Kinsler column: The questions an 11-year-old boy would ask in 1958

What did Sky King do for a living?

Was Dale Evans’ Western-themed luncheonette the financial engine of the Double R Bar Ranch?

Who did Captain Midnight actually work for, and did he get paid for flying the Silver Dart?

“We have got to get you outside more,” said Natalie.

“But these were actual questions that 11-year-olds asked in 1958,” I rejoined, “For I, M Kinsler, asked them.” We all did, and we laughed at each other for doing so.

For television and comic book characters, there were more answers than you might imagine. To wit, TV Guide ran a Q & A column that finally revealed what supported Ozzie, Harriet, and the boys. Turns out you were supposed to know that Ozzie Nelson was a retired big band leader (and Harriet Hilliard was his chief singer.) Kids were expected to know this because he’d been famous before we were born. The back stories of Lucy, Desi, George and Gracie were similarly mysterious, though for some reason Jack Benny’s seemed self-evident.

But my favorite commentary appeared in my friend Robby’s extensive collection of Superman comics—piles of them. Each contained the oddly fascinating “Letters to Superman,” a page whose top banner featured a picture of Superman in his cape reading a letter.

The letters, supposedly sent in by readers, were typically technical: How could Superman see the cash in the strongbox with his x-ray vision without setting the contents afire? I thought that it was because there wasn’t any air inside, but it turns out that x-ray vision intensity can be varied to suit the application. Other questions were complex, involving kryptonite, whose rays were fatal to former Krypton residents but which could be shielded with a layer of lead, which was, alas, impenetrable to x-ray vision. No one ever asked about Lois Lane’s personal life: these were 11-year-old boys.

I don’t know who wrote that page, but I wonder if he or she had ever spent any time in divinity school, where precisely the same sort of questions are addressed.

Mark Kinsler, [email protected], lives and writes stuff under the skeptical eye of Natalie and the two alley cats (Gemma and G Webster) in an old house in Lancaster.

This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Kinsler column: The questions an 11-year-old boy would ask in 1958