Dive, Dive, Dive!

When I was in the third grade, Jeff Rhodes and I decided we were going to buy a submarine. After we acquired the submarine we were going to take it down to Lake Hartwell and drive it around. We had great fun imagining all of the scenarios we could use the submarine for. The "real" periscope was going to be a great way to spy on all the fisherman and what a great time we would have pulling on their lines.

"Hey Bob you won't believe it, but I really got the BIG one!"

Yeah. Those dumb fisherman wouldn't know what hit them.

Our favorite plan had to be the one where we would submerge and use our submarine to sneak up on Jeff's mom sleeping on her air mattress. We would empty the torpedo tubes and scare her to death.

All we needed was $6.98 and that amazing vehicle could be ours.

I discovered the advertisement for the Polaris Sub on the last page of a Fantastic Four comic book. It described the sub in vivid detail, "Over 7 Feet Long. Fire Rockets and Torpedos. Electronically Lit Instrument Panel. Big Enough for Two Kids."

What nine year old wouldn't have fallen for that ad.

The sad reality was that seven dollars was a fortune to me and with no way to acquire the money, we were never able to order the sub.

It was two decades later that I stumbled across the ad again at a local comics shop specializing in back issues of all those Marvel and DC comics I read as a kid. This time the fine print buried beneath all the good stuff stood out like a sore thumb. "Sturdily constructed of 200 lb. test fiberboard." In other words it was a cardboard box. The last thing that sub would have been good for was putting in the water.

Come to think of it, I never did get those X-Ray glasses either.

Keep the Adventure Alive,

AT