Creepy Classics & Monster Bash News

If I close my eyes, it seems like just last week. Sunday morning at my Grandparents Shorts house (my maternal grandparents).

I would be up early and my grandfather was in the kitchen stirring a mixture with an egg beater like a man possessed. The sizzle as his batter hit a hot cast iron griddle on the stove. It was Sunday morning and that meant pancakes. He made the best.

He plopped the plates down on the table. Butter and hot syrup in the ready. At his seat a pancake the perfect size of the plate. Then, plop he would toss a plate in front of me in a gesture that seemed right out of a Laurel and Hardy movie. There on my plate was the pancake, perfectly cooked, the size of a dime in the center. The gag never got old. He always did that and then would delight me with a plate full of silver dollar size pancakes that were delicious.

Then it was time for church. He would have his tie and tie-clasp on (you never see tie-clasps that much anymore), a tweed suit jacket and an overcoat. I had my best Sunday sweater and dress pants on and off we went. The Sunday morning rituals that mean more and more to me as the years have passed.

The church was huge and so impressive. Giant gray stone and hanging amber lights from chains. I would look up to the hundred-foot ceilings and think of the workers that must have been on scary high scaffolding to install those lights and the beautiful arched wood beams. Often my mind would flicker to the movie I had seen with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo the bell-ringer in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. My grandfather was more familiar with the silent film version starring Lon Chaney. The church was warm and the hymns filled the framework as one voice.

Afterwards, we would shake the hand of our minister and my grandfather and he would smile and share a joke together. They both had wonderful senses of humor and showed the utmost respect with smiles and chuckles.

 Before I knew it, we were off in my grandfather's car heading for the newsstand. The newsstand where I would buy comic books and monster movie magazines like FAMOUS MONSTERS. I had no idea that decades later I would be filling that hole of fun classic movie magazines with MONSTER BASH. The newsstand on Sunday mornings had stacks of Sunday papers that were five feet high from the floor to my eyes. The aroma of fresh newsprint ink was strong. My grandfather let me pick out a comic book and then handed me the newspaper that must have weighed three pounds!

Back at the house, if it was a warm morning, we would sit on the porch. The birds chattering. My grandfather pulled off the comics from the paper. The colorful Sunday comics section that was huge. He handed that section to me. I would devour it...Charlie Brown and Peanuts, Pogo, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Li'l Abner (my grandfather was friends with Al Capp, the writer-artist of that one), Nancy, and all those great strips. It was on that very porch that Al Capp, when he visited, and my grandfather would sit and have deep conversations while I would be playing in the yard.

Those were wondrous mornings. Thoughtful, calm, yet fun, full of feeling as bells rang in the distance. 

Ron Adams
Ligonier, PA
January 2026