Another Incredible Comics Collection + Chuck's Farm History Howdy! Will and Pam just purchased two more great collections of nice older comics. Given that you joined this newsletter because you are a fan of old comic books, letting you view new options of great back issues that you might wish to add into your collection supersedes pretty much anything else that I might have to say. I have been receiving a lot of requests for information about other aspects of my personal life, however, so I am going to briefly provide you with some background on me, and our family farm. If you have no interest in my tale, just skip to the end. Farm Photo To begin, my wife Nanette, and I moved our brood of four young daughters to an overgrazed 32-acre cattle ranch on the northeast end of Boulder, Colorado in late 1990. We had already been successfully growing organic vegetables to sell at the newly-formed Boulder County Farmer's Market beginning in 1987, but had totally run out of expansion space on the 25,000 square feet of land that came with our home on Boulder's ritzy upper west side. The good news is that a developer wanted to scrape off our truly mediocre old house on the west side, and replace it with a $600,000 custom. He offered to arrange a deal where we could sell our old house to him, and immediately receive enough in exchange to almost cover the entire purchase price of our proposed new farm. It was a great deal! Farm Photo That having been said, two factors complicated our purchase. First, was Wal-Mart. A real estate developer who claimed to be working for them contacted our sellers while we were under contract, and offered them a $20,000 cash bonus if they would sell to him, instead. The longtime Boulder family who had been ranching our farm liked us, and wanted their land to stay in agriculture, so they refused his offer. That same man then called me after our closing, and offered me $20,000 to immediately flip the farm to him. I also refused. Twenty-nine years later, Boulder is completely "built out," and Wal-Mart only found enough room for a little neighborhood outlet before all the buildable land was totally gone. Not getting our farm was a great loss for them, but an enormous win for Boulder, Farm Photo The second complicating factor about our farm is that the soil is a class IIB soil, which is fairly mediocre (at best), made up of a tight matrix of stones and Bentonite clay. Rock hard when dry, it turns to sticky gray madness when wet. This compaction was made even worse by 50 years of non-stop grazing by cattle. In order for me to even begin to grow vegetables in this tough soil, we first had to bring in a huge four-bottom plow to break the compacted surface, and then add (by hand) hundreds of tons of organic material including leaves, spoiled hay, and endless truckloads of manure. Farm Photo This work to enhance our soil was so hard that it really was purely a labor of love. No way did our recompense from the sale of our veggies ever compensate me for the endless 16-hour days I put in each spring and summer. I was young and ambitious, however, and fell deeply in love with our beautiful land. After the second year, I banished the cattle, and made it my goal to restore our entire 1.4 million square foot ecosystem into an organic paradise, filled with thousands of birds and small mammals. By the 13th year, I did manage to get our annual farm revenues up to $40,000.00, and was well on my way toward reviving the wildlife aspects of our paradise through careful propagation of plant species (such as wild plums) that provided nutrition for those creatures seeking refuge on our land. Then, in 2003, disaster struck. Farm Photo On the evening of August 11th, 2003, I drove 400 miles south to Santa Fe, New Mexico in order to participate in the annual "Feast Day" celebrations at Santa Clara Pueblo. My drive down was nothing abnormal, except that I felt a little more tired upon arrival. The next morning, however, I awoke in my motel room feeling incredibly tired, and a little nauseous. I managed to choke down some coffee, and then drove the 20 miles to the Pueblo, just outside of Espanola. As I watched the sacred Santa Clara dances my mind began to wander, and by mid-afternoon, I was full-on hallucinating. I apologized, begged off from participating in the celebratory dinner with my friends, and immediately started driving the 400 miles home to Boulder. Farm Photo I still don't know how I made it without wrecking my van, but by 9 PM that evening I was undergoing tests in the Emergency Room of Boulder Community Hospital. The doctor informed me that they strongly suspected West Nile Fever, which I most likely contracted from an infected mosquito out at our farm, approximately ten days prior. They told me that there was no treatment or cure, and that I just had to hope that I was one of the lucky people (90%+) who recovered almost immediately. Sadly, I turned out to be in the less than 2% of the West Nile population that suffers extreme illness. I was not among the 64 people who died of West Nile in Colorado in 2003, but it took me over three years to fully recover my cognitive abilities after a savage battle with encephalitis (brain swelling). Then, two years later things got much, much worse for me. To be continued... Below are a few representative photos of desirable comics from the wonderful comics collections that Will and Pam purchased today. Most will be appearing for the first time in our Premium New-In-Stock link on our website at approximately at noon on Saturday 7/27, with even more showing up all of next week. All are available to you at 60% off of our list prices when you utilize our ongoing SUMMER! codeword. Only new issues, a few variants, and our professionally-graded back issues are excluded from the huge SUMMER! comics sale. Please enjoy perusing these great new arrivals with our sincere thanks for your kindness and support of Mile High Comics. Recently purchased comics Recently purchased comics Recently purchased comics Recently purchased comics Recently purchased comics Happy collecting! Chuck Rozanski/Bettie Pages, President - Mile High Comics, Inc. July 26, 2019 Current Newsletter