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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

A kid offered me some Big League Chew bubble gum.

If you’ve ever been a kid, you’ve likely chewed bubble gum.

I thanked him and then declined his kind offer.

I don’t chew gum.

It makes my jaws tired.

I had a neighbor who got punched in the jaw during an altercation. When John Wayne was socked in a movie, he’d rub his jaw and smile. Real life differs from reel life. My neighbor’s jaw was broken and subsequently wired shut. After his jaw had ostensibly healed, he took up chewing gum again. He favored Black Jack with its black licorice flavor. He was a vigorous chewer, and for the rest of his life, his jaw, which hadn’t healed properly, cracked whenever he chewed gum. It was the “Black Jack crack.”

A kid, back when I was a kid, offered me a pack of baseball cards if I gave him a good name for his dog. I’d suggested Hoosa, as in, “Hoosa a good dog?” His father rejected the name, but the boy gave me a pack of baseball cards anyway. In the pack, there were two cards of the same player, Don Mossi, a pitcher nicknamed “The Sphinx” or “Ears” because of his distinctive facial features. I didn’t break into song. I had nothing against Don Mossi, but I had a plethora of Don Mossi cards. I’d cornered the market on them.

I collected baseball cards during my youth. Each baseball card pack contained a stale, crunchy, petrified, powdery stick of unchewable, pink bubble gum made of sugar and rubber. A single chew caused me to cry, “Medic!” Baseball card bubble gum didn’t make my tastebuds dance.

My family had the 5-second rule that declared that if food hit the floor, and you snatched it up in less than five seconds and blew any detritus off it, it was safe to eat. We had a 5-minute rule for Mom’s sugar cookies because they were that good. Even with a 5-second rule, it did no good if I dropped that gum to the floor because it broke into 5,000 pieces.

It was bubble gum worthless for blowing bubbles. I pulled a hamstring while trying to blow a bubble with that gum.

Back before we began getting twice the bag and half the chips, a gumball machine was an early introduction to gambling. It was filled with gumballs of many colors. In exchange for a coin, the vending machine dispensed the gum or didn’t. As Forrest Gump might have said, “Life is like a gumball machine. You never know what you’re gonna get.” We didn’t know what color gumball we’d get, but we knew it wouldn’t be pumpkin-spice-flavored.

Dubble Bubble bubble gum was invented in 1928 by a fellow working for Fleer, who discovered that children wanted gum that could be turned into bubbles. Bazooka Joe bubble gum, introduced by Topps in 1947, could be soft or concrete-like depending on its age. Why named Bazooka? It’s a mystery. It was bubble gum, not an anti-tank weapon. I liked Bazooka Joe because it lent itself to producing large bubbles and it had a comic strip that had been added in 1953. It was tooth decay wrapped in the funnies. Bazooka Joe wore an eyepatch. His sidekick Mort wore a turtleneck over his mouth. An example of the humor found there is as follows.

Bazooka Joe: “What’s wrong, Mort?”

Mort: “Last night, I dreamed I was eating a giant marshmallow. When I woke up this morning, my pillow was gone.”

Bazooka Joe also offered a fortune. One read, “You will be a fine swimmer and may make the Olympic team.” “May” was the keyword. There were terrific offers included with the comic strip, fortune and gum. You could get a gold-plated genuine 22-karat, signet ring that fits any finger for only 150 Bazooka comics and $.30 or a real camera that took 16 photos for only 250 comics plus $.50.

You wouldn’t have wanted the bubble gum-chewing boys who binge-watched Bazooka Joe comics working with subatomic particles. That’s why people persistently warned us not to swallow bubble gum because it would gum up our works.

But we were wild and couldn’t be governed.

We swallowed bubble gum.

That might explain things.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.