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.