Throughout the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, most issues of
Archie Comics featured a two-page spread titled Archie Club News. The
banner at the top of the page announced, "ARCHIE CLUB MEMBERS send in
your reports and be eligible to win cash prizes in the Archie Series
Magazines." The results of this venture were generally irrelevant notes
sent in like, "Dear Archie, what is up with noise pollution? It is a more serious problem than we realize..."
Often what was sent in appeared to be part of a class project.
Elementary school children were in the process of learning how to write
letters and encouraged by a teacher to send something Riverdale way.
Sometimes the letters were weird or even profound and other times
prophetic or just silly. This letter originally appeared in Archie #187, December 1968:
Dear Archie,
Have you ever noticed the way in which people shake hands? I didn't until I did a project on it and found it very interesting. There were many different kinds - a clincher, when a person squeezes your hand so hard that it nearly cuts your circulation off. An Ed Sullivan handshake is when your hand is shaken so violently you think it will continue vibrating the rest of your life. One more which has no name that I know of is one in which a person pulls and stretches your fingers. This is extremely dangerous sometimes, if the person is strong, because as I once heard it said, "If you don't stop them in time you may be wearing mittens the rest of your life!"
Joanne Burns
2273 Perran Drive
Clarkson, Ontario
Canada
Joanne's letter won first prize of five dollars for this issue. "Gonna make ya hafta wear mittens fer the rest of your life!" certainly sounds like something off The Sopranos.
There is an equation based upon the number of audible cracking sounds when ones hand is shaken. While subjective the theory and empirical knowledge do coincide in this determination of which parallel of latitude south of Middlesex county a person grew up in. It is likely that this equation could be adjusted to reveal Parkway exit numbers in inverse proportion to bone damage. The value to the science of forensic pathology should be obvious.
Posted by: bartleby | July 06, 2008 at 09:42 PM
Archie Comics still prints Archie Club News. The prize is up to $10.
Posted by: Alex Battles | July 11, 2008 at 12:43 PM