I was a teenage stripling at the onset of America’s last patriotic war.  Pure of mind and heart and as simple as the lever, as you might surmise from that statement, I was truly pure and simple, a second generation De Leonian.

Steve Rogers had the years on me, being of 1017 vintage and old enough to volunteer for the armed resistance to the original Axis of Evil and their ambition to take over the operation of Planet Earth.  His parents were Sarah and Joseph Rogers who had emigrated from Ireland.

Steve was a fledgling fine arts student and as skinny as a bean pole, so the US Army culled him and classified him as 4F.

As Steve rose and held back a tear an officer engaged him in conversation, and wound up by asking if he was brave enough for an experiment that might gain him the opportunity to join the colors.

“I’m game,” Steve responded immediately.

“A scientist who had fled before Hitler’s roundup of the sworn threat to Germany had developed a serum that might—just might—result in the creation of the ultimate warrior.  The covert code name for a top secret defense operation, Rebirth, was the official nomenclature, and Dr. Reinstein was the creative genius responsible for the formula and development of the project.

Dr. Reinstein had accumulated a number of imperfects to choose from and Steve Rogers was selected to test for the Super Soldier serum.

The laboratory was well lighted and as quiet as a tomb, and behind a glassed partition the top brass watched in awe as Steve receives the injection and oral ingestions.  Then he is exposed to controlled pulses of Vita Rays which activated and stabilized the chemicals in his frail body.  The assemblage of observers watched, as Steve morphed in microseconds, from a scrawny lad to an almost perfect human being.  His magnificent musculature would eclipse Arnold Schwarzenegger.  A gasp went up from the viewers in the gallery.

Bedlam ensued and a crazed Nazi burst into the lab and puts a bullet through Reinstein’s head.  Before he can turn his weapon on Steve Rogers, Steve expertly erases him from the earth.

Unfortunately, Dr. Reinstein kept a key ingredient in his head, and Steve Rogers was the sole beneficiary of the Super Soldier vaccine.  The U.S. Government opted to bestow the classification of counter intelligence agent on Steve Rogers and promoted him to the rank of Captain.  His uniform was modeled from the flag, and Franklin D. Roosevelt presented him with a bullet proof shield, a personal sidearm and the code name of Captain America.

There’s a heap more I could tell you, but I’ve run smack out of space for this communication, so I’ll leave you with the heartbreaking crawl I read on CNN on the tenth day of February.  Captain America died a violent death, probably at the hands of a minion of the newest edition of the Axis of Evil.  But do not despair—each time Batman’s circulation wanes a life restoring panacea has been concocted to get a new beginning.

Yes, I read every comic book I could lay hands on back in my youth, plus most of the hard stuff available at the De Leon Library.

Classify me any way you choose, but I yet prefer a good (or bad) book to the viewing of America Idol.

Let me hear from you.

My phone number is 254-893-5063, my official postal address is: 333 W AYERS AVE – DE LEON TX 76444-2113, and you can e-mail chupp@charleschupp.com.