Alopexian Philosphy

I am trying a more spontaneous journal off my main website at http://buddybest.tripod.com/index.html

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Location: Bensalem, PA, United States

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Chuck White Again!

Let's begin with the rules. I will be blogging with a variety of subjects. I have a live journal and an online journal. I intend to post the live journal with exerpts of my diary. The online journal will carry various discoveries I place here. This blog will be more spontaneous.

I note the passing of Paul Winchell, whom I knew through "Winchell-Mahoney Time" way back in 1967. I await some funny cartoons about Paul Winchell's entrance into the afterlife.

I just spent another amount of time with the Treasure Chest classice, called "Chuck White". So far, I've read up to 1951. When Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact began in 1946, its main character also began in a series called "Chuck White". Despite its obvious bias and some rather unreal situations, I found Chuck White quite appealing.
Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact (Search under that title.) began as the Catholic alternative to the comics. Chuck White and its situations were the moral equivalent of how a boy escaped a lifetime of crime, one which he really wasn't inclined toward anyway.
When I read off the internet Chuck's adventures from the first three volumes of 1946-48, it felt as if I vicariously returned to my religious roots. Although I ofiicially left Catholicism in 1991, I never abandoned the morals. I once again felt warm and comfortable in Chuck's world. His conversion from no religion to Catholicism as a teenager reminded me of Matthew Wayne Shepard's similar trek to Episcopalianism when he was a teenager. I still have my disagreement over the perverted view of sex, but then Chuck's world was also before Vatican II. Pius XII was pope, the one before John XXIII. Of course, everything turned out in the end. In fact, Chuck finds himself with an opportunity to become an actor in Hollywood at the end of the third volume.
The seires begins with Chuck in trouble with the law, and how Catholicism provides the means for him to escape trouble, which keeps coming at him. He reconnects with the gang in the second volume, and he must prove his innocence.
Chuck White remains naïf, but resourceful throughout 1947. He sells stolen and refinished cars while playing sports. After he clears himself from the accusation that he knew they were stolen, his parents come back together, denecessitating his living with Mrs Blake at the store which the gang had attempted to rob when he was with them earlier.
However, the gang comes back for revenge in the fall of 1947. Meanwhile, no one bothers to explain the explosion on the boat Chuck and his friend Joe Kelly and Joe's father were on. As Harry Truman might have observed, the characters get hurt almost schadenfreue. During his convalescence, Joe writes a play in which Chuck performs. A talent scout shows up, and Chuck goes for a test in New York during Christmas vacation. There he runs into Rankin's gang, who are going to New York to welcome Rankin out of jail. Assaults on his father and he friend finally give Chuck the push to plan to trap the gang for good. Meanwhile Chuck becomes Catholic in a baptism.
Then he runs into a publicity seeker on his baseball team. Despite more adversity, Chuck regains notice of the Hollywood scouts after the original scout had died. Treasure Chest urges feedback on what Chuck should do -- stay in Steeltown or go to Hollywood. Unfortunately, the fourth volume remains lost.

I personally identified with Joe Kelly. His freckled blond looks helped. His devotion to Catholicism reminded me of my own at that age. Of course, Joe's life is much better than mine as well, but then it's all fiction. Still, I'd like to have Chuck White as my friend, although he'd be around 75 now.
The fifth year brings Chuck into danger on the football field. How did he get so good? The Chuck White I knew in 1968 began by outwitting the vandals in Steeltown. Then he brought Sam with him to uncover a scam of a charity. Usually Chuck was a modest boy whose detective skills supposedly came from Uncle Charlie, and neither of his parents were around.
I have continued to struggle with my daily task of reaching goals. I have seen a few results by not buying any more books or tapes. Rather I am using my enormous store of these products. It's cutting waste.
Perhaps praying has its benefit of focusing the mind on goals. Image streaming and meditating are still other forms in the day of instant gratification and mircotechnology. Of course, there's the old rabbinical wisdom that prayer allows us to remember how dependent we are on God, who doesn't nedd us to tell Him our wishes.

Alopex