My older siblings, having had the dual advantages of my mother, who had previously (and for many years later) taught children to read, not working, and the sometimes brutally rigorous Catholic school education that was no longer affordable by the time I came along, plowed through the newspaper with conspicuous relish and aplomb each day, an act I couldn’t help but find both astonishing and enviably grown-up, which understandably made me long to jump onboard.   As soon as I could read even a few words. they’d charitably toss me the comics and tell me which ones were the funniest that day, leading me to dig deeper and deeper, to the point where I read everything but the non-funny, soap opera ones, probably only due to their lack of daily laughs.  Slowly though, egged on by my sister pointing out an unusually exciting or sexy plot, I got hooked on those, too.  Judge Parker.  Mary Worth.  Winnie Winkle.  I even got hooked on Gasoline Alley when Clovia married that fat guy.

Soon, a day without the funnies was like, as Anita Bryant used to say in those days, “A day without sunshine.”  How, indeed, would Mary Worth fix up this new nutcase’s life?  Was Winnie’s new marketing guru genius or charlatan?  (Honestly, the “Winnie Weiner?)   Could Sam Driver solve this case before his girlfriend Abby got too jealous and whiny?  I still laughed at “Ziggy” and “Grin and Bear It ,” (the latter mostly for the curlered harridans, admittedly…), but what made me greet the paper each day with eager anticipation was the soaps.

Of course, this shared obsession led my sister and I to have many arguments and discussions over the direction of the current plots; I was thunderstruck the day she flatly proclaimed that Sam ought to dump Abby because she was such a troublemaker, and worse, had pink hair.  (her hair, described in the comic as “Strawberry Blond,” did, with the printing technology of the early 70′s, look not unlike something from “Beauty School Dropout” on Sundays, but admitting such heresy, much less denouncing the storied Abby Spencer of Spencer Farms for it, seemed as subversive as denying the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, put together.)  We both could see the handwriting on the wall for Mary Worth, when instead of being a freelance busybody, she was made the manager of an apartment complex so she could go pro, which she did, of course.  And, after the unfortunate “Winnie Weiner” incident, when Winnie Winkle unloaded the snake-oil salesman, Dieter Tippe, and a new artist rescued her from her dowdy suburban factory and moved her now more fashionable and svelte self to the Manhattan skyscraper where she belonged, Stacy and I rejoiced.

Through it all, though, a pattern developed; reading the morning newspaper was no frill, it was a necessity, and there simply weren’t enough funny pages to go around, so we all read the news, too.  Either that or cereal boxes, which aside from having evocative words like “guar gum,” “carageenan,” and “partially (never totally) hydrogenated” stuff, still weren’t very interesting.  Back in those days, Art Buchwald, Mike Royko, and others offered even funnier things to read on the editorial page, and as Watergate unfolded, all of us followed it avidly; some of the mechanically inclined like myself even developed our own taping systems, and soon the news itself became at least as interesting as, say, “Judge Parker,” and the plots certainly moved a little faster.  During the thick of this era, my little brother, far from being unprepared when questioned by one of our many (recorded, natch…) crank call recipients, deftly and immediately identified himself as “Bozo Rebebe.”

It used to be that the commercial forces who elbowed their way into newspapers, back when they were still wealthy and powerful, argued that the funnies were a money-wasting trivialization of the news.  Older hands argued in return that the funnies were a necessary investment in future readers.  I can’t speak for everybody, but in my experience, anyway, the older hands were right.  How many nine-year olds today could come up with, under stress, a name like “Ham Remanuel.”  Not many, I’m guessing.  And how many forty and fifty-somethings still read the paper, compared to those who followed?

Too bad Mary Worth, who could still probably save us all today from our current troubles with her formidable talents, seems to have decamped to greener pastures.  She’d definitely be up for the job, since as my mother pointed out, “She’s gotten younger over the years,” but sadly she’s a distant memory. Just like Abby’s pink hair.  And we’re a dumber country for it.