Homer Price Read Free Page A

Homer could keep Aroma for a pet because instead of hurting business Aroma has doubled business. People for miles around are coming to the crossroads where 56 meets 56A just to buy gasoline and to eat a hamburger or a home-cooked dinner, and to see Aroma.
    The next time Homer went into Centerburg to get a haircut, he talked the whole thing over again with the sheriff.
    “Yep!” said the sheriff, “that was sure one smell job of swelling, I mean one swell job of smelling!”

 
THE CASE OF
THE COSMIC COMIC

     
THE CASE OF THE COSMIC COMIC
    O NE Saturday afternoon Homer and Freddy and Freddy’s little brother Louis were listening to the State College football game on the radio.
    After the game Homer said, “I’m feeling sort of hungry. Come on, Freddy, come on, Louis. Let’s go down to the kitchen and get something to eat.”
    They went downstairs and Homer poured out three glasses of milk, and Homer’s mother brought out the cookie jar.
    “Don’t eat too many cookies,” she cautioned, “because it’s almost dinner time.”
    “No, Ma’m, we won’t,” said Freddy. Then he said to Homer, “Has tonight’s newspaper come yet?”
    “I think so,” said Homer. “Yes, there it is, on top of the refrigerator.”
    “Oh, boy!” said Freddy as he opened it to the comic page. “Let’s see what happened to the ‘Super-Duper’.”
    So Freddy and little brother Louis and Homer gathered around the paper to see how the Super-Duper was going to get out of the big steel box filled with dynamite, where the villain had put him and dropped him into the middle of the ocean from an air-ship.
    There in the first picture, the Super-Duper was saying,“Haw, Haw! That villain thinks he can get rid of me, but he’s mistaken!” Then in the next picture the dynamite exploded and blew the steel box to bits. But that didn’t hurt the Super-Duper because the Super-Duper is
so
tough (tougher than steel) that
nothing
can hurt
him!
    “Just look at those muscles and that chest the Super-Duper’s got!” said Freddy before going on to the next picture. In the next picture the Super-Duper bounded up from the bottom of the ocean and went whizzing through the air. He caught the air-ship by the tail and broke it off with a loud
crack!
In the last picture the villain was trying to escape in an airplane, and was machine-gunning the Super-Duper, but the bullets were just bouncing off his chest because he was so tough. Then it said, “Continued on Monday.”
    “Boy!” said Freddy, “the Super-Duper can do anything!”
    “Yeh, but it’s only a story,” said Homer. “And the story’s always the same. The Super-Duper always hits things and breaks them up, and a villain always tries to bomb him, or shoot him with a cannon or a gun or an electric ray. Then he always rescues the pretty girl and gets the villain in the end.”
    “Well, it isn’t just a story,” said Freddy, “because Super-Duper’s in the movies too. They really take
movies
of him lifting battleships with one hand and even flying through space.”
    “Aw,” said Homer, “I read a book once that said they do that sort of thing with wires and mirrors. It’s just trick photography, that’s all it is.”
    Then little brother Louis, who had been eating cookies all this time said, “Read it to me!”
    So Freddy had to read it all over again, out loud, and explain the story to little Louis.
    “Freddy,” called Homer’s mother, “your mother just phoned and wants you to bring little Louis right home.”
    “O.K. C’mon, Louis, finish your milk. Good-by, Homer, and thank you for the cookies.”
    The next time Freddy came over to visit Homer he brought along some of his Super-Duper comic magazines.
    “Say, Homer, I thought you might like to look at these,” said Freddy.
    “Gosh, Freddy, you certainly have a lot of those comic magazines,” said Homer.
    “They don’t cost much,” said Freddy. “Only ten cents apiece. Here, read this one, Homer, it’s the most