However, when I first got rid of my sister's comics, I just couldn't bear to part with the issue containing my top favorite "Only a Poor Old Man" and I kept it hidden away in a drawer. It was the first issue of UNCLE $CROOGE comics, but I didn't know that at the time as it had a "#386" number on it rather than a "#1". So I'm VERY pleased that I STILL HAVE the very issue of "Only a Poor Old Man" that I grew up with since I was less than a year old. It has my sister's name written on the cover and my own "art" scribbles on the inside. It's in a special display in my comic "vault".
Please help me out, here, Don. My memory has never been very good but I do remember that, during the first of my two visits last year, you also told me a much more adventurous story about this comic. So let's get together and try to get the details right.
As far as I can recollect, the full story is as follows. Yes, when you thought you had grown out of all those "childish" comics you traded them in at the second-hand comics store where you could get one comic for two of your old ones. And yes, you did keep that one with "Only a poor old man", and also your other favourite, the one with the Golden Helmet story. However, later, when you started collecting practically everything, you "upgraded" your tattered old copy with a better one! So you did, at that point, lose the copy of the comic you had when you were a little child.
Many years later, though, in fact only a few years ago, you came across your very copy (with "Deanna", your sister's name, on the cover) in some other second-hand comics store, or at a convention, or somewhere else I can't remember. Obviously that comic had been traded and traded and somehow, several decades later, you had come across it again. "Hey! It's mine! The one from when I was little! The very paper on which I fell in love with that fantastic panel of the dam breaking! And look at all my scribbles! I gotta have it..." And so you bought it, or maybe traded it, I don't know. Or maybe---wait, maybe I remember---it was a friend of yours who got it, and he asked you "wasn't your sister called Deanna? Couldn't this be YOUR copy I've got here?", and you said "Omygosh YESSS!" and he was happy to give it to you so long as you bought him a replacement copy for his collection---yes, that was probably it, right? So you got your copy from your friend and you bought another, newer copy at market price for him. And that's how it got back into your collection and into your comics vault.
Riassunto ita: mi pare di ricordare che la storia del giornalino numero uno fosse ben più complicata. Lo conservò ma poi lo scambiò con uno migliore e solo dopo molti anni gli ricapitò sottomano la sua copia. O qualcosa del genere. Chiedo conferma direttamente a lui. Oh. Gosh. Is it... my #1 Dime?
Frank might even have a photo of it. If he can locate it.
Yes, I'll dig it out and put it up.
As I think I said, a kind and competent lady is already hard at work as we speak, translating the first part of our chat. In the second part of the interview we spoke of exactly that business, of you inheriting those comics from your sister and then, in a fit of youthful exuberance later to be regretted, trading them for Superman and stuff like that. Those following this discussion here might like to check out
that part of the interview and
listen to you retelling all this---to me it's so much more alive than just reading about it. If we get more helpers we could have several parts of the interview translated in parallel. (English to Italian shouldn't be that hard.) I promise I'll have the photo ready to go with it by the time the translation is up.
Riassunto ita: Don parla di quel periodo della sua vita nella seconda parte (linkata sopra) dell'intervista. C'è già una gentile e competente traduttrice all'opera sulla prima parte. Con eventuali altri/e volontari/e potremmo procedere in parallelo sulle altre parti.
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