Super-Fun-Pak Comix, feat. Chekhov's Gum, et al

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government_informer_baby_t_shirt-rd7b2ac9452b5466a8697a90649e90c15_j2nhb_307

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I think you’ve got to know you seeds and know your market.

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I read abolutely everything that was in a comic book, but I don’t think that I have ever in my life seen a “Grit”. Was aware of it, just never saw one.

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Unfortunately, I had experienced and seen way too much crap at an early age to fall for such ads.

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Violence and terror… in a Mississippi flood?

The editor must have thrown that in. Even on his worst day, Faulkner would never have stepped into such unnecessary redundancy.

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You mean the ad, or the actual newspaper? I’ve never seen the newspaper either, which is why I couldn’t get the value of selling “Grit”*-- I eventually delivered our local newspaper like most kids my age, the market was already there, I didn’t have to convince anyone to buy it. And seeds? As much as I lusted after the telescope and archery set I knew I would feel dirty trying to convince people to buy something I didn’t want to buy myself.

(* I think we laughed the first time we saw an ad for Grit-- the headline of “Sell GRIT” conjured the image of offering people handfuls of sand from your pockets. )

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You’ve a point.

I remember those ads. Two things crossed my mind:

  1. I never ever saw any evidence of Grit in the real world:
  2. Anything as badly named as “Grit” probably needed child slaves to distribute it as any adult w/ two brain cells would avoid it like the plague:

therefore, scam.

Yeah, it was always suspect, but the link @Steve_L provided above to the (still in existence!) Grit actually looks kinda intresting-- raising rabbits for meat, modern farmhouse plans, etc.-- seems like it’s just a rural thing so I would never have seen it in the over-populated suburbian sprawl of the Northeast.

Now that you mention it, I got an image in my mind of a guy in a trenchcoat (you know, the one the protagonist in a movie meets in a back alley to buy an “authentic” Rolex watch or piece of “gold” jewelry for cheap) who opens their coat to reveal hanging strips of sandpaper.

“You want the ultra-fine stuff, to make your woodworking project come out as smooth as a baby’s bottom? I got a 500 grit that you won’t be able to find anywhere else.”

There are rural sections of the Northeast – take a trip out to western Massachusetts and you’ll see trees as far as the eye can see.

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No kidding. (Yes, I know, my grandmother had a farmhouse in Connecticut, and I’ve spent a lot of time in rural New England, but my impression is Grit was more a midwest thing.)

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