RIVER CITY JOURNAL: PLEASE, DON'T LET JUST ANY OLD SLOB PLAY SUPERMAN

* I'd do it myself if I only had to suck in my gut for a couple of minutes. But for four days?

When I saw the story in the paper Tuesday about how the city of Metropolis is looking for someone to be Superman for four days in June, I thought to myself, Well, there's something you haven't tried yet.

Then I said to myself, Darn, I can't do it after all. I don't have jet-black hair. And I don't have a spit curl.

I do have a widow's peak, though.

If you hear of any opportunities for someone with a widow's peak, please get in touch with me.

It just so happens that I'm a big fan of Superman. When I learned to read, I started hanging out at Toney's Rexall Drugs on Saturday afternoons in my favorite hometown.

Toney's, which just closed a couple of years ago after more than a century of dispensing pills and potions to the good people of the Ozarks, was much more than a drugstore. It was the social heart of town.

Sure, churches were a mainstay of my hometown. Everybody went to church. Some of us went Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night every week. I was always envious of the Methodists, because they could watch "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Sunday nights. And I thought the Catholics got off easy too, even though they had to eat macaroni and cheese every Friday.

OK. I see I said some things right there that probably need to be explained.

First, I know envy is not good. But if you're from Kelo Valley and have to milk a cow every morning and every night (even on Sunday nights and prayer-meeting nights) and your town friends don't have to do anything but go to Toney's Rexall Drugs for a Coke float, you can see how envy could creep in.

Second, I don't have a thing against Methodists. I married a Methodist, and that was even before I found out she possessed THE recipe for Wesley Chili, which can either feed an entire youth group or keep me happy for a couple of days.

Third, I don't have anything against macaroni and cheese either. It happens to be one of my favorite food groups, which is another reason I couldn't play Superman for four days. Little kids who worship superheroes might have their little psyches dented if they saw a white-haired Superman with a widow's peak whose midriff is the biggest muscle he's got under those tight pajamas. I think you get the picture, and it's not pretty.

Back to Toney's. It was much like the drugstores of the 1950s you could find in any town. It had a long counter with stools where you could get good things to eat. There were some booths farther back where you could relax over a malt (always served with a creme-filled sandwich cookie) and gossip about anyone who wasn't there. The other half of the long drugstore was divided between cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

The thing I remember most about Toney's is how the smells of grilled-cheese sandwiches, cologne, cigarette smoke and antacids all blended together into something special: the drugstore aroma.

Toney's was the first business in town to have refrigerated air. The sign on the door said Come On In, It's Kool Inside. We didn't know at the time that breathing unnaturally cold air would mean severe health problems later on in life. We thought it was the cigarettes.

Most of all, Toney's was where boys could go after a Saturday matinee and a trip to the Ben Franklin penny-candy counter to spend the rest of his weekly allowance -- a whole quarter -- on comic books.

Gosh. A quarter went a long way, didn't it?

Near the back of Toney's was a rack of magazines. And at the end of the magazines was one of those spinning display racks with all the latest comics.

I knew from visits to my city cousins that there were -- out there in the big, bad world -- drugstores with spinning racks of comic books with signs that said If You Read 'Em, You Buy 'Em. And clerks in tortoise-rim glasses would grab you by the ears if they saw you flipping through the comics and putting them back in the stand.

The folks at Toney's never did that. I guess that was, in a way, their contribution to literacy. Or maybe they understood how grabbing a kid by his ears might keep the kid's parents from getting their prescriptions filled or buying chocolate malts. Whatever their reasoning, a farm boy could forget milk cows and fence mending and hoeing for awhile every Saturday afternoon and spend some quality time with Superman, who was always right and always made sure evil-doers got what they deserved.

That's a lot like we learned in Sunday school, but they called Superman by another name.

I don't have any of those old comic books. If I still had them, I'd be retired. I wouldn't give part-time work in Metropolis a second thought.

But I still have my memories of Toney's Rexall Drugs. I can still smell the refrigerated air on a hot summer afternoon. I can still taste the chocolate malts and the creme-filled sandwich cookies. I still can see that nice red-haired Sheila waiting on customers and making them all feel like welcome guests in a very special place in a very special town in a very special time.

I'm still a big fan of Superman. I hope Metropolis finds the right guy to put on the suit and cape. I hope he hasn't had as many chocolate malts and creme-filled sandwich cookies as I have.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.