WAITING FOR LE ROCKETTE

When I was a kid I hated Kellogs PEP breakfast cereal. Despite that, I encouraged Mom to pick up a box or two when grocery shopping.

PEP tasted to me like leftovers from food that people ate at parties and then hid in potted plants.. "Then, why eat it,?" you might reasonably inquire.

Well you see, even though the Sullivans were big on Wheaties, Cheerios, Kix, and Rice Krispies, none of them offered the prizes that you could get with PEP.

Oh yeah, you occasionally found hokey prizes in the packages of the above but nothing like what you could order by mail from Battle Creek, Michigan - the site of the PEP manufacturing plant.

Even being able to read the back of the Wheaties package twelve hundred times to learn about Patty Berg or Elmo Lincoln while gobbling your "Breakfast of Champions" was a letdown compared to "the big time offer" of PEP cereal.

Nothing could compare with the PEP advertisement for the soon to be famous "rocket ring" that glowed in the dark and had a secret compartment.( I can't tell you the exact location as I'd then have to kill you.).

All I knew was,just like the ad said, I wanted to be "the first in my neighborhood" to own one. .

I sent away my dime and the order form and started the unbearable wait. I was the original naive and impatient customer - pacing the living room on Saturdays awaiting the mail. During school days I was thinking about the mailman instead of Alexander The Great and his mighty white steed, Bucepalus.

Geography was not my best subject. I didn't know where Battle Creek was but I was sure it must have been one of the sites of the Peloponnesian War. - because no mail should take that long to get to Pittsburgh.

Every day I hurried home from school to see if my rocket ring had been delivered. What could have been taking so long?

I thought about running down Sumner Avenue to the Ardmore Boulevard and visiting Johnny Dicoskey, the grocery store owner. Surely Johnny had some pull with Kelloggs.

Maybe I could send him a ransom note made up from newspaper type and threaten to kidnap his mother (who lived next door to us) if Johnny didn't call in a couple of IOUs and intercede. I then knew I had either been listening to too many FBI - In Peace & War episodes or swallowing too much LAVA soap.

I abandoned the last thought also as Mom would never approve.. Besides, it was very difficult for a 10 year old to disguise his voice on the phone when arranging the exchange point. Finally, I didn't know how I was going to get 70 year old Mrs. Discoskey to agree to ride blindfolded on my bike.

Finally, after what I'm sure must have been 7 or 8 months, my rocket ring arrived. Oh joy of joys! I ripped open the package and quickly read the instructions. (this was unnecessary as I had pretty much memorized the ring from the picture on the cereal box and knew where everything was located.)

Oh yeah. I also noticed the rocket ring was much smaller than the picture on the box.

I ran into the hall closet and awaited the glow from my prize to appear. Nothing! I then tried Mom & Dad's closet. Still nothing. I sat for a while in our kitchen to explore my options and then moved my location to the coal cellar - the darkest place in the house.

Lo and behold, I could see this teeny, teeny glow coming from the nose cone. "Ah yes, success at Lake Success", I shouted to the few rats that still inhabited the unfinished dirt cellar of our rental home on Sumner.

Then I was a child. Now I am a man. I recently ordered a desk and a printer cabinet for my new home office. The store took much too long to deliver same.

Now I'm awaiting the installer technician. . The handyman we hired to assemble my wife's desk in her home office 3 years ago swore after taking several days to put it together, "I'll never do that again for all the money in the world!"

That was enough for "old fumbles" here. I figured it will be worth the C-note I paid up front. But, what in the name of everything holy could possibly take the tech this long to come to our house?

I mean, "Where's he coming from - Battle Creek?"