Title: "Junk Bonds"
Story (out of 24 pages): 13 p.
Writer: Nathan E. Stowe
Penciller: Matt W. Jeschonek
Letterer: Jose A. Wheat
Colorist: Theo A. "Jet" Swann
Summary:
An elderly man steps out into his yard, wondering aloud what a curious drilling sound is. When the Trio of Trouble pops up, he calls for his son to come out and see. The younger man, Dupont, seems unimpressed by the three tourists, even if they are rather odd.
The boys, busy poring over their road map, take no notice of the old man until he approaches and asks them if they need help. When Jon asks where they are, he answers, "Watts". Jon doesn't realize this is the name of the place and thinks the old man is hard of hearing, so he repeats himself a bit louder. Again the man answers "Watts". Josh attempts to clarify things by yelling at the man, who takes offense and yells "Watts" a third time. The boys then start talking amongst themselves, with tonge-twisting chatter flying about confusingly, until the old man starts hollering at them to be quiet. This nearly escalates into an argument, but Dupont neatly intervenes.
It seems the two men are father-and-son owners of a salvage yard (which the irascible old gentleman, Jed T. Sandberg, calls an "empire"). Josh makes a crack, and a second fistfight almost begins. Just then Jed's homely sister-in-law Hester pays a visit. Jed immediately starts arguing with her. Josh discovers that every piece of junk in Sandburg and Son has a potential scientific application. The Trio estatically starts going on a mad buying spree while Jed and Hester continue to bicker and Dupont tries to play peacemaker. Another wiseass remark out of Josh turns Hester's wrath onto the boys, but they counter with something to put the Bible-thumping biddy in her place. This imediately endears them to Jed (and the fact that they are buying junk by the buttload doesn't hurt, either!)--though it's now Dupont's turn to be angry and suspicious of their three visitors.
After all is said and done Jed and his new pals have enjoyed a very lucrative friendship--however, it wouldn't really be a Trio of Trouble story without that trademark nasty twist ending!
Notes
Unless you've been living in a cave for three decades, you should recognize this story as a parody of Sanford and Son, right down to the caricatures of Redd (Fred Sanford) Foxx, Demond (Lamont Sanford) Wilson, and LaWanda (Esther Anderson) Page, and the familiar house, yard, and iconic broken-down red truck. Created and produced by the team of Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin, Sanford and Son debuted on Jan 14, 1972 and enjoyed six seasons on NBC. This story, released two months prior to the 35th anniversary of the premiere, is peppered with jokes and sight gags lifted straight from the series itself:
page 12. "Jed Sandburg" grabs his heart when surprised. Often Fred Sanford would stagger clutching his chest, usually when upset or as a ploy to get his way, and call out "Elizabeth, I'm comin' t' join ya, honey!" Elizabeth Sanford, his wife and mother to Lamont, had died over two decades earlier. Ironically Redd Foxx would suffer a real heart attack in 1991 on the set of The Royal Family, the aging and financially-strapped comic's big comeback vehicle. His costars thought he was doing the old heart attack bit. By the time they realized it wasn't a gag, it was too late; he was gone.
page 12. Ben mentions El Segundo, a frequent running gag in the series.
A lot of the background props are objects actually seen in episodes, and some either seem to move about from panel to panel, or even vanish altogether. The bathtub in the yard, for example, was perhaps the most commonly seen piece of junk, and even played a prominent role in ep. #215, "A Guest in the Yard". The tuba (pages 14, 16) was seen in #414, "Julio and Sister and Nephew" (though in the yard, not the house). The safe is only seen in the top panel on page 15, which refers to its key role in "The Suitcase Case" (#112) and then never being seen or brought up again. The knick-knack shelf conaining Lamont's prized porcelain collection was prominent in ep #106, "We Were Robbed", and despite being broken in that episode (twice, no less), was often visible throughout the show's run as background scenery (it even seems to move about from being behind the couch to closer to the front door in the comic, as it did from ep to ep).
page 13. Jed first calls his son a "big dummy", Fred's frequent term of dubious affection for Lamont.
page 14. Jed utters the famous "five across yo' lip" line and windmills his doubled fists in the air. Fred did both a lot--though here his aggressive behavior is taken to a bit of an extreme. Although he frequently threatened violence, Fred seldom actually hit anyone. Likewise, his sister-in-law Esther rarely struck him in retaliation with her handbag, except in one episode (#619,"The Will").
page 14. In the last panel Jed calls the junkyard his "empire". The elder Sanford frequently described Sanford and Son as such. On occassion he also called it a "dynasty" and a "legacy".
page 15. Jed mentions hailing from St. Louis, the birthplace of both the character and the actor. Redd Foxx frequently gave shouts-out to his hometown in the show and in his standup act.
page 15. Jed gives his middle initial, "T" and says it stands for something different each time. Fred did this with his initial, G., quite a bit (usually once an episode). He always said it stood for whatever epithet he felt fit a given situation. Oddly, no one appeared to know, or thought to ask Fred, what the G really stood for.
page 15. Jed and Hester bicker with full aplomb. Catchphrases like "watch it, sucka", "old heathen", and "trout-eyed fool" (a parody of "fish-eyed fool") are used. Also, it's worthy to note that someone else actually thinks Hester is ugly. In the show, Fred was the only one who ever commented rudely on Esther's looks...although when in several episodes costar Whitman Mayo, who played Fred's oldest pal Grady Wilson, filled in for Foxx during a contract dispute with the network (the show claimed Fred was attending to a relative's funeral arrangements in St. Louis), Grady carried the joke forward (albeit with no real vitriol behind it, as he never seemed to dislike Esther as much as Fred did, and only seemed to be doing what he felt was his duty by putting her down.) The Fred/Esther animosity was staged, of course. In real life Page and Foxx were good friends, and she was his only choice to play Esther.
page 17. Fred's favorite foods, ripple wine and menudo (a stew made from animal innards) are mentioned.
page 19. The flame visible on Hester's finger alludes to "The Bronze Goddess of Fire", a popular bit Page performed during her nightclub act in her youth, and reprised in "Greatest Show in Watts (#513). She would set her hand on fire, and use her fingertips to light bar patrons' cigarettes, and even swallow live flames.
page 19. One of the funniest running S&S gags involved a pair of cops who were friends of the Sanfords, Officers Hopkins and Smith (or Swanson, in a few early episodes). Hopkins ("Hoppy"), a white cop, would frequently have trouble with slang, e.g. saying "torn off" for "ripped off", and "Smitty" (or "Swanny"), his black partner, had to correct him. Or, conversely, Hoppy would rattle off a long, overly-complicated, jargon-filled speech, and Smitty (Swanny) would simplify it for Fred and Lamont in a more "ghetto" manner. Jon and Josh fill the Hoppy and Smitty roles here, respectively.
page 19. In many episodes Fred kept a drawer filled with numerous pairs of fairly useless glasses, and made a big deal of fumbling through them to select one when he had to read something.
page 20. Fred, when asked to perform physical labor, would often complain of arthritis (which he pronounced "arth-a-ritis") and draw his hand up in a knot to demonstrate. The John K.-ish closeup of Jed's "claw" seen in the first panel of page 21 is actually editor J.M. Sweet's own hand.
page 22. "Sonny Lister" refers to boxer Sonny Liston, the famed 1962 world heavyweight boxing champ known for his large, powerful fists and long reach. "Sonny Lister's Sister" was the title of one of the routines on Foxx's "Live and Dirty, vol. 1" comedy album.
page 23. Jed is shown to literally flip his wig, revealing a bald head. Foxx did indeed wear a hairpiece and fake beard to play Fred Sanford.
The line about retiring to Arizona refers to the short-lived spinoff The Sanford Arms, set at the boarding house the Sanfords had converted their neighbor's house into after he moved. Neither Foxx (who was then being courted by ABC) nor Wilson appeared in this show, though semiregulars LaWanda Page, Whitman Mayo (himself recovering from his own disasterous spinoff, Grady), and Don Bexley (Bubba) periodically guest-starred. One story goes that Demond Wilson--who was addicted to coke at the time--pulled a gun on Norman Lear in his office when they had a dispute over his salary.
In 1981 Foxx returned to NBC (his ABC variety show having tanked) and revived the S&S franchise with Sanford. Wilson declined to appear, so Lamont was now said to be working on the Alaskan pipeline (hence Dupont's line about "the Alaska oil pipe work crew") and had sent a fellow crewmember down to L.A. to partner with his father in the business. The retooled show lasted for only a couple of seasons.
page 23. The gag near the end refers to events in ep. #614, "Here Today, Gone Today ".
page 23. Fred enjoyed watching monster movies, for which he would give crazy (fictitious) titles for. "Godzilla Meets Ernest" (referring to the late Jim Varney's iconic rubber-faced redneck man-child from many films, commercials, and a short-lived Saturday morning series) isn't too far off from the sort of fare Fred would revel in.
page 12. Knott's Berry Farm is both a popular water park and a food processing plant located in two neighboring communities in southern California. It got its name from its humble Depression-era beginnings, when the Knotts family sold fresh berries and pies from their roadside stand to the tourists.
page 12. In the last panel Josh alludes to the Slauson cutoff, which was a recurring gag of Johnny Carson's character Art Fern, a scuzzy TV pitchman, on The Tonight Show. The joke went that to find Fern's place, you drove so many miles to the Slauson cutoff, stop, and "cut off your Slauson" (this last bit often chanted by the studio audience along with Johnny). There is an actual Slausten Avenue that runs east-west through southern L.A. and passes through the low-rent districts like Watts, which likely would be the real-life location of the fictitious cutoff.
page 13. Cucamonga--or, more properly, Rancho Cucamonga--is a popular resort town on the West Coast. It's most well known, perhaps, as the last stop on the route of the train in the Jack Benny radio show. The conductor (voice of cartoon raconteur Mel Blanc) would rattle off a list of stops, ending with "CUC--" (first syllable stressed, then long comic pause)- "--amonga."
page 13. Looking about and asking "Who came in?" when addressed as gentlemen was a popular bit of the Three Stooges'.
page 13. The whole "Watts" bit the boys perform for about two pages recalls the Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on First?". Sanford and Son is indeed set in Watts, a low-rent subburb of California. The boys got confused and thought Jed kept asking what they were saying when he was really answering them.
page 15. Rio Linda is a small, low-rent district just outside L.A. It's probably best known as a recurring gag on conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh's radio show, often preceded by "for those of you in..." when something overly technical is discussed that needs to be dumbed down.
page 21. "Bag of holding" (also called "hammerspace") refers to the concept (popularized in cartoons and video games for decades) that an infinite amount of objects can fit in a finite space, such as a bag, suitcase, or pocket.
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California, here they come! The Trio of Trouble decides to leave the frozen Mid-South behind and spend Christmas in warmer climes. Traveling below ground, they pop up at a junkyard outside Los Angeles, where they meet up with a cantankerous old coot and his beleaguered son. Will the boys be the biggest riot to hit L.A. since the Rodney King verdict? Sit back and laugh, or you'll get five across the lip, dummy!
