Fast forward to 1964 when I got my hot little hands on a Philadelphia phone book. I turned to the JUDO heading. There should have been Jiu Jitsu schools listed there, but there weren’t. There was a Judo school and something else: K-A-R-A-T-E? What in the world was that?

I knew that it had something to do with Jiu Jitsu, because it was in the same section of the phone book. I thought I had even seen something about it in the back of a comic book next to the strong man ads.

I dug out some comics and, sure enough, I found that I could learn Karate and be “the deadliest man on earth” in just two weeks for only 99 cents. And here I had been practicing jiu jitsu for nearly two years, and I wasn’t “deadly” at all!

O-K. Even as a kid I knew that things presented in the back pages of comic books were usually not as advertised. But this karate interested me, largely because I could get to the school. The problem with Jenkintown was that someone would have to drive me to and from the school. But, via some bus connections and a ride on the Germantown Ave. trolley, I could get to the Shuto Karate Club all by myself.