall dead before they get to the tape.”
    Underfeld looks at me like I had stuck him in the seat of his sweat pants with a fistful of pins and kind of gives a gasp, “What did you say?” he inquires, breathless like.
    â€œI don’t mumble, do I?” I snapped.
    â€œGet out of here! Get outta here!
Geddouddaere!”
    He was making quite a fuss as I kicked out the door to the dressing rooms.
    As I got dressed I gave the whole thing a good think. I was pretty sure that a couple of those stinkin’ teachers I had guffed had put wormhead Underfeld up to it. But what can a guy do? I’m just a kid, so says they. They got the cards stacked six ways from Culbertson, and that’s it.
    I was pretty damned sore as I kicked out the front door. I decided to head for The Woods and try to get it off my mind. That I was cutting school did not bother me. My mother, maybe. But me? No. It was The Woods for me for the rest of the