One of these days, 142-year-old Nugget Pete is going to ego-surf his own name through Google and find this post.
So a couple of weeks ago I was talking about a Sugar and Spike story dedicated to “Nugget Pete,” a 90-something year old gent who’d been writing in and requesting an S&S story featuring Native Americans.
Well, longtime Ruinite C. Elam popped into the comments on that post to drop in a couple of message board links giving us a little more detail on Mr. N. Pete. Those message board entries were made only days after my own initial posting, so clearly the Nugget Pete zeitgeist was making its way across the comics nerdinet.
The first features a Sugar and Spike letter column containing what seems to be Nugget Pete’s first letter to the series, written back when Pete was but a strapping young lad of 87. And, sure enough, he’s asking for stories with Native Americans. “I suggest you put in something about cowboys and Indians – That never hurt a magazine yet.” …Words to live by!
The second link has another S&S letter column, this time from another fan (this one only 75 years old!) referring back to Nugget Pete’s letter and wondering if that was any inspiration for the grandpa/cowboy character Shelly Mayer introduced into the S&S strip. Mayer’s response, paraphrased: “yeah, probably.”
Anyway, that was a nice follow-up to what was (to me, anyway) an interesting tidbit of funnybook history. Thanks, C. Elam, for pointing that out to me!
Am I horrible for suspecting that ‘Nugget’ was, pre-publication, a similar word with an N, two g’s, and an e?
He leased a ranch called “Nuggethead”.
You are welcome, Mike! I like to think there is a little bit of Nugget Pete, crusty old former prospector who also reads DC Comics, in all of us.
(I still wonder what the story was there. If it was someone’s idea of a joke, they kept it up for years. If it was somehow real, I am…amazed.)
As good a thread as any to mention that, with the release of the recent Archives, as well as digging out the old digest and a couple other reprints, I’ve been reading Sugar & Spike to my five-year-old son at bedtime. I’m not sure who’s enjoying the stories more, him or me! They’re thoroughly charming, timeless, and well-observed. Great stuff.