I AM CURIOUS: UGLY



My very own UGLY STICKER. Art by Norman Saunders.

 In the summer of 1965, I bought trading cards from the ice cream man. That's right, along with the Big Sticks, Push-Ups and 50-50 bars, he had a stash of trading cards sitting in his freezer box. I usually had enough coin left over from the ice cream to buy one or two packs of cards.

For a while, UGLY STICKERS were the card of choice. I was as intrigued by these grotesque little curios as a crow is to a bright, shiny thing sitting in the road. It didn't take long to find the sticker with my name in one of the frozen wax packs. Turns out I shared it with a few other people's names.

It was much later that I found out the artists on these little gems were masters such as pulp artist Norman Saunders and cartoonist Wally Wood. By that time I had expended much of my collection on school notebooks and anything else that didn't already have a Topps SPOOK STORIES monster sticker on it. Oh, and the gum? A very strange experience trying to defrost a slab of trading card gum in the middle of a hot summer day. Tearing into the stack o' stickers to see who I got next, I hardly noticed the inconvenience.