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Fred Hembeck is 70

What the World Needs Now

I first met Fred Hembeck at FantaCo, the comic book store at 21 Central Avenue in Albany, NY, in February 1980. That was about three months before I would work there. The occasion was a signing for Hembeck 1980, published by FantaCo.

But I knew his work from the weekly strips that he did for the Buyer’s Guide to Comic Fandom. Here’s a brief review by former Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, who nails what I liked about his work.

“Hembeck was great–he had an appealing style, he didn’t take the subject matter too seriously (and simultaneously took it very, very seriously, a dichotomy I could appreciate), and he was a like a comic book archaeologist, digging through old issues to find weird and forgotten stories to spotlight.”

Fred created seven Hembeck magazines with FantaCo, He also made some spot illos for other FantaCo pubs, including the three FantaCo Chronicles I edited. We also became friends. A few years later, he moved from Rensselaer County downstate, and we lost touch for a while.

Then in 2004 – and I’ve mentioned this before – our mutual friend Rocco asked if I had read Fred’s blog. I had never read ANYONE’S blog. But I devoured his writings going back to January 2003.

Eventually, I would send Fred blog ideas or questions, and my name started appearing in his columns, starting in January 2005.

Around the same time, we exchanged CD mixes. His were more eclectic than mine, featuring discs of Andy Williams, Robbie Williams, and Beatles covers. His discs of 1960s tunes were epic.

In time, I decided that I’d start my blog. Fred plugged it. Moreover, I visited his extensive blog roster, checked out some of those folks, and commented on their blogs. That’s how I “met” Lefty, Gordon, Eddie, and even Greg.

Visit

Then my family started being in his general neighborhood once each summer. So from 2006 to 2013, my wife, daughter, and I would visit his family, a grand time in which Fred and I would philosophically muse about media.

He tends to stay with television programs he started with to the end, whereas I will give up. We were both describing the same song but remembering different parts: What the World Needs Now/Abraham, Martin, and John by Tom Clay.

These days, I tend to see him at the Albany Comic Con when I can make it, which was impacted by COVID. I should note that Fred does NOT have squiggles where his elbows and knees should be, though his comic book persona does.

So now Fred is older than I am, for about five weeks. Happy birthday, effendi.

Needed cash

pointed the same way

It was a Sunday night. My wife needed cash for her hairdresser appointment early Monday morning. Either her bank doesn’t have an ATM, or she never bothered to get a card; I suspect the latter.

Conversely, I use the ATM of my bank, two blocks away, all of the time. As I’ve mentioned, during the pandemic, my bank figured out that its machines could be programmed to dispense not only $20s, which it did forever but also $10s and $5s. They must have decided that the investment in tweaking their money dispensers was better than having customers coming into the bank to break a $20.

My wife said, “I need two $5s, three $10s…” Wait a minute.. she’s giving it to me from the bottom up, not the top down? This confused me! To be fair to me, she said she would give me a check for $150 to deposit, and she’s already asked me for $40 back so far. No, she decided she only needed $100 in cash, so three $20s. Got it. Still, the ATM asks from the top denomination down, and my mind wants to do the same.

One useful thing

When I first moved to the Albany/Schenectady, NY, area, the first job I got was as a teller at the Albany Savings Bank in downtown Albany. I didn’t love it, and I quit in a month to take a job as a bookkeeper for the Schenectady Arts Council’s program. Not only was I making more money – $8200 instead of $6000 per year, but the latter job was far more interesting.

Still, there was one thing I learned at the bank. All the bills in the drawer should be in value order, from left to right. And the bills should all be face up and pointed the same way.

As the person who most often counted the drawer and made the bank deposits at FantaCo, the Albany comic book store I worked at from 1980 to 1988, I tried to enforce that one thing. It was easier to impose this on people who started at the store after me than those who started before, let’s just say.

Carrying cash

When I buy things at most chain stores or restaurants, I usually use my DISCOVER card for the cashback bonus. For small mom-and-pop operations, though, I prefer giving them cash because it helps with their profit margins. But the amount matters, too, because I rarely have more than $100 in cash on me.

Fill-in for Sunday Stealing

FantaCo photographs

The Sunday Stealing is a fill-in.

1. I am currently obsessed with old photographs. I used to work at a comic book store in Albany called FantaCo from 1980 to 1988. Specifically, my old boss Tom is looking for old photos from that period. As it turns out, I took a bunch of pictures with cheap cameras. They are in photo albums, in some semblance of order. I will wade through the photo albums and mail them to him. He will digitize them, then send the pics and the digitized files back.

BTW, if you have some FantaCo or FantaCon pics, feel free to email them to me or send them via Facebook. If you can identify any people, that would be great.

Simultaneously, I’ll be hunting for photos of an ex-girlfriend to give to someone who knew her in the same time frame.

2. Today I am happy because I’m going to see some theater, not just today but eight productions over the next ten months.

3. The age I am is apparently inappropriate to some people. The age I feel depends on the part. For instance, my head is about fifty, but my left knee is about 100.

4. My favorite place may be my office. It has 70% of my books, and I have a device on which I can play music.

5. Something I have been procrastinating on is creating a Wikipedia page for my late friend, the artist Raoul Vezina, who worked at FantaCo. I have enough material, but I’ve never done one of these things before.

6. The last thing I purchased was almost certainly recorded music.

Books!

7. The thing I love most about my home is the built-in bookcases in my office.

8. My most prized possession – IDK. Maybe the metal file box with all of my important papers.

9. If I could be one age for the rest of my life, I would want to be 37; it’s a prime number.

10. My outlook on life tends toward the pessimistic. Global warming, gun violence, and certain political philosophies are involved.

11. If you want to annoy me, be a poor listener.

12. I am completely defenseless when it comes to bubbles.

13. The bravest thing I’ve ever done was run out into traffic to scoop up a toddler who had wandered out there.

14. Something that keeps me awake at night is: See 10.

15. My favorite meal in the entire world is lasagna.

Personal History: Sunday Stealing

Who Knows Where The Time Goes

**daughter, wife, niece, sister, sister, niece (Feb 2011)**

This week’s Sunday Stealing is called Personal History, an interesting topic.

1. What would you like people to know about your mother?

I was thinking about this a lot this week. My father was the more outgoing and visible member of the couple. But I doubt they would have been been able to pay the bills if it wasn’t for my mom.

She was a bookkeeper at McLean’s Department Store in Binghamton, NY, then worked at Columbia Gas, not even a block away. When she moved to Charlotte, NC, she was a teller at First Union Bank, which eventually was swallowed by Wells Fargo. I probably got my love of numbers from her. When I told her we were learning base 2, which we were told was the basis of computers, she was clearly excited.

2. What would you like people to know about your father?

I’ll be writing about him on August 10, the anniversary of his death. My eclectic taste in music started with him.

3. What was your childhood bedroom like?

HA! After my second sister was born, my father put up two walls in the dining room, built a wooden shelf into the two walls, then put a mattress on top of that. My storage was under the “bed,” though my books were around the corner on a bookcase. My dad painted the solar system on the ceiling.

Ballgame

4. What was your favorite activity as a child?

Alone: playing with my baseball cards. With others: playing softball/baseball/kickball. And singing.

5. What was high school like for you?

When we first got there, there was a certain hostility from some because my friends were identified as against the Vietnam war. But by the time I graduated, most of the school was against the war. I was on the stage crew and president of the Red Cross club. I was also president of the student government, which is how I sort of got to introduce Rod Serling.

6. Write about your cousins.

I have no first cousins. My parents were only children. Well, essentially. My mom had a younger sister who died as an infant. So my cousins were my mother’s cousin’s kids who lived in NYC and were a decade or more younger than I. Still, aside from my sisters and their daughters, they’re the closest relatives outside my nuclear household.

7. What was your favorite food as a child?

Spinach. Totally indoctrinated by Popeye.

8. What was your most memorable birthday?

My 16th was held at the American Civic Association, so it was a real party. Lois, who I’ve known since kindergarten, gave me Judy Collins’ album Who Knows Where The Time Goes. She was afraid it might be too country for me; it was not.

9. What world events were significant to you as a child?

The integration of the high school in Little Rock, AR. Sputnik. The Cuban Missile Crisis – I didn’t really understand it, but I grokked adults all being nervous. The assassinations of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy. The massive 1965 blackout was the only time I ever heard my father worry about a possible Soviet plot.

To Starr Avenue

10. What did a typical day look like as a child?

During the school year, walk to school about half a mile, usually trying to vary my route. At lunch, walk home to my grandma Williams’ house for lunch, watch JEOPARDY with her sister, my wonderful Aunt Deana, back to school, then walk home with, in geographic order, Bill, Lois, Karen, Carol, and Ray. I’d walk home.

11. Write about your grandparents.

Gertrude Williams (1897-1982) operated out of making us afraid of the boogie man. I don’t remember her husband, Clarence Williams (d. 1958), though I may have gone to his funeral.

Agatha Green (1902-1964) was my Sunday school teacher and taught me how to play canasta. She was the first person I knew well to die, and I was devastated. McKinley Green (1896? -1980) was a custodian at WNBF-TV-AM-FM and would bring home stuff the station no longer wanted, such s the soundtrack to The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968).

12. Did you move as a child?

I moved from the second floor of 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, to the first floor when my mother was pregnant with her second child. Until college, that was it.

13. Who taught you to drive?

Several people tried, including the Okie, Uthaclena, my father, and a professional.

14. Which job has been your favorite?

FantaCo, the comic book store/mail order/publisher/convention, where I worked from May 1980 to November 1988.

15. What was the best part of your 30s?

Working at FantaCo, singing in the Trinity UMC choir

For Lent, Ask Roger Anything

I have wisdom, I’m told

For Lent, people have been giving up something. But some years ago, I heard a sermon and decided that the way, or at least, A way to go, is to take on something.

I’ve heard that some people decide to engage in random acts of kindness. That’s admirable, I suppose. I always try to engage in random acts of kindness, throughout the year. The trick is that you have to have your eyes and ears and mind open to it.

The opening of the TV show The Odd Couple came to mind. Felix Unger (Tony Randall) tries to help an older woman and the woman slugs him with the purse. Then a Boy Scout also pokes him. I don’t want to be a Felix Unger.

Part of the Ash Wednesday Prayer of Confession at my church this year includes this. “We forget that we are called, invited, and loved with all that we are—including our mess, our beauty, our faith, and our doubt.”

Especially doubt. Most sane people have it. I related to this recent John Green video titled Hard week, which incorporated grief with hope.

When Easter is on April 22

(A random fact: Ash Wednesday was on my birthday in 1962, 1973, and 1984, though I have no recollection of this. It won’t happen again until 2057 when I turn 104. I’m sure I’ll be surprised.)

I would probably have quit blogging long ago except for your likes and comments, and suggestions. I was taken but a comment to this post from December 2020 about Handel Messiah and the book of Isaiah chapter 40. And I received, this month, a response from an old FantaCo colleague who used to go by Matt: “Wow, all glory to God. Here I am researching Isaiah for a Bible study and lo and behold, it’s wisdom by my old friend and mentor Roger Green. Wow. God is great. Always wonderful to think of you Sir. Your influence on my life continues. It is now profound. Love and Grace my brother.”

I found it quite touching. And, to paraphrase Sonny Curtis, it took a nothing day, and suddenly made it all seem worthwhile.

We have all been here before

I ask y’all to Ask Roger Anything because it gets me out of my own head, and into yours. What are YOU thinking about right now? What’s going on in your life that generates such a question?

And I’ll answer your queries, generally within a month. Please leave your questions, suggestions, et al in the comments section of the blog. OR you can also contact me on Facebook or Twitter. On Twitter, my name is ersie. Always look for the duck.

You may remain anonymous, or preferably pseudonymous, but you need to share that. E-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you want to be unnamed. Otherwise, I’ll attribute the queries to you.