“Weasels ripped my flesh.”

That’s what the cover of the magazine declared. It was the title of a story in an old magazine in the men’s adventure genre that catered to a male audience. Barbers didn’t get any new magazines until they had run out of the old ones. I discovered these magazines in barbershops back in the day in which the township I live in was still a houseboat. The barbershop provided a free library of comic books and magazines. It also offered all the verbal gossip that two ears could hold even if the brain was unable to comprehend. Life was complicated even in those bygone days.

I agreed to the terms and conditions that allowed me to read away as I waited to be clipped. I cavorted with the written word. I know because I could read my thoughts. I needed to read those goofy magazines that were never visited by the truth fairy. It was a safe step out of my comfort zone and I was a learner. The tales astounded me. Mashed potatoes and gravy moved down a slot in my life’s priorities.

Every so often, I’d look up from my reading and say, “Children are your future,” just to watch the shudders run up and down the spines of the barbershop’s patrons as they considered that a boy like me who regularly lost buttonholes was their future.

The pulp magazines presented highly embellished and often lurid tales featuring feats of daring and exotic travel. Even Lassie wouldn’t have known what to do if Timmy had gotten into one of those fixes. The stories were decidedly not politically correct even during a time when we had no idea what that meant. They were both relaxing and terrifying. Some people referred to these periodicals as armpit slicks. Like a good salesman, the men’s sweat magazines (not to be confused with a fitness magazine bearing that name) sold the sizzle, not the steak.

The articles in the magazine weren’t just about weasels.

Other stories included in that fine publication were, “Piranhas ripped my flesh,” “Wolverines ripped my flesh,” “Shrews ripped my flesh,” “Ants ripped my flesh,” “Pigeons ripped my flesh” and “Sea monkeys ripped my flesh.”

You get the idea. The editors liked stories involving flesh.

The magazine offered life lessons presented in disturbing clarity. They were tales from roads that should have been less traveled.

I should have been satisfied that I was going to letter in coloring in school, but I dreamed of one day being a participant in such adventures as highlighted in those periodicals, minus the weasels ripping my flesh.

I’d suspected that they were fictionalized accounts, but I’d hoped they were true.

Years later, I met a man who had made part of his living by writing such stories. He had tried writing poetry. “Roses are red. Violets are blue. Some poems rhyme. This one doesn’t,” was one of his. He wasn’t much of an adventurer. He made up the stories.

I thought about titles of magazine pieces I could write.

“Telemarketing terrorists held my ears for ransom!”

“They harbored a dark secret. The price of an oil change had increased.”

“I was on hold for eight minutes!”

“I had to clean the mirror. It was giving me dirty looks.”

“Our TV stopped working long ago and we haven’t had it repaired or replaced!” Unbelievable, but a frightening and true story.

“There was a mouse in my house!”

“My neighbor pretends to be interested in what I’m saying!”

“Cats like me!”

“My church forces me to eat lime Jell-O with shredded carrots in it and mayonnaise on top!”

None of those seem to be up to or down to their standards.

This year, I could write for those magazines.

I enjoy eating raspberries. I’m an ardent picker of that wily berry. Raspberry plants don’t readily give up their berries.

“Raspberry canes ripped my flesh!”

The mosquitoes and I weren’t on the best of terms. They were more numerous than they had been in some years. As catbirds complained about me picking what they considered their property, mosquitoes attacked. I felt like a pizza in a dormitory. I felt like a million bugs.

Raspberries and mosquitoes made for a perfect storm.

Mosquitoes not only ripped my flesh. I had a title for another pulp magazine article.

“I was eaten alive!”

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.