Troy, me and the magical device

It was the summer before fifth grade when my best friend, Troy, and I combined our money and sent away for the greatest item ever. Troy, who lived down the street, saw it in a comic book: A portable communication device.

It was perfect. Long before the cellphone era, we could talk at any time. While he was in his house and I was in mine. A space-age miracle!

It cost $3, plus shipping and handling. That was serious money, but worth it.

The drawing in the advertisement in the back of the "Archie" comic book looked like something from a sci-fi movie. It showed two people, in two different buildings, talking into metallic devices.

It was going to be awesome. While stuck at home – maybe because we were in trouble and couldn't go out, maybe because we were in our bedrooms but not ready to sleep – we could talk. We didn't really know what we'd talk about, since our telephone conversations were limited to "Hey, wanna play?" "OK. Your house?" "OK." "Bye."

But we could. It opened other possibilities, too – could we leave it in our sisters' bedrooms like a bug? Could we sneak it to school and communicate from class to class?

We placed our order around the end of the school year, cramming three crumpled dollar bills and a handful of change (for shipping and handling) into an envelope, along with the proof of purchase stamp from the comic book. We mailed it to New York or Pennsylvania or somewhere far from Northern California. Then we waited.

That summer, Troy and I played sports, built a fort and threw our G.I. Joes over my house to each other, pretending they had fallen out of airplanes. We played hide-and-seek with the neighbor kids. We rode our bikes to Country Club Market, a few miles away. We played wiffle ball. We built a "ladder" on the tree that grew over our fort, allowing us to see into my backyard from the woods behind it. I checked the mailbox every day, waiting for both the communication devices.

Finally, a plain box arrived. The communication devices!

I called Troy (maybe the last time we'd need to use the phone?) and he raced to my house. We tore off the paper, then ripped open the box. This was going to be the night we could talk to each other from our bedrooms, several houses away. We pulled the magic item out and examined it.

It was two aluminum cups with handles. Attaching them was a 3-foot-long string. The instructions said to extend the string, then talk into one device.

What?

We spent $3 of our hard-earned cash to buy a glorified Dixie cup communicator, where you connected to cups with a string and talked?

It would work to communicate "from house to house" only if your houses were nearly touching each other and your windows were opposite each other. In that case, the communication device was unnecessary. You could just talk.

We were disappointed. And ripped-off. The product wasn't what the advertisement suggested.

As wiser soon-to-be-fifth-graders, we learned that things weren't always what they promised, especially when they were in the back of a comic book.

It was a hard lesson.

But just to be sure, we went ahead and ordered the "X-ray glasses" in the back of the same comic book. They could see through women's clothes!

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Characters continue after spotlight fades

One-hit wonder author Harper Lee last week dropped her biggest bombshell since she revealed that "To Kill a Mockingbird" wasn't a hunting book. In her sequel to her only novel, Lee presents "TKAM" (in the publishing industry, we love acronyms) hero Atticus Finch as a racist.

Yes, the character that Gregory Peck portrayed in the iconic movie turned into an angry geezer who railed against African-Americans two decades after he defended an innocent man in "TKAM." While many readers and fans of the movie were shocked, I suspect that the family of the man he defended, Tom Robinson, wasn't. After all, did you see the all-white jury that Finch got seated to hear Robinson's case? And his stunning lack of effort to get DNA evidence admitted?

I'm not saying he threw the case, but . . .

The hubbub over the change in Finch's character got me thinking about the other fictional characters who are stuck in time by readers or moviegoers. Many of them changed, but their new personas were ignored by readers.

For instance, did you know that E.T.'s life dramatically changed after the little alien disappeared into the spaceship at the end of the eponymous movie? Sadly, upon returning to their home planet, E.T.'s fellow travelers denied that they visited Earth and E.T. was locked up and deprived of Reece's Pieces. The others claimed the "Earth visit" was a stunt filmed on a sound stage in their version of Hollywood. E.T. finished his life in disgrace.

E.T. is not alone in his shocking change of fate. Here are some other famous fictional characters whose post-story life took surprising turns.

Cat in the Hat: Famed for bringing his sidekicks (Thing One and Thing Two) to wreck the home of Sally and her brother, the Cat is widely viewed as an irritating interloper. But in "Catnip: My Story of Fame, Blame and Shame," the Cat revealed that his infamous visit on that rainy day was fueled by drugs and ended up with him eating the fish that objected to his presence. Cat later cleaned up and started the nonprofit foundation Panthers Urging Recovery for Relatives (PURR), which lobbied against Big Catnip.

Samantha Stevens: The main character in "Bewitched," the popular 1960s television show, met a surprising and shocking end: She was burned at the stake in 1972.

The Little Engine that Could: Famous for his catchphrase "I think I can . . . I know I can," the LETC became a favorite speaker on the motivational circuit, making more than 200 appearances a year during the 1990s. As rumors of performance-enhancing drug use surfaced, he challenged reporters to "kiss my caboose." The New York Times investigated LETC and discovered that he profited from electrical power in his famous ride over the mountain. LETC is currently petitioning to be able to return to the rails, but has been denied.

Bambi: The star of the beloved Disney children's story married on-screen flame (no pun intended) Faline after filming and moved north to escape attention. Way north. A few years later, their first child was born, a red-nosed deer named Rudolph, who followed Bambi into show business. Bambi died in 1979 and was served as the main dish at a midwinter banquet at a Moose lodge.

Dorothy: The protagonist in "The Wizard of Oz" saw a dramatic change in her life after she returned to Kansas. She became an Academy Award-winning actress who struggled in her personal life, marrying five times and ultimately dying of a drug overdose at age 47. She is survived by her daughter, Liza.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Learning about love from a TV dating show

I've got plenty of excuses – it doesn't mean anything. I do it as a tradeoff for the sports that Mrs. Brad watches. Our house is small, so I can't really ignore it. But the next paragraph is the truth.

I watch "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette."

With Mrs. Brad, of course. Because, well . . .  re-read the first paragraph.

In case you don't know about the two television shows (really one show, alternating between seasons) here is a brief description: One person "dates" 25 people of the opposite sex, eliminating bad prospects each week until there's just one. The final show is set up to include a dramatic proposal.

And there's also this: The contestants are universally young, attractive and white (despite efforts to bring diversity, the top 10 or so are always white. And they're always in their 20s and 30s. But they're especially white).

The demographic of the viewers, based on logic and audiences at their live shows (a "tell-all" episode with the losers and the finale) is suburban women, 25 to 60. And their beat-down spouses (see first paragraph).

It's a stupid show, which I said several times to Mrs. Brad before learning to keep quiet. However, it does provide some insight into what people – at least the producers of the show – think that the audience believes.

At least that's what I tell myself as I write this, inviting humiliation.

Some examples of "Bachelor/Bachelorette" dating philosophies:

1. People should accept "falling in love" with someone who is "dating" (and making out) with two dozen other people. To be jealous or upset reveals that you don't know how to play the game (or in "Bachelor"-speak, you might not be there for the "right reasons."). This is all despite the fact that accepting that kind of behavior in real life is sociopathic.

2. The way to "take the next step" and "open up" to someone is to tell them something that you haven't regularly told others. Maybe it's that you cheated on your spouse and were thrown out. Maybe it's that your dog died when you were 9 and you are still heartbroken. Maybe it's that you have three elbows. Anything. But tell them something secret and you've really taken the next step.

3. Men who cry are sensitive. Regardless of whether they're jerks. If they cry, they're sensitive. Women apparently love that.

4. The real way to have a romantic date is to have an iconic spot to yourself and then have a popular band (usually one I've never heard of) play a song while you dance. That's romantic, even though it takes a TV network and a team of people working for the producer to make it happen.

5. The poor beautiful young people (often models or fitness instructors) who get eliminated on the show are crushed because they thought this was their true love, and because they'll never get another shot at finding someone because they're just young, wealthy and have been on TV for several weeks.

6. The audience believes that men sometimes actually sit around and talk about how they're falling in love with a woman in the same way that 13-year-old girls talk.

It's a ridiculous show with an absurd premise. I just hope Kaitlyn finds true love with Nick, Shawn or Ben!

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Cars, buses, trains and me: A memoir

On a ride home on BART last week, I began to sweat. Since I'm a diabetic, my first presumption of every significant sweating episode is that I have low blood sugar – it's a common symptom.

I had tested my blood before I left my office in San Francisco. It was fine. But now I was sweating. Profusely.

And it got worse. I could feel perspiration trickling down my back. And my front. Fortunately, I was wearing a black shirt, so it wasn't obvious. But I wondered if other riders noticed and felt the anxiety that comes with worrying about your health.

We pulled into the North Concord station and I stood up. Then I heard another rider shout. "How about someone turns on the mother #%$*ing air conditioner?"

Ah, public transit.

I walked out of the car and felt like I walked into a refrigerator. A cool day that I later realized was 95 degrees.

How hot was it on my BART car? One-hundred-five degrees? Hotter?

Ah, public transit.

My split shift of a pair of two-month stints of commuting on public transportation ended July 1 when my company reopened our office in Walnut Creek.  It gave me back that most American of privileges – the right to drive my car 50 minutes each way to work, rather than taking public transit. For many of my co-workers,  some of whom rode BART for a decade, it was like getting out of prison. For me, it was more like the end of an experiment.

BART wasn't new. Mrs. Brad and I have long been clients, having taken it on every trip to the interior Bay Area since the 1990s. We take BART to every Giants game, Pier 39 visit and Christmas shopping excursion. We take BART to the airports. We take BART to Warriors games.

But I never used it as a commuter until last fall, when I started working in San Francisco – before a temporary move to Walnut Creek. For the first two months of heading to San Francisco, I caught the Solano Express bus from Suisun City to the El Cerrito del Norte BART station, where I transferred to ride BART into the city. At night, it was the reverse.

Then it ended for four months, when some of us were temporarily in Walnut Creek and blissfully drove our cars. Then we moved back to San Francisco while our office was renovated and I changed my commute-to-the-city plan. This time, I drove to the North Concord BART station, then rode into the city.

People who have commuted that way for years consider me a lightweight. The hardcore folks – who take the bus to BART – scoff at my softness. And they're right.

But as I leave the temporary public transit commute grind, I gained four important observations:

• BART is less crazy during commute hours. Mrs. Brad and I encounter strange situations – people shouting, aggressively asking for money, acting erratically – nearly every time we take BART to a game on a weekend. In more than 150 trips during commute hours, I had one such situation, and it wasn't bad. The busier it is, the less crazy it is.

• Hard-core public transportation commuters take the bus, too. I admire anyone who regularly gets to the bus stop at 6 a.m., rides 45 minutes and then scrambles into a BART station to ride some more; only to do the reverse in the evening. The fact that it was a semi-regular concurrence for people to shout out displeasure at a driver – as if they were unable to avoid expressing their thoughts – was understandable. They were passengers for hours. Every day.

• Public transportation really works. A train from North Concord stops in San Francisco 45 minute later. It's a miracle.

• Most importantly, despite the previous three points, I'm really grateful that I'll be driving my car to work. Because I'm an American.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.