This story details a crime committed in the 1930s and the life sentence I drew because of it.

Back then, I had two pairs of winter stockings, one brown and one black. Even with safety pins or new garters, those ribbed cotton stockings wouldn’t stay up neatly. And when I pulled my bloomers down over the lumpy roll at the top, the stockings still wrinkled at the ankles.

Dean (short for Euladean) Goodson wore some of the long stockings she disliked when she sat on the running board with her Aunt Mary (left) in 1930.

Despite those difficulties, I was reasonably content and well-behaved…not yet the 7-year-old delinquent I would soon become.

It all started when some relatives from Kansas came to Grandma’s house in Oklahoma for Christmas. My cousin’s bloomers didn’t bag, and her socks weren’t mended, either. She also wore long cotton stockings like none I’d ever seen.

Red and Redder

Those stockings weren’t brown or black…they were red. Incredibly, on Christmas morning, my cousin got a new pair of red stockings. Her old ones weren’t even worn out yet!

That afternoon I begged her to let me try the old red stockings on my skinny legs. She refused, stuffing them into the corner of her suitcase. She spent the rest of the visit prancing around in her bright, beautiful red stockings.

Being new at criminal activity, I didn’t wait long enough after the relatives had gone before “finding” the old red socks. But nothing I could say would keep Grandma from packing them in an empty box and mailing them back to Kansas. She knew full well how they’d “accidentally” been left behind. I had to confess my guilt.

Fate Was in Store

After that, my hatred of brown and black socks grew in proportion to my obsession for red ones. When our general store finally added a dozen pairs to its stock, my fate was sealed.

I was in the store the day the bundle of red stockings was unpacked. Mr. Wilson casually threw the bundle on the shelf as I stood there spellbound.

In my defense, it wasn’t really a premeditated crime. I waited until Mr. Wilson took the eggs I was trading for Grandma’s groceries to the back of the store, then I slipped behind the counter and helped myself to a pair.

Back home, I handed Grandma the groceries and headed for my tiny bedroom off the kitchen. I planned to hide the stockings under my mattress…but when I turned around to see if the coast was clear, there stood Grandma in all of her towering authority!

Justice was swift. Within 5 minutes I’d returned the socks to Mr. Wilson, apologized and went to bed early. Grandma’s words thundered in my ears: “If I have my way, you will never own a pair of red socks!”

From that day forward, red stockings were never again mentioned between us in our many hours of companionship, love and respect. Grandma died when I was 21, and through the years afterward, I avoided red socks. I don’t know if it came from “the sentencing” or an unconscious self-punishment.

Recently, at the age of 60-plus, I bought a sporty new skirt. My daughter suggested I buy the matching sweater and red argyle socks to wear with it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to pick up the red socks. Suddenly it occurred to me: Mr. Wilson and Grandma forgave you years ago. Don’t you think it’s about time you forgave yourself?

So I did…and I purchased the first pair of red socks I’ve ever worn. I felt so chic—and so aware of the freedom of full pardon.

By Dean Goodson
Cleveland, Oklahoma

On a warm March morning in 1945, my father took me for a memorable hike in the woods that bordered our upstate New York village of Lyons. Only 9, I was thrilled to spend a few precious hours alone with him.

Besides running a grocery store 12 hours a day, Father was a volunteer air raid warden and airplane spotter. He made military parts in the high school machine shop and volunteered to help on a nearby farm on his day off.

We’d left home that morning with a lunch box full of peanut butter sandwiches and a thermos of cold milk. At the edge of town, we followed an abandoned stretch of the old Erie Canal into the woods.

Father held my hand and we laughed as we shuffled precariously across a big fallen maple that spanned Black Brook. “I brought along a couple of jackknives,” he said. “Maybe we can find a good tree to carve our initials on.”

I pointed out some maples and oaks that looked good to me, but Father shook his head. “We need a tree with smooth bark,” he explained. “Let’s head up the hill.”

Half an hour later, we found a young beech. Firmly rooted in the hillside, it rose against a backdrop of clear blue sky. “This is a good one,” Father said.

Secret Revealed

Neatly, he scored 3-inch-high block letters in the smooth bark. “A sharp knife’s the secret,” he revealed as I tried to copy his technique.

John Buchholz and his father, Lester, made their marks together (above) in the spring of 1945.

An hour later, our work was done. As we left for home, we turned to look back at our handiwork. Just then, a shaft of spring sunlight found our cream-colored initials, vivid against the tree’s silver bark.

“Pretty good job!” Father said, smiling at me.

“Yep,” I answered, grinning proudly back.

In the years that followed, I didn’t think much about that special day. I left town after high school, shortly before my parents moved away.

Nearly 5 decades later, I finally learned the real significance of our long-ago Sunday hike: Just days beforehand, Father had received his draft notice. As the two of us carved our initials into the beech that day, he must have been acutely aware that we might not have much more time together.

Hearing this, I was seized by an urge to see whether “our” tree still stood. On a sweltering July morning, I drove 300 miles back to Lyons to find out.

Journey into the Past

Arriving in town in early afternoon, I was surprised to see my old high school. And Beanie’s Gulf station, last stop on my paper route, was still there, too…although the dented red Coke machine was gone.

Parking near unfamiliar houses at the edge of town, I took a moment to gather my thoughts, then headed into the woods. I crossed Black Brook, just a trickle in the summer, and headed up the ridge. Exhausted and sweating, I finally reached the crest and turned north along a winding path.

For 30 minutes, I paced the path in vain, stopping every few seconds to study the trees from different vantage points. My heart sank with disappointment—either my memory had misled me or the tree had died years ago.

Then a stately beech, bathed in sunlight, caught my eye! Bounding toward it through the woods, I could see that it rose straight and true to a height of 70 feet.

Yes! There they were, right at eye level—two sets of scarred initials now half a century old, stretched across the smooth silvery bark. I embraced “our” tree and, pressing my sweaty cheek against its cool trunk, reveled in the knowledge that this link with my past still stood.

Father had been right. “This is a good one,” I heard him say one last time.

By John Buchholz
Paoli, Pennsylvania

No one messed with these hombres (above, from left): Buck Jones, Tim McCoy and Raymond Hatton.

For a boy in Chicago around 1933, Saturday was the best day of the week. I’d deliver my newspapers, do chores at home, then plead with Mom for a nickel so I could go to the matinee and see my hero, Buck Jones.

All of this had to be done before 1 o’clock, when the admission price changed to 10¢. It was hard enough trying to get a nickel, let alone a dime—10¢ could put a loaf of bread on the table!

When I finally reached the theater, there’d be a line a block long. But I never cared, because soon my friends and I in the Buck Jones Rangers fan club would thrill to a Western tale like White Eagle, Border Law or The California Trail.

Western film star Buck Jones (1891-1942)

Buck was the best white-hatted cowboy hero ever, appearing in about 200 movies from 1913 to 1941. He was courteous to ladies, friendly to children and kind to animals. Still, there was no doubt that he was the boss—if somebody was getting hurt, you just knew that he would save them.

In real life, Buck died the way he lived, as a hero. On November 28, 1942, he was selling war bonds at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston. A fire broke out that killed 492 people. Buck died 2 days later from injuries he suffered while trying to save people.

Buck’s been gone over 50 years, but I’m still a fan, and I collect anything with his name on it—buttons, comic books, pocketknives and wristwatches.

I’m also a member of a new fan club called the Buck Jones Western Corral #1. Our headquarters is in Brookings,

Buck Jones and his wife, Dell, are off for a ride at their California ranch during the late '20s. All of the horses they had at the ranch were white.

Oregon, and one of our goals is to persuade the U.S. Postal Service to issue a Buck Jones stamp.

Now that I’m retired, I watch tapes of those great old Buck Jones movies and feel young again. I’ve seen them so many times, but to me, each time is like the first.

Best of all, I don’t have to beg for a nickel, stand in line or sweat the change in admission price.

By John Cebat
Port Richey, Florida

Buck Jones Movie Posters

Click on the thumbnails above to view larger images of the posters.

Comic books were big stuff for kids in the 1940s. But I forgot all about the comics after I picked up my first “pulp” magazine.

It was 1945 when I began stopping at a secondhand shop in Johnson City known as Pat’s Trading Post.

“Pat,” a kindly old fellow whose real name was Woolford B. Watson, sold comics at half the newsstand price, allowing poor kids like me to get extra mileage out of our meager allowances.

Not yet in my teens, I’d first come to Pat’s for those bargain comics. But the gaudy covers on the pulps quickly caught my attention, and their fast-moving, thrill-packed stories proved irresistible.

So-named because of the cheap paper these magazines were printed on, pulps were action-packed cover to cover. To me, their heroes were even more riveting than those in comic books.

For example, there was the “Black Bat,” an extraordinary crime fighter whose exploits were featured in a magazine called Black Book Detective. Tony Quinn, the man who adopted the name Black Bat, was a district attorney and supposedly blind.

Blind as a Bat?

At one time he really had been blind, but then a dying police officer bequeathed his eyes to Tony. After an operation restored his sight, Tony discovered he could see even in total darkness.

He put this remarkable ability to good use by becoming the Black Bat, an eerie-looking nocturnal figure that criminals came to dread.

Clad entirely in black with a hood covering his head, he prowled the city in search of clues to crimes the police seemed powerless to solve.

Another pulp superhero, the “Phantom Detective,” also had a double identity. In everyday life, Richard Curtis Van Loan was a wealthy New York socialite.

Fed up with cocktail parties and golf, he studied criminology and molded himself into an expert detective. A master of disguise, he had a folding makeup table built into the back of his supercharged bulletproof sedan.

Crime-Fighting Reporter

One hero with a single identity was Johnny Castle, who appeared in Thrilling Detective.

Johnny was a wisecracking sports reporter at a New York newspaper, but he attracted murder like a picnic attracts ants. His pretty girlfriend, Libby Hart, usually assisted in solving the murder cases he was forever becoming entangled in.

Of all the pulps I used to buy at Pat’s, I remember none more fondly than Weird Tales.

This magazine was instrumental in launching the careers of such well-known writers as H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch and Robert E. Howard.

Typical of the stories was “The Final Hour” by Chester Geier, which appeared in the January 1947 issue. It’s about an incurably ill author who offers his soul to Satan for 7 more years of life so he can finish a monumental book.

At the end of the 7 years, Satan comes to collect his due. But he goes away thwarted when he discovers that the man’s soul is already gone—the author has literally poured his heart and soul into his book!

The magazines I’ve mentioned are but a fraction of those printed in that era. Jungle Stories, Sky Fighters, Unknown Worlds, Foreign Legion Adventures, Sea Novels and Super Science Stories are but a few more.

Pulps, like movie serials, Big Bands and the 15-minute radio soap opera, were a colorful and important part of America’s entertainment past. Because of the inferior paper they were printed on, few survive today, but the happy memories I have of them will never deteriorate.

By Gene Tipton
Johnson City, Tennessee

To view a gallery of more pulp magazine covers, click here.

After more than 50 years, pulp magazines still thrill. Daring detectives and dastardly villains were only part of the allure of these 1940s magazines. Check out some of their eye-catching covers in our slideshow below.

Argosy Weekly

Startling Stories

Black Book Detective

Thrilling Detective

Weird Tales

Famous Fantastic Mysteries

Dime Mystery Magazine

The Phantom Detective

To view slideshow, use the previous and next buttons. Or, click on each individual thumbnail.

When the Cold War got too cold, Richard Rybkowski and his buddies warmed up in this unofficial rig.

In winter of 1952, I was helping fight the “Cold War” in eastern Germany…and it was cold.

Our radio crew for the 7th Army, 118th Engineer Battalion was monitoring Russian troop movements. We operated out of a 3/4-ton truck, which housed the equipment, and slept on the ground in tents. After waking one morning with icicles in our tents, we decided something had to be done. So we set to changing our radio truck into a camper (right).

Benches were made higher and wider, with hinged tops so they could serve for storage and as bunks. A wooden box, complete with door and windows, replaced the stakes and canvas. An old sealed-beam headlight provided light and heat.

When our company commander asked if the “camper” met military regulations, I tied the original canvas cover over the box and said, “Now it does.”

The rig worked great…so great that one rainy night in the field, our first lieutenant came knocking and asked to sleep on the floor till morning.

It wasn’t long before several other companies copied our design. And before my tour of duty was up, Detroit-manufactured steel-topped communi­cations vehicles began showing up on the roads in Germany.

By Richard Rybkowski
Marceline, Missouri

With the Academy Awards presentations coming later this month, let’s get the movie reels rolling on some of the films that have won Best Picture recognition over the years. We’ll give you the year and a well-known line from the film, and you’ll have to come up with the movie title. No looking up the winners by year online or in a book! Enjoy.

1. “Behold, the walls of Jericho!” And also, “Say now, wait a minute. Let’s get this straightened out right now. If you’re nursing any silly notion that I’m interested in you, forget it. You’re just a headline to me.” (1934, It Happened One Night)

2. “I’m a good girl, I am!” And later, “Well, you have my voice on your phonograph. When you feel lonesome without me, you can turn it on. It has no feelings to hurt.” (1964, My Fair Lady)

3. “You’ve got to pick a pocket or two.” (1968, Oliver!)

4. “A seaman is a seaman. A captain is a captain. And a midshipman, Sir Joseph or no Sir Joseph, is the lowest form of animal life in the British Navy.” (1935, Mutiny on the Bounty)

5. “Uh, Fraulein, is it to be at every meal or merely at dinnertime that you intend on leading us all through this rare and wonderful new world of indigestion?” (1965, The Sound of Music)

6. “You’re right, Henry, it’s not enough. But (laughs) it’s close!” (1973, The Sting)

7. “Play it once, Sam, for old times’ sake.” (1943, Casablanca)

8. “They call me Mr. Tibbs!” (1967, In the Heat of the Night)

9. …and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I’m still standin’, I’m gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren’t just another bum from the neighborhood. (1976, Rocky)

10. “I said nice, get it? Because if you don’t, and I catch any of you doing any more brawlin’ in my territory, I’m gonna personally beat the living crud out of each and every one of you and see that you go to the can and rot there. Say good-bye to the nice boys, Krupke.” (1961, West Side Story)

My brother, Lavern Lerg, and I used to go stag to dances so we could dance with more than one partner.

Lyle and Mildred Rosekrans danced into each other's arms as teens in 1940.

One night in 1940, Lavern, our cousin Louise and I were at a dance, and I mentioned an acquaintance named Lyle as a potential dance partner and date. Louise bet I couldn’t get anywhere with him, and I took her up on a 25-cent bet.

I wasted no time, walking over and talking with one of the girls I knew from Lyle’s crowd. Lyle noticed us and asked me to dance. When we danced by Louise and her partner, I gave her a big grin, knowing I’d won half the bet.

Eventually, Lavern said he was ready to leave, but I begged to stay for a couple more dances. Luckily, Lyle heard me and said he would gladly bring me home.

Lyle and I danced the rest of the evening, until everyone started to leave. Louise stood by the door with a grin on her face that matched mine. But my smile turned into a look of surprise and embarrassment when she handed a Lyle and me each a quarter.

Louise laughed and said, “Two quarters make a nice pair.” Lyle and I stared at each other, realizing we’d both been working on the same bet! Believe it or not, those two quarters kept us dancing together for 63 years.

By Mildred Rosekrans
Houghton Lake, Michigan

My high school classmate Dorothy and I stood at the bus stop in front of Central Elementary School in Wakefield, Michigan, early one morning in 1949. The wind was cold, but we were warm with the anticipation of buying a popular record that day.

Dorothy had heard there was a new shipment of records at the Johnson Music Store in nearby Ironwood. We intended to be the first customers at the door to buy copies of our favorite song, Cruising Down the River, by Russ Morgan.

But when we got there, we found at least a dozen other teens ahead of us, so we sighed with relief as we each purchased a fragile black platter. We took the next bus back to Wakefield with our records on our laps. As soon as I got home, I played the song with the volume at full blast to hear every possible decibel.

After supper, I sat on the chair next to the record player and heard a crack. I had sat on my precious record and broken it into black shards!

Later that evening, a new friend, David, called and said he liked Cruising Down the River as well. I told him about the broken record. He said his father had a box of records and that he would check to see if he had an extra.

David found one and delivered it to me, and that was our second meeting. Months earlier I had seen a photo of him and felt a warm tug at my heart; later we met in person at a school event.

A few weeks after that, my broken record brought us together again, and we began dating. We were married three years later and had four children. I never forgot how that fragile Decca recording changed my life. Losing my record helped me find true love.

By Audrey Carli
Iron River, Michigan

I Can Dream, Can’t I?
–The Andrews Sisters

Some Enchanted Evening
–Perry Como

Again
–Mel Torme

My Darling, My Darling
–Jo Stafford, Gordon McRae

A Little Bird Told Me
–Evelyn Knight

Forever and Ever
–Russ Morgan

Someday (You’ll Want Me to Want You)
–Vaughn Monroe

Buttons and Bows
–Dinah Shore

“A”—You’re Adorable
–Perry Como

Sisters Shirley and Cathy saw more than their fair share of dirty plates and silverware as kids.

When I was a girl in the 1930s and ’40s, washing dishes for our family of 12 was no easy job.

First we had to bring in water from an old pump in the backyard, then heat it up on a stove in two white galvanized dishpans. With no sink or indoor plumbing, we set the dishpans on an old wooden worktable.

Then my sister Shirley and I began this tedious chore, which fell to us by virtue of being the eldest daughters. How we hated washing all the silverware and those mismatched, chipped, cracked dishes!

On the plus side, the dishes rarely required scraping or pre-rinsing because not a speck of food remained on anyone’s plate. And we didn’t use glasses or side dishes, so there were fewer items to wash.

We made suds with Mom’s homemade soap, which we also used for bathing, laundry and housecleaning. The washer knew she’d better get the plates completely clean, because the best part of the dryer’s job was the devious pleasure of putting them back in the dishpan if they weren’t!

To dry the dishes, we shook off as much water as possible, since we had no dish-draining racks back then. As it was, we went through several cotton drying cloths every time we did dishes.

The hardest part was washing our thin, dented aluminum pans, to which everything stuck. A wiry scouring pad came in handy, but it was still slow going. In fact, when it came time to wash those pans, the dish dryer usually caught up—much to the dismay of the washer, who had put much effort into keeping the dryer behind!

When we were done, we carried potato peels and other scraps out to our animals. One of the older boys carried the dishpans to the garden and dumped them; Mom said the soapy water kept away bugs. Then one of the boys would mop the floor, while the person who dried dishes hung the towels to dry.

Things sure are different these days. I store leftovers in aluminum foil, plastic wrap or airtight containers. When I rinse dishes, food residue goes into a garbage disposal. Then I load all the dishes into a dishwasher.

The last step: I push a button and walk away, knowing that the dishes will soon be clean, sanitized and dry. We’ve come a long way since I was a little girl!

By Cathy Reits
Byron Center, Michigan