CAPTAIN FLASHBACK
A fanzine composed for the 399th distribution of the Society Columns Turbo-Charged Party-Animal Amateur Press Association, from the joint membership of Andy The Wisconsin Historical Society Hooper and Carrie Root, residing at 11032 30th Ave. & The Wisconsin Magazine of History
NE Seattle, WA 98125. E-mail Andy at th [email protected], and you may reach Carrie at On or about the 19 of August 1970, my family [email protected]. This is a Drag Bunt Press and I arrived at our new home at 110 Spooner Production, completed on 9/22/2019. Street in Madison, Wisconsin. My parents had driven my not yet three-year-old sister and I in CAPTAIN FLASHBACK is devoted to old our 1969 Volkswagen camper van from our fanzines, monster movies, garage bands and other th previous abode in Morgantown, West Virginia. fascinating phenomena of the 20 Century. All On our first evening in the city, my Dad drove written material by Andy Hooper unless indicated. the van up over Observatory Hill so that we Contents of Issue #10: could look out over Lake Mendota and see Page 1: Society Columns: The Wisconsin Historical where we would make our new home and life. Society and The Wisconsin Magazine of History My memory is that we then drove up to the Page 2: Comments on Turbo-Apa #398 Capitol Square and visited the Badger Candy Page 5: Errata Department Kitchen for ice cream, one of the beloved rituals Page 6: A Key to Interlineations in Issue #9 of my Mother’s own youth; for we were moving Page 17: Fanmail from Some Flounder: Letters of Comment on CAPTAIN FLASHBACK into her home town, where both her Father and Page 18: I Remember Entropy Department: Mother had roots stretching back 3 generations. “The Worshippers” by Sid Birchby Reprinted from SMOKE #2, Nov. 1959 This was a heady, complicated transition for my Page 20: “Necessary to Invent” by Jerry Kaufman 8-year-old brain, and I was not enthusiastic at first. Although I was born in Lincoln Park, Michigan, I had thoroughly enjoyed the three long years we lived in Morgantown and had particularly resented leaving behind our little house in the big woods, with acres of undeveloped forest stretching out behind it. But my parents knew that if they stayed there, I would probably become a semi-feral hunter and fisherman like my Uncle Tom, and my school experience would not approach what I would have in Madison (or most anywhere else). And the same relative lack of opportunity would be even more oppressive to my sisters, with the second girl, Margaret, still in the
The Reading Room of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, 1908 [Continued on Page 6] ------Issue #10, September 2019 ------
1 ------I hate each Julie Andrews film they’ve made. ------Mailing Comments on Turbo-Apa #398: THINGS THA T BEGIN WITH OE, Jim Hudson: Jim, I’m still completely delighted that Cover (Hope Kiefer): A very suitable effort for you will be the new Official Editor of Turbo and the your last mandatory cover as outgoing OE. I I had nothing but positive reactions to all the wonder, out of just south of 400 covers in the ideas you have for its operation. Creating a history of the APA, how many of them have had combined .pdf version of each mailing is an a picture of one or more cats? I suppose it’s just intriguing possibility – it would allow Patrick to slightly ironic, given that the “Original Party read the apa long before the postal service can Animal” that brought the term into the American possibly deliver a paper copy to him, to offer lexicon, was a white pit bull named “Spuds just one example. I can see the deadline will be McKenzie.” It isn’t like we don’t have a few less theoretical under your regime and will do members that love dogs at least as much as cats, my best to help you speed things up. but somehow cats have had a virtual monopoly on the cover. Is this the result of conspiracy or I’m glad that you approve of my efforts to share manipulation by the Vatican Kremlin? As soon my Turbo-fanzines with a larger audience as Trump manages to track down all that through eFanzines.com. There are a few other widespread voter fraud, I hope he will turn his regular contributors – I’m looking at Jeanne and attention to this question next. Scott and Steven Vincent Johnson in particular – who might at least consider doing the same AFTERWords #33, Lisa Freitag: Your thing. I don’t know if we will ever attract exploration of music created to accompany anyone to join Turbo that way, but I feel good various anime productions was intriguing, but of sharing my stuff with at least a few people course I found myself wishing I could hear some beyond the copy count of 18. Who knows, of the selections. I always have the same feeling maybe one of the people writing letters of when I write about music, just wishing that I comment will consider joining and contributing. could find a way to make the piece I’m writing I have a brief original article by one-time Turbo- about play in the background while the reader Charger Jerry Kaufman elsewhere in this issue, reads my analysis. But I’m not a musician which feels like a small step in that direction. myself, so the idea of playing the pieces on piano in order to appreciate them better would AN WISCONZINE, Greg Rihn: Your coverage not occur to me. It does seem very much like my of the Milwaukee visit of the Union Pacific 4-8- practice of retyping pieces of fan-writing that I 8-4 “Big Boy” locomotive was very entertaining find particularly compelling. reading, and for once, I was genuinely envious of an event that you attended and reviewed. Are you familiar with the work of Jun Seba, who There is a “Big Boy” on display in Henry Ford’s worked under the name “Nujabes?” He was a great gallery of steam engines at the Greenfield remix artist, a DJ and producer who was Village Museum in Dearborn, and I think I tragically killed in a car accident in 2010. And would swear that it was at least as long as a city I’ve already gone on about him at some length in block. Back in the days when I was playing a lot the past. Although he has been gone for nearly a of “Railroad Tycoon,” one had to pay attention decade, his music continues to be highly if one decided to acquire one or more 4-8-8-4 inspirational to the current generation of hip-hop locos, as they were incredibly powerful but had composers in Japan. In July, Otakon presented a a fairly short operational life. If you let them run tribute concert featuring several of Nujabes’ for too long, the telltale sound of a boiler collaborators, including Shingo02, Eye-Q and explosion would soon reach the ear. I used to MINMI. It was apparently Zentasic. Anyway, I electrify the great majority of my line but leave just get lost in his compositions, and wonder if one section without power where my high-end you might like them too. steam locomotives would run back and forth
setting speed records. I really miss that game,
2 now that I think about it; I should see if there is have the framing device of Danny’s paper some sort of successor version for Windows 10. spaceship frenzy and Julie’s graduation ceremony when you told it in person. Collecting And whenever I hear that the Bristol these pieces now is going to be so much easier Renaissance Faire is still in operation, I’m quite th for you than it will be for some future literary amazed. This must be very close to their 40 executor, so if I can help you find anything else, Anniversary season, because they were 3 or 4 just let me know. And of course, the prospect of seasons in when I worked there in 1982. It must some memoir of that wild summer of 1987 is look very different now – I can’t imagine that more than I could ask for. Maybe I should see too many of the structures that were standing in what I can still remember about that trip to 1982 could possibly have lasted this long. Britain after 32 years. I know that Carrie
encountered Ross Pavlac in a launderette in OCCAM’S WHISKERS, Georgie Schnobrich: It Inverness, but the rest of trip is a bit blurry… sounds as if your tastes and the Wisconsin State I think your involvement in creating the profiles Fair have been evolving in different directions. I th of classmates for your 50 High School Reunion would think that some of the same tricks we use is a great way to avoid showing up and not to see various animals at the Woodland Park knowing who anyone is. Zoo would apply, including arriving as soon as they open up in the morning. Many of the SCOTT, the photos of your Grandfather, your animals are a lot more active before the crowds Mom and Dad and your Dad’s aircraft were all completely close in on them, and maybe some of wonderful to begin with, and very nicely the same effect would apply at the Fair. scanned and reprinted for us to enjoy. Just as there were a series of variants of the P-38 We’ve been talking about art made in a natural, fighter, there were also several reconnaissance outdoor context for a few issues – your variants. My guess would be that your Dad’s encouragement to give it a try is appreciated, but plane was an F-5A, which was an unarmed I find I’m puzzling over engineering. I’ve been version of the P-38G. The Lockheed Lightning thinking about bamboo, because we have a was the only twin engine fighter to be used in clump of it growing in our own yard, and there large numbers by American Air Forces during are other patches on the loose all around the the war. In Europe, they had persistent neighborhood. I have this image of frames and performance issues, due to “compression” boxes made with bamboo, but I know from problems that appeared at high speeds and in experience that lashing the stuff together is steep dives. In the Pacific, they were the Army’s harder than it looks. I’ll let you know if the deadliest fighter, generally operating at lower project ever makes it out of my head. altitudes, and outpacing their Japanese MADISON FOURSQUARE #33, Scott Custis opponents by 75 miles per hour. Part of the & Jeanne Gomoll: Gromf, what a pile of difference in performance was due to the use of comment hooks. Better just get at a few of them: American aviation fuel, which worked far better in the supercharged Allison engines than the JEANNE, I’m completely thrilled that you are British fuel available to pilots in Europe. trying to collect your fan-writing in a form that In the movie Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart’s can be accessed by someone other than character has a photograph of a reconnaissance obsessive collectors with a basement full of Lightning on his wall, but in conversation claims Twiltone. The piece from HARLOT #2 about to have merely taken aerial photos, while his your high school graduation was a good one the friend, now a Detective, drove the aircraft. If this for the occasion of your class reunion. I know I description is accurate, they were not actually have heard it a few times – Carrie reminds me flying in a Lightning, as only a handful of two- that you told it at the Storytelling Program we [Comments continue next page.] were both on at LonCon in 2014. But it didn’t ------I’m just a nasty, narrow-minded Jade. ------
3 ------We weren’t Democrats, we were sardines. ------Comments on Turbo-Apa #398, continued: MADISON FOURSQUARE #34, continued: the canoes around. As miserable as that latter man conversions were built, with the observer course would have been, there were a few times lying on his stomach in the bottom of the where we certainly should have done it. It fuselage. In real life almost all reconnaissance P- wasn’t “The River of Doubt,” but there were 38 variants were single-seat airplanes, with no some miserable evenings. Anyway, have fun! one to help the pilot navigate the aircraft, watch You and Jim Hudson did your best to break the out for enemy fighters or photograph the target. cat and dog monopoly on pictures in Turbo zines Pilots who could fly high, straight and fast, this month. The pictures of your resident swan without any help from a wing man or ground family were lovely. It must be interesting to control, were not that easy to find; no wonder watch the cygnets grow; in the pictures, they they gave your Dad the duty despite the fact that look like little beige adults, just as graceful as he was probably the largest fighter pilot in their parents. Our juvenile Osprey may finally captivity. Really, I have never heard of a man have left its childhood perch on top of the light your Dad’s size successfully flying a high- towers at the football field; I have not heard its performance fighter in the 1940s; the Air Corps loud and plaintive meeping for several days. was notorious for washing pilots out because they were too big, or at least sending them to the KN, Kim & Kathi Nash: The saga of the Frugal Transport service. In addition to his sense of Muse bookstore and its delayed re-opening direction, your Dad must have been very good at made my back hurt, and I’m still holding my math, and gotten high marks on his classroom breath a bit to see if they ever really re-open. work. Thanks for introducing us to him and your After all the suffering involved in moving the Mom as they were when they and their world inventory, I sure hope so. I’m still putting some was young…. money into books now and then, because of my persistent addiction to Osprey Press military COMING TO GRIPS #26, Walter Freitag: The history titles. But that’s such a specialized “bucket list” is a curious idea; we are collection that it takes a special retailer to help encouraged to aspire to do remarkable things, me find some that I don’t have. The Museum but apparently need the permission of our Store at the Boeing Museum of Flight used to be impending mortality to give ourselves something a great source, but when we visited there with that we want so much. That’s a bit weird, isn’t our niece Frieda in August, they had stopped it? But whatever your rationale, it is great to carrying them. read that you have finally decided to indulge in a proper kayak that won’t spin wildly every time It wasn’t clear to me if one of the buyers from you drop a paddle in the water. the Frugal Muse came to my parents’ house in August, but whomever it was took everything I did a fair amount of whitewater canoeing in my they had left. This impressed me, because teens, and thinking back on it now, I think I’d be looking over the books which my folks sent me, willing to portage for miles to avoid some of it was very clear just how intensely they had those experiences. A lot of it was just good fun, been loved over the years. My Dad’s copy of the with the opportunity to carry our bags around collected Sherlock Holmes stories has such a the rapids before we went down in otherwise broken spine that it feels like you could fan the empty canoes. But there were some trips on pages like a deck of cards. If the Muses – or rivers that were not as well mapped or had a anyone like them -- are able to find buyers for major part of their length outside of the National any portion of those books, I’ll be impressed. Forest. There were a few occasions where the choice seemed to be to run an unfamiliar set of CONJUNCTIVE DISORDERS, Cathy Gilligan: rapids or hack a path out of the trees and drag You commented to me that my parents house- moving seemed calculated to frustrate my plans
4 to cull some of the material culture from our FANDOMAIN TC #32, Patrick Ijima- home. The truth is that the five boxes full of Washburn: The combination of your happy stuff they sent easily disappeared onto our reports on daily family life and the curious shelves, with just a minor detour to refile the stream-of-consciousness breakdown on page 2 entire run of Turbo-Apa in order to make room. was slightly disorienting. I wondered which part I mentioned that part already, I’m sure, but one was one of your daughter’s dreams and which of the things I noticed while doing it was that I part was you breaking down under the effect of am missing about five out of 399 mailings. It your direct neural fanactivity interface. Is this made me ponder who was likely to have copies fanzine haunted? of them, and then to wondering how many When I was 7 I also used to have vivid dreams people have kept all their mailings. Do you? If about Christmas presents and there may have so, where do you keep them all? I have them been bad bears in them as well. But at a distance stored horizontally now, which seems to at least of fifty years, I can no longer remember if they keep them flat. spoke to me or not. I do remember that LETTER FROM THE FARM, Marilyn Holt: sometimes the dream was so vivid and The saga of how your new dog Kabu came to wonderful that I would wake up and go you was very interesting – and I can imagine she downstairs, where it was a terrible must find life in chilly Washington very, very disappointment to find neither presents nor a different from living outside in Tijuana. I’m glad Christmas tree in the living room. Does she ever that she has found someone who will care for fly in her dreams? When I was young I was her as deeply and thoroughly as you, Marilyn; always flying in my dreams, a kind of slow, no dog could hope to have a more loving mom wobbly, near-the-ground flight, where I would than you. I’m working my way backwards push off hard with my legs, but tended to pop through the mailing this time, so your story straight upward, and then float awkwardly back about 9-pound Kabu and the chain of custody to earth. And of course, bad bears and their ilk that brought her to you comes on top of the were always snapping around our feet as we Ijima-Washburn family’s dreams of talking tried to fly away. Scary dreams; the curious bears and phantom Christmas, so I find myself thing about them was that they more or less fantasizing that if you can just teach Kabu disappeared as soon as I learned to ride a English, she’ll be able to tell you her whole bicycle. Perhaps that was close enough to flying story…. to satisfy my subconscious. ------Once when I was a kid I cried because another kid had a nosebleed. Boy, I was something. ------Errata from CAPTAIN FLASHBACK #8 & #9: Additional Errata: As Jeanne Gomoll observed in MADISON Around 65 AD, Pliny the Elder wrote: “Beyond FOURSQUARE #34, I published an incorrect the Scythian Cannibals, in a certain large valley email address for Cheryl Cline, whose work of the Himalayas, there is a region called appeared in CF #7. The correct address is Abarimon where some forest-dwellers live who ([email protected]). have their feet turned back behind their legs; they run with extraordinary speed and wander In the “Apa Edition” of my comments on Turbo- far and wide with the wild animals. Baeton, Apa #397, I failed to include Tracy Benton in Alexander the Great’s road-surveyor, states that my list of one-time Turbo-Apa Official Editors. these people could not breathe in another climate The complete list, alphabetically: Jae Leslie and for that reason none had been brought to the Adams, Tracy Benton, Scott Custis, Andy neighboring kings, or to Alexander himself.” Hooper, Jim Hudson and Hope Kiefer & Karl Hailman . The correct list was published in the This does not appear to be true. “online edition” at EFanzines.com.
5 ------A Key to Linos published in August in CAPTAIN FLASHBACK #9: Page 2: “The Day Begins With The Parade of Corgis!” Copy in TV advertisement for events at Emerald Downs Racetrack in Auburn, Washington. Page 3: “We’re the fools standing close enough to touch those burning memories.” Lyric, “Looks Like We Made It,” by Barry Manilow (1976) Page 4: “Seymour doesn’t use semi colons. He says they make him queasy.” Mother Agnes Skinner (Tress MacNeille), S31, Ep. 7, Twerking Mom” The Simpsons Page 5: “I can assure you, there are some grumps in Major League Baseball.” An informed observation by WTBS baseball announcer Dennis Eckersley. Page 6: “He knows 62 words, no two alike.” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #29, Bill Rotsler, October 20th, 1955 Page 7: “That’s The Dirtiest Password I’ve heard since World War II.” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #29, Bill Rotsler, October 20th, 1955 Page 8: “MCMLIV? How do I know, I’m not a Roman.” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #29, Bill Rotsler, October 20th, 1955 Page 9: “Gregg Calkins brought a cheery robust charm and 200 pounds of fanzines.” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #33, Bill Rotsler, Spring 1956/April 1957 Page 10: “The front design of the ’56 Ford looks like a man playing a harmonica with both hands over his eyes.” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #29, Bill Rotsler, October 20th, 1955 Page 11: “We’re making payments on a half-gallon of gin.” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #33, Bill Rotsler, Spring 1956/April 1957 Page 12: “He is out in the foundry, casting aspersions.” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #33, attributed to Dean A Grennell, Spring 1956/April 1957 Page 13: I hope we don’t get into a wreck, I’m wearing an old bra.” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #34, Bill Rotsler, June 1957 Page 14: “Was this fanzine imported or deported?” Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #29, Bill Rotsler, October 20th, 1955 Page 15: I think in cosmic terms every chance I get. Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #34, Bill Rotsler, June 1957 Page 16: They’ll never get Burbee in a box. Interlineation, KTEIC magazine #33, attributed to Robert Bloch, Spring 1956/April 1957 ------Society Columns Richter and I could look straight into one [Continued from Page One:] another’s rooms from a distance of around 30 feet. I was grateful that the curious triangular planning stage. So I had to say goodbye to the shape of our block had led home owners to trout runs and the lady slippers, and soon found allow a small forest to sprout up along the back myself living in an actual town. line of their properties, and I spent quite a bit of As a Detroit native, I was not a genuine hillbilly, my time skulking in those trees as I took in my but our house on Spooner Street was the first I’d new surroundings. ever lived in with a sidewalk in front. The house Effigies of Antiquity where I had lived until I was five on Drexel When we lived in West Virginia, I was Avenue in Mount Clemens, Michigan, had a enthralled by the rich fossil beds found in almost shallow drainage ditch at the lip of the front every exposed limestone face and could even yard. In Morgantown, our lawn gave way find pieces of brachiopods and eurypterids in the directly to the shoulder of Tyrone Road, a busy gravel that made up our driveway. I had become rural route. But on Spooner Street, I would be a passionate fan of dinosauria of all types, and afforded the opportunity of shoveling snow off proudly told teachers that I intended to become a that sidewalk several hundred times. And where paleontologist. Wisconsin’s heavily glaciated my bedroom window had looked out on a thick terrain has relatively few surviving fossil beds line of trees that stood between us and our from the era when life was abundant on Earth. It neighbors, now, if we left the shades open Jeff has some examples of some of the oldest and
6 simplest fossils known, but it just did not have But this was only preamble to our trip down the the wealth of Ordovician and Mississippian wide flights of stairs to the basement, where the critters that I had come to love. Society’s Museum of History was then housed. Everyone who ever descended those stairs What Wisconsin seemed to have in abundance remembers two things – the “big pink bomb” a was a rich native American presence, both in the hollow mock-up of a 500 pound general purpose historical record, and at reservations and tourist aerial bomb used for training at Truax airfield attractions around the state. My Dad never failed during World War II. (It was painted pink to to stop at every “historical marker” that we help them find it after dropping it.) The other passed, and so I became aware of the Blackhawk was the display of worked flints collected by War, and how the forces of both sides had Professor Brown, Lyman Draper, Ruben Gold crossed over the Yahara River and passed Thwaites, and other early members of the through what would become the City of Society. Dozens and dozens of fine blades, Madison. And not long after, I began to see the points and tools, they spilled up the stairwells markers that Professor Charles E. Brown had between the museum floors, and gave the placed to point out the many effigy mounds that impression that at least as many more were held dot the city and county, a unique reminder of in their archive. people that lived in the district when Leonard DaVinci was born. With as yet no real The arrowhead collection was complimented by understanding of my own connection to the city, a series of meticulous diorama, portraying the I still began to take real pride in its unique lives of the earliest people to live in the region. assets. And in my second semester at school in These began with the archaic period and the Madison, Mrs. Garber and the other 4th and 5th mysterious “Old Copper Complex” culture that Grade teachers arranged a short field trip from was established in the Western Great Lakes Randall School to the Museum of the Wisconsin region by the time the first “city states” began to State Historical Society at 816 State Street. coalesce in Mesopotamia. As far as I was able to recall, West Virginia’s history went no father Mrs. Garber, who had been a kibbutznik and had back than Henry Clay, so I was firmly hooked. led the class in growing Jerusalem Cherries from And our local effigy mounds were fantastic seed, always tried to get a little more out of us enough, but then I saw models of the huge and for us; on that trip, she swore us all to Mississippian sites at Cahokia, and the smaller silence, and led us into the main reading room of but closer “Aztlan” at Lake Mills. They looked the Society’s colonnaded granite headquarters. like something straight out of a comic book – Several researchers looked up curiously, then something from the age of Conan the Barbarian, returned to the arcane tomes they had open in or at least Scrooge McDuck! front of them. A previously-enlisted Librarian came over and quietly pointed out the subjects The Society Ages of the paintings that adorned the walls; we This museum, which was located about a mile retained none of the information, but the and a quarter from my front door, soon became sequence of artists and statesman subjects one of my favorite places in Madison, along conveyed a sense of the dignity and age of the with Burnie’s Rock Shop, and the comic book Society itself, let alone our amazingly venerable racks that Bruce Ayres ran out of a rug shop on state, then more than one hundred years old! Monroe Street before he opened Capitol City West Virginia, having been born in the Comics. The museum was then free, so if we intersectional struggles of 1863, was 15 critical went for an ice cream cone at the Memorial years its junior, a fact I seized upon with delight. Union a few yards away (a recurring theme in [“Society Columns” continues next page.]
------A rococo clock with cops chasing crooks in circles and tumbling forth to chime the hour. ------
7 ------Henry Roe Cloud accepted the tablet in the name of the Winnebago, who were the original inhabitants of those lands. ------Society Columns archive was more difficult to house, and it [Continued from Page Seven:] wandered from the basement of the Society’s Director to several local churches, one of the Dairy state), I would beg for the chance to go Madison’s first school buildings and the State back down the stairs and stare at the diorama of Capitol. the flat-topped pyramid at Aztlan. I probably went through the place 20 or 30 times by the In the 1890s, Madison had grown into a city – a time I turned 12. small city, certainly – and several of its institutions needed new facilities. The Over time, I learned some of the history of the University of Wisconsin now had far too many Historical Society too. I was surprised to find students for its aging library, and scholars were out that it had been created in 1846, two years forced to study standing up. At the same time, before Wisconsin became a state. But there had the State Historical Society’s library had worn been little action by the Society until 1854, when out its welcome at the legislative library rooms it adopted its charter and appointed Lyman in the Capitol, and also needed a new home. The Copeland Draper (1815-1891) as its Recording Regents and Trustees collaborated on an elegant Secretary. He would serve in that capacity from and characteristically costly solution. A 1854 to 1886. A native of Westport, New York, handsome classical revival building with a Draper grew up hearing of the exploits of his beautiful colonnade of native granite, to serve as father and grandfather in the Revolutionary War both the headquarters and museum space of the and the War of 1812. His great ambition was to Historical Society and the University’s central write a history of the Trans-Allegheny frontier library. This ambitious structure would stand and the Wars with Native Nations in the Ohio right at the foot of Bascom Hill, the university’s Valley, and he corresponded with hundreds of traditional focus, and look up State Street at the survivors of the second half of the 1700s. While State Capitol – a geographical illustration of the he never completed his history, his letters are partnership between public and private interests still an important resource for those doing that still characterizes the Society today. It was research on what was then called “The Old dedicated and opened in the fall of 1900, the Northwest.” most expensive building to be constructed in the Many of the European-Americans in Wisconsin State of Wisconsin to that point. at the time of Statehood were Yankees from the By the time I first visited the museum in early North Atlantic states, and a similar interest in 1971, the University had moved its books and Colonial and Federal-era history. Early state reading spaces into the much larger Memorial historians were very concerned with recording Library immediately across the mall from the the lives of important citizens, including their older building. The State Historical Library was genealogical descent from noted Colonial quiet and generally underpopulated, a stark figures. Other members were most interested in contrast to the brisk business it had seen for the the natural history of the state, and an important previous seven decades. When my Grandfather minority were determined to document the was studying in a Pre-Med program in the late disappearing culture of Wisconsin’s pre- 1920s, I know he must have visited the library European inhabitants. Madison, which was many times and continued to do so as a student always the Society’s headquarters grew from a in “police science” in the 1930s. And for that village to a proper town between 1854 and 1865, matter, his father, his uncles and many of his and the society developed a set of public cousins had been employed as masons, stone collections of curios and artifacts, which were th cutters and bricklayers in 19 Century Madison; displayed at a Capitol Square bookstore into the the odds are good that one or more of them were 1870s. The Society’s much larger library and involved in the building of the Library Building.
8 I knew almost none of this in the 1970s, but still felt a trifle sad when the Society decided that they had outgrown their basement museum and had to find another home in central Madison at the end of the decade. They chose the old Wolff- Kubly-Hirsig Department Store building on the corner of State and Carroll Streets, and they have been there for more than 35 years now. Frankly, the new facility was essential for the preservation of exhibits of materials like textiles and paper, which were all slowly going brown in the humid basement of the old building. The Society has steadily improved the interior of the successor building over time, and the exhibits have evolved in concert with new standards of display and curatorship. When they first opened up, many of the old models and maps had been transferred over intact; over time, most were replaced with more nuanced and contemporary Naturally, Minnesota has a more impressive materials. private/public trust behind its Historical Society, The American Attic a relationship which is explicitly named in the The Wisconsin Historical Society is a highly State’s constitution. They have nearly 20 functional partnership between private and different historical sites under their direction. public interests; it is supported by the State The Minnesota history in downtown St. Paul is budget, but its Trustees, Directors and staff considered one of the city’s finest buildings. generally operate without direct government In other States, the “Historical Society” has a oversight. In addition to its museum and library, similar mission but a less ambitious portfolio of it also operates nearly a dozen historical and real estate under its control. Missouri’s interpretive sites around the State. The beautiful Historical Society concentrates its efforts on the old building at the foot of State Street is still in spectacular Missouri History Museum in the constant use, and people researching historical Forest Park complex in St. Louis, on the site of records, including their own genealogy, continue the 1904 World’s Fair. The Tennessee to visit it daily. Historical Society was a completely private While this co-operative model is not uncommon, organization into the 1920s, when the State it is by no means universal. Some States, like government committed to the publication of a Iowa, have historical agencies that are entirely quarterly Journal of History. The Society has contained within an arm of the State never had a building all its own and has had to Government, and do not have the same tradition deal with the rival East Tennessee Historical of grass-roots public fund-raising that has Society in its search for funds. But its collections characterized many attempts at preservation in are now safely housed in the Tennessee Museum Wisconsin. The Illinois State Historical Society of History and the Military Museum in the is a small and seemingly eccentric body, which Tennessee War Memorial building. was supported by public finds across much of its history but was “emancipated” in 1997. Under [“Society Columns” continues next page.] private direction, its only ongoing activity is the publication of an academic journal. ------Fashions of the future, modeled by science fiction’s most attractive women. ------
9 ------In anger unkind words are said that make the teardrops start ------Society Columns eventually resulted in a Code of Standards and [Continued from Page Nine:] Ethics for historians and curators that is now embraced across the field. Quite naturally, the nation’s oldest State Historical Society is in Massachusetts, where the Many of the founders and early trustees of Society met in the attic of Faneuil Hall for much America’s State historical societies were also of the 19th Century. The New York State members of the American Antiquarian Society, Historical Association – which is distinct from the oldest such organization to focus on the the New York Historical Society, still thriving history of the whole country. It began operating on 77th Street at Central Park West – ended its in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1812; by contrast 120 year existence in 2017, when it reconstituted the upstart American Historical Association only itself as the Fenimore Art Museum. Located in came on the scene in 1884. Cooperstown from 1939, the Association had a Magazine Fires troubled history, with chronic issues in I left Madison in 1992. Not long before, I had publishing their magazine. become sufficiently interested in the city’s history to begin paging through the microfilm The Arizona State Historical Society grew out of archive of the city’s newspapers at the public the Arizona Society of Pioneers, which came library and would surely have graduated to the into being in 1884. New Mexico’s Historical Historical Society archives had we not chosen to Society draws its lineage to 1859, and proudly move to Seattle. Within a few years, people proclaims it is the oldest such organization West would begin digitizing historical records and of the Mississippi River. It is now a completely making them available through the Internet. non-profit organization with no paid employees, Eventually, I would resume my research, and permanent offices or phone number, but across finally learned just how long my ancestors had its long history, it has provided a number of been associated with Madison, and all the places services for the people of New Mexico. It where they had lived and worked – places I had maintained the State archive until the State was walked by and spent time in, never knowing the ready to create its own facility in 1960. Much of historical connections I had to them. the contents of the Museum of New Mexico consisted of the Society’s collections when it But that process really did take a while to get was opened in the Palace of Governors in 1909. going – something like a decade, anyway. Back And the society operated several magazines and in the last years of the 20th Century, I had finally journals across its history including Old Santa become aware of the Wisconsin Historical Fe and The New Mexico Historical Review, Society’s other primary activity – publishing the which was turned over to the University of New Wisconsin Magazine of History, a quarterly that Mexico in 1963. Today the society concentrates has appeared continuously in a variety of forms on its annual conferences, which gather since September of 1917. The Society provides historians interested in the American Southwest. the magazine as a benefit of membership, and I There is, of course, a Society of Historical found it sufficiently entertaining that I have Societies too – The American Association for subscribed on and off for many years. Across State and Local History. It began as a division of that time, my parents have frequently been kind the American Historical Association, which enough to give me membership renewal as a gift founded it as the Conference of State and Local for Christmas or my birthday, so even if I were Historical Societies in 1904. The one likely to forget to renew, they keep me involved. Association seceded from the other in 1940. It I’ve seldom taken advantage of the entrance established a new headquarters in Nashville in discounts and other benefits attached to 1964 and began publishing a series of technical membership, but the magazine always gets put pamphlets four years later, a program that on top of the reading pile.
10 history magazine. The Wisconsin Historical This is one characteristic that almost every State Society (WHS) sends members a newsletter Historical Society or Association shares – the titled Columns, which trumpets the Society’s production of a magazine devoted to the history many galas, programs and special acquisitions, of the state and the region around it. The like the recent bequest of personal papers and Washington and Oregon Historical Societies collections by the respected television actor seem to have different priorities – in Daniel J. Travanti. Many Societies maintain Washington, the WSHS focuses its efforts on the their own Press and publish books on topics sprawling State History Museum in downtown connected to their state and its people. Tacoma, rotating a number of new exhibits in every year. The Oregon Historical Society also Across the 20th Century, the general trend was has permanent collections housed in a smaller for these history magazines to evolve from museum in downtown Portland; but it academic journals primarily meant for an specializes in traveling exhibits that appear at a audience of professional historians, to a more variety of museums and cultural sites around the popular form of writing about history, more state. OHS are particularly proud of their accessible to the average or lay reader. I’ve seen temperature-controlled warehouse in suburban this process at work in the Wisconsin Magazine Gresham, where the Society’s collections are of History, just in the relatively few decades I housed and archived when not on display, a have been reading it. In the early 1990s, it had scene out of Citizen Kane or Raiders of the Lost the proportions of a “digest,” with very thick, Ark. The warehouse replaces an older building very white paper in a package that was about 9 in Portland’s Pearl District, which the society inches by 6 inches. Color photos were generally sold for more than 12 million dollars, while the restricted to the cover, and whole trees died to Gresham facility cost them less than 4 million. create the generous margins that surrounded its This profit was important, because OHS relies narrow columns of rather formal text. In 2019, heavily on bond measures and voter referenda the magazine is as slick and colorful as for its funding, while the Washington History American Heritage and covers subjects that the Museum is supported directly by Washington’s schnapps-loving Badger state native will enjoy, State budget. like football and polka music, as well as more intense pieces on the social history of Despite differences in mission and resources, Wisconsin, with themes like slavery, suffrage both societies produce two rather similar and labor unrest. magazines, the Oregon Historical Quarterly, established in 1900, and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, which has been in operation since 1884. The latter might be a little glossier, with a little more color, and since 2018, it has been supplemented by a podcast on historic topics titled Columbia Conversations. But Oregon Historical Quarterly is also an impressive zine, with a particularly strong focus on maritime history and culture.
Almost all State Historical Associations have some kind of periodical to their credit; many publish more than one, with a society newsletter falling between issues of the more elaborate [“Society Columns” continues next page.]
------Why can’t I free your doubtful mind, and melt your cold cold heart? ------
11 ------I am a vehicle of divine know how. ------Society Columns extended community who had reason to pay [Continued from Page Eleven:] them social calls. Their grandson shares such details as the preference for Hills Brothers The March of History Coffee, as the can featured a man wearing a In the interest of illustrating the broad range of turban that closely resembled a hat much subjects covered by the Wisconsin Magazine of favored by Menominee men throughout the 19th History, I’m going to share a list of articles Century. The Weso kitchen was the scene of published over the past three years, with some many solemn meetings: “Many visitors were brief impressions of my favorite element in each relatives from the Mole Lake Ojibwe and Forest issue. Very sincere thanks again to Frank and County Potatwatomi who were heavily into the Judy Hooper, who keep renewing my old religion, which also was considered to be membership in the Society before I realize it is black magic. They were spooky, and no one due to run out. Hopefully, this will indicate how wanted to offend them.” much I appreciate that gift, and that the magazine is a continuing source of Volume 100, Number 3 Spring 2017 entertainment and education. The Editor for all Contents: issue is Sara E. Phillips. Re-Examining the American Pioneer Spirit The Extended Family of Laura Ingalls Wilder Volume 100, Number 2 Winter 2016-2017 By Jennifer Van Haaften Contents: Hemp The Children’s Code Wisconsin’s Forgotten Harvest Securing Due Process for the Children and By Dick Hildebrandt Families of Wisconsin Book Excerpt: Thousand Miler By Richard J. Phelps Adventures Hiking the Ice Age Trail “Thy Word Is a Lamp to My Feet” By Melanie Radzicki McManus The Lamp and Wisconsin’s Welsh Christian “Set Like a Gem in the Clasp of Four Silver Lakes” Endeavors This Wisconsin State Capitol at One Hundred By Robert Humphries By John Zimm Greetings in Wartime1 Indentured Children of the Wisconsin Public School The Greeting Card Collection at the Wisconsin By Jan Gregoire Coombs Historical Society By Simone Munson My Choice: Jennifer Van Haaften’s Wisconsin’s Good Neighbor investigation of the life stories of the ancestors Maestro Diego “Jimmy” Jones and the WPA and family relations of the author of Little Wisconsin Symphony House on the Prairie includes some rather dark By Charles V. Heath stuff that would have been right at home in Book Excerpt: Good Seeds Michael Lesy’s notorious 1974 photo essay A Menominee Indian Food Memoir Wisconsin Death Trip. By Thomas Pecore Weso Volume 100, Number 4 Summer 2017 My Choice: The story of conductor Diego Jones, The Centennial Issue who left Wisconsin for greater fame in Oaxaca, Contents: was entirely unfamiliar to me. But I was From Wheat to Dairy Farming and More completely drawn in by the excerpt from By Jerry Apps Thomas Pescore Weso’s kitchen memoir Good Three Degrees of Separation: Seeds. Weso’s grandfather, Moon Weso, was Wisconsin’s Environmental Legacy considered to be a medicine man, and his By Michael Edmonds grandparents carried a considerable burden of The Tenpin League of Women Bowlers hospitality to the many members of their By Erika Janik
12 Contested: Black Suffrage in Early Wisconsin My Choice: Longtime readers will find it By Christy Clark Pujara unsurprising that I was drawn to the account of a Iconic Wisconsin: How Images Shape Our naval disaster. The SS Lakeland was a large car Understanding of History ferry that foundered and sank off Sturgeon Bay By Joe Kaplan in December, 1924. The 27 people on board Adda F. Howie: “America’s Outstanding were all rescued by a nearby Coast Guard cutter, Woman Farmer” so all the mystery in the story lies with the By Nancy C. Unger reasons for the sinking. Divers using hard hat “A Fair Chance for All”: suits inspected the wreck in 1925, but it appears McGovern’s Progressivism that the questions of cause and liability were not By Michael E. Stevens settled by at least two trials, and possibly a third. Centennial Survey Results Modern investigations indicate that unsecured
th vehicles and open hatches led the vessel to sink My Choice: Everything in this 400 Quarterly quite spectacularly; observers said that portions issue is quite impressive, and the pages are of the superstructure were blown forty feet in the particularly thick with photographs, paintings, air by the explosion of air pockets trapped lithographs and other images of the state. But as inside, and the vessel broke in half when it usual, biographical material on a figure of whom struck the bottom of Lake Michigan, In 2013, I had never heard before was the best part of the members of the Nash Automobile club were issue. Adda Howie was a Milwaukee socialite enlisted to identify cars found in the wreck. who turned her attention to farming in her 40s and came to national prominence for her success Volume 101, Number 2 Winter 2017-2018 in bringing what were thought of as “women’s Contents: values” to the male-dominated business of Wireless Pioneer running a productive farm. A true celebrity of Edwin Bennett and Early Radio in Wisconsin the 1920s, she has been almost completely By Jeanne Heuser forgotten a century later. “Run it, and Let’s Get the Hell Out of Here”
Remembering the Ice Bowl Volume 101, Number 1 Autumn 2017 By John Zimm Contents: Book Excerpt: The Great War Comes to Wisconsin Pioneer Editor Sacrifice, Patriotism and Free Speech in a time of Pete Savage and the Iron River Pioneer Crisis By Zoe von Ende Lappin By Richard L. Pilfer with Marjorie Hannon Solving the Mystery of the SS Lakeland Pilfer By Paul E. Rackner, Tamara Thomsen and The Milwaukee Fourteen Richard J. Boyd. A Burning Protest against the Vietnam War Book Excerpt: The Wisconsin Capitol By Tim Thering Stories of a Monument and its People “To Care For Him Who Shall Have Borne the Battle” By Michael Edmonds The Milwaukee Soldiers Home Wisconsin’s Cold War Citizen Diplomats and By John Rothe the Salvadoran Civil War My Choice: John Zimm’s coverage of the By Molly Todd st In Search Of Northern Freedom December 31 1967 NFL Championship game, Black History in Milwaukee and Southern known forever as “The Ice Bowl” is excellent, Ontario, 1834-1864 but that was an event that was already fairly By Jaclyn Schultz familiar to me. I’ve seen NFL Films account of
[“Society Columns” ontinues next page.] ------My parents were fools that deserve the worms that burrow through their skulls. ------
13 ------Though he plays no instrument, Art Widner has sung professionally. ------Society Columns By Dave Webb [Continued from Page Thirteen:] A Yankee Whig in Milwaukee Rufus King Jr. and the City’s First Public Schools the game many times, and so many people have By Kyle P. Steele told me their recollections of the match that I Max and Eva Fernekes almost feel like I was there. Jeanne Heuser’s A Duet in Paint and Clay profile of radio pioneer Edwin Bennett was By Cliff Krainik much less familiar and contained a lot of “The World Walked in Milwaukee Leather” background on the development of the medium Hemlock and Wisconsin’s Tanning Industry in Wisconsin. By John Bates Volume 101, Number 3 Spring 2018 Book Excerpt: Taking Flight Contents: A History of Birds and People in the Heart of Puckety Chute America The Hard Luck Story of the Cazenovia and By Michael Edmonds Southern Railroad My Choice: So I guess people in Wisconsin play By Peter Shrake some sport besides football after all! Dave A Dash through the Sahara Webb’s account of the many challenges that Alonzo Pond’s First Algerian Expedition faced the City of Superior’s Northern League By Judith Siers-Poisson franchise makes the point that profitability was The Amateur’s Eye not the only criteria by which one ought to Daniel Bastian Nelson in Eau Claire measure success in a community-supported By Greg Kocken pastime like minor league baseball. Sidebars The Inimitable Clifford Lord also describe the Northern League experiences By Helmut von Knies of several hall-of-fame players who found Book Excerpt: How to Make a Life themselves playing in the deep woods on the A Tibetan Refugee Family and the Midwestern way up or back down from the major leagues. Woman they Adopted By Madeline Uraneck Volume 102, Number 1 Autumn 2018 Contents: My Choice: This issue was particularly The “University of Wausau” and the Perfect Season wonderful to look at. Some of Daniel Bastian by Matt Foss Nelson’s historic photos are allowed to fill up They Brought Their Beer half a page, and the images from Alonzo Pond’s German Brewing on the Wisconsin Frontier expedition to Algeria show an amazing details. By Dirk Hildebrandt The story of the expedition consumes 14 pages, “On, Wisconsin!” including a remarkable hand-tinted shot that Celebrating Camp Randall spreads across two pages to introduce the By John Zimm account. Judith Siers-Poisson does a very good Book Excerpt: Somos Latinas job of illustrating how attitudes and idea have Voices of Wisconsin Latina Activists changed in the century since the Beloit-based By Andrea Teresa Arenas and Eloisa Gomez group went to Algeria, but she also preserves the Abolition and the Law in Civil War Wisconsin real sense of adventure that drove the From Glover to Gillespie expedition’s members. By Grace Castagna Volume 101, Number 4 Summer 2018 My Choice: At this point, we might suspect that Contents: editor Phillips is conducting an experiment to The Baseball Blues see if the readers will ever reach a point where The Superior Blues and the Struggle for Survival they have read enough about football in in the Minors Wisconsin. Dirk Hildebrandt’s history of
14 German brewing in Wisconsin holds up the dedication ceremony at one of his effigy mound “other end” of Oktoberfest magnificently. The markers in Vilas Park with representatives of the photos of early brewers and breweries and Menominee people present. At the end of the reproduction of vintage beer labels are all very conference, Brown was made an honorary handsome. The story also indicates how central member of the Society. beer was to the life and culture of German- speaking Wisconsinites, and why Prohibition Volume 102, Number 3 Spring 2019 was always something of a ridiculous but Contents: dangerous joke in the state. The Jeffersons of Madison A Family’s Search for Identity in Early Wisconsin Volume 102, Number 2 Winter 2018-2019 By Sebastian Van Bastelaer Contents: A Very Superior Whale Amerca’s “Alien Enemies” The Rise and Fall of Alexander McDougall’s Registering as German in Wisconsin During Whalebacks World War I By Matthew Lawrence Daley By Lee Grady Rejoicing Everywhere Collecting for Victory Wisconsin Soldiers Return Home from World War I World War I Print Propaganda and the By Rachel Cordasco Wisconsin Historical Society All the Rage By Simone Munson The University of Wisconsin Mandolin Club The 1914 Meeting of the Society of American By John Zimm Indians at UW-Madison Book Excerpt: Madison in the Sixties By Larry Nesper By Stuart D. Levitan Henry Sink Settler, Soldier, Citizen By Victoria E. Tashjian and Jeff Kannel Book Excerpt: The Misunderstood Mission of Jean Nicolet Uncovering the Story of the 1634 Journey By Patrick J. Jung My Choice: Simone Munson is a WHS curator who specializes in features that revolve around materials drawn from the museum’s large collections; her pieces are always packed with interesting details and lovely images. But Larry Nesper’s account of the 1914 gathering of the Society of American Indians is amazing, haunting and to some extent inspiring. The suggestion of Apache representative Carlos Montezuma that Native Americans be loaded onto a ship in San Francisco and disembarked at Ellis Island where they would at last be seen as human beings, is heart-breaking. This was the first native rights organization that was entirely composed of native people, and 1914 was just their fourth annual conference. During the event, [“Society Columns” concludes next page.] WHS Museum Director Charles E. Brown, led a
------Langley Searles and Chan Davis are pianists for their own pleasure and edification only. ------
15 ------The Sofa is mightier than the Sword. ------Society Columns partner – and a husband -- that would encourage her [Continued from Page Fifteen:] interest in composing music and writing sings. Their first major success was the song “Country Boy,” My Choice: The publication of Stuart Levitan’s book recorded by Grand Old Opry star Little Jimmy on Madison in the 1960s is major event for those Dickens in 1949. They would go on to write many hit interested in the city’s history, and possibly the records including “Bye Bye Love,” “All I Have to Do events of their own youth. But the story of the is Dream” and “Rocky Top,” first recorded by the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Osborne Brothers in 1967, is one of the State of Hemmings is one with national significance. I Tennessee’s ten official State Songs. discovered William Beverley Jefferson on my own while researching the story of the development of Volume 103, Number 1 Autumn 2019 restaurants and hotels in Madison; not only did he Contents: manage the American House Hotel, he operated the When East Met West and a High School Football city’s first taxi service. But this story revealed that Rivalry Ruled Green Bay William had brought his family from Ohio to By Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen Wisconsin in a concerted effort to conceal their The Milton House and the Underground Railroad African-American heritage, and the possibility that By Doug Welch this secret would be revealed haunted his son John Homegrown Diva Wayles Jefferson, a decorated officer in the Union The Early Life of Olivia Monona army during the Civil War. The fact that John had to By Rachel S. Cardasco conceal his heritage in order to fight for emancipation National History Day Winner, Junior Division: is the kind of irony the magazine loves to present. The Bay View Tragedy Wisconsin’s Fight for the Eight-Hour Workday Volume 102, Number 4 Summer 2019 By Anna Pearce Contents: Book Excerpt: We’ve Been Here All Along Felice Scaduto Bryant Wisconsin’s Early Gay History From Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Rocky Top, By Richard J. Wagner Tennessee By Bobbie Malone My Choice: Rachel Cardasco’s biography of Lead, Slavery and Black Personhood in Wisconsin Olivia Monona, born Olivia Goldeberger in By Eugene H. Tesdahls Madison in 1889, is quite delightful and supported Belle LaFollette’s Fight for Women’s Suffrage by the huge trove of correspondence which she left Losing the Battle for Wisconsin, Winning the War behind after her death in 1976. Her grandfather for the Nation Benedict Goldenberger had come to Madison from By Nancy Unger Switzerland in 1858, and ran a cooperage and cider Eduard Frankl Picturing the Great War press out of his home in the 800 block of By Helmut M. Knies University Avenue. Olivia performed with a Book Excerpt: Proxmire: Bulldog of the Senate number of famous companies, including the New By Jonathan Kasparek York Metropolitan Opera, Madison took great pride in her accomplishments through the length of My Choice: Eugene Tesdahl’s article on the presence her career, but she lived in relative anonymity after of African-American slaves in southwestern returning to her hometown in the late 1960s. Wisconsin is a fascinating topic, and it leaves open the question of when slavery actually ceased within Coda: If you find any of these issues and articles of the territory. But Bobbie Malone’s profile of interest, the entire 102-year archive of the Boudleaux Bryant and Felice Scaduto Bryant, who Wisconsin Magazine of History is posted on the were in the first generation of Nashville songwriters Web, and all 2000+ articles it has published can be was a complete revelation. Felice Scaduto was born accessed for free. There are some unique benefits into a Sicilian immigrant family in Milwaukee and to that public/private partnership! had been recognized for her singing in local talent shows. But when she met the Moultrie, Georgia native Diodorius Boudleaux Bryant she found a
16
Fanmail from Some Flounder Department: Transparents, which really are yellow – well, Letters to CAPTAIN FLASHBACK greeny-yellow anyway. John Hertz I expect “She missed some of the scenes with 236 S.Coronado St., No. 409 the elephants” (also p. 12) to reappear Los Angeles, CA 90057 somewhere as a lino. 16 Sep 19 My Spikecon report is at
------Marge, I’m a little vexed with you. You promised me the next time I saw you, you would be as svelte as an antelope. ------I REMEMBER ENTROPY DEPARTMENT [This month’s reprint selection is “The Worshippers,” a report on the 1959 Southport Garden Show, written by Sid Birchby (1918 - 2001), and published in issue #2 (November 1959) of SMOKE, a fanzine edited by George Locke (1936-2019) out of Chelsea Gardens in London. Sidney Leonard Birchby was a passionate science fiction reader who joined active fandom in 1937. Although he missed out on the first meeting of sf fans in Leeds, he joined the Science Fiction Association and firmly believed that the genre would eventually take over the world. His home, and more importantly his collection was destroyed by a direct hit from a German bomb, but he continued to participate in fandom while in the service. He met with a group of fans stationed at No. 1 Signals School in Cranwell, a gathering known as the “Cranvention” and contributed to their fanzine, CRANFAN. Birchby remained in service for some years after the war ended, including a period stationed in Nairobi, and he met his wife while he was in the army. He took technical training after the war and worked for the city of Manchester as a surveyor but retired from that job in 1963, when he was still only 45 years old. As a young man, he was an amateur spelunker; later in life, he became a home winemaker, and was inspired to make Dandelion wine by Bradbury’s famous story of that name. While I first selected this piece from 1959, Carrie Root did all the work of retyping the text, and retraced the original art created by Joy Clarke. She did her best to reproduce the original layout of the two-page spread in SMOKE -- including a review of the movie The Mouse That Roared that Locke used to fill out the page. We both hope you enjoy it – as Carrie says, “It’s timeless.”
17 THE WORSHIPPERS BY SID BIRCHBY
The Southport Flower Show steamed and wilted under the dazzling August sun. In the distance, across a silted-up bay, I glimpsed the silver line of the sea’s edge, with one or two dots on it where non-gardeners were dunking hot feet. But the Southport Show, together with those held at Chelsea and Shrewsbury, is in the top rank of English summer shows, and only a few spare any time for the sea’s temptations while The Show is on. Away from the slicked-up stands where lounge-suited salesmen fondled the latest gadgets; away from the polythene pots for plants and the stainless steel spades, I found in a cool tent a crowd listening to a quiet-spoken man describing the work of a soil-conservation society. I fingered leaflets about the bumper crops obtainable with organic fertilisers; ‘How to make a compost heap’; ‘Putting life back into the Land’; and so on. “The soil is our precious heritage,” declared the speaker. “We should learn to work with Nature, not against her. The crowd rustled ecstatically in agreement. He had tapped the hidden spring of earth- worship that bubbles eternally in English hearts. Let no one, I thought, mention hydroponics here! In the big display tents, where commercial firms had their stands, the air of respectful admiration almost amounted to awe. The biggest crowds and the greatest praise centred on the ranks of gleaming, multicoloured vegetables, whose arrangers, mindful of the unusual shapes of their subjects, had raised up pyramids, fountains, and well-nigh volcanoes of vegetables, until the stands looked like a surrealist Aladdin’s cave.
18 Here were purple-black egg-plants, clustered together like the many- breasted black Diana of Ephesus; here the Martian-like squirting cucumbers, sap-green and prickly, with blood-red seeds the size of a toe-nail; here was the zany pea-bean, a runner bean with knobs on; here, tall columns of leeks spraying out of the floor like fountains. Ornamental gourds for Cubans to dance to; yellow, nut-like tomatoes for the gourmet; water-melons for ear washers; turnips the size of a Hallowe’en head. I joined the fascinated, murmuring throng as it moved among the marvels like a congregation at a church Harvest Festival, and with feelings not very different, I daresay; feelings which might well date back to any age since first men swung out of the trees some time in the late Palaeolithic. On the train home was a merry old greengrocer from Manchester. He had come to see the show, he told us, but some cronies had met him at the station, and he had got no further than the bar of the Station Hotel all day. But he had had a wonderful, alcoholic time, and they had put him back on the train clutching a bunch of flowers for his wife, and he assured us that Southport, and
its Flower Show, was “grand – right grand.”
THE MOUSE THAT ROARED. In the last issue, I mentioned a new film, with Peter Sellars starring, based on
the famous s-f novel of the same title. The film is very well worth seeing, and whilst not up to the book – what could be? – contains some very good
scenes. My favourite is Peter Seller’s take-off of the Prime Minister during the scene where he is taking the part of the Fenwickian P.M. Peter had
Mac Millan down to the last syllable. The ending of the film – where they all end up playing football with the bomb, is a little to farcical, though.
19 ------I’ve been on more diets than Arcaro has horses, but somehow I always get thrown before the finish line. ------Necessary to Invent When I began to attend conventions myself in By Jerry Kaufman 1966, there were few. I’ve ransacked my memories, pored through the Tricon progress I had some further thoughts about the Carl reports and program book, and browsed Jay Kay Brandon Society’s contention that “the existence Klein’s Convention Annual No. 4: Tricon Edition, of a lone, fictional black writer underscores the a photo memory book. (Wouldn’t it be fun to have fact that a fictional voice had to be invented for the previous three?) There’s Samuel R. “Chip” people of color, because we had none in fandom.” Delany at his very first convention, though Chip I mentioned in that letter that a few people on that was already a professional writer who’d never had discussion list dismissed this statement, saying any contact with fandom previously. There’s Elliot there were active African-American fans during K. Shorter, active club and convention fan, with the period “Carl Brandon” was active. guitar. There’s a young black man in tie and Someone on the list told a story about why glasses in several audience shots, though I don’t Brandon’s creators made him black. I don’t recall meeting him or if I ever saw him at another remember the details well, so here’s what con. I do recall meeting Carol Cross of Chicago, Fancyclopedia says: “Not long after Brandon’s though she’s not in any of the published photos, name was put on the FAPA waiting list, a but again, this may have been the only convention conservative member posed the hypothetical she attended. More research needed. question of what, if anything, FAPA might do if a That’s four people out of 850 (the official Negro applied for membership. ‘Carl’ wrote to say attendance according to the Long List of that it wasn’t a hypothetical question –- he was Worldcons that’s published in Worldcon Program black but hadn’t thought to mention it because he (or Memory or Souvenir) Books). And I don’t didn’t consider it important.” This implies to me recall any fanzine publishers or writers or artists of that in the mid-1950s, black fans, at least ones the time, aside from Elliot, who were black. My active in fanzines, were so rare that the possibility memory could be faulty, and there were certainly of one joining FAPA was simply speculative, and letterhacks and artists I never met personally who that the members knew of no one likely to fit the might have been African-American. Still, I think bill. So I think saying that “it was necessary to it’s safe to say that per capita participation by invent one” is essentially true. black folks in particular, and people of color I think it’s probable that there were black readers generally, was far below their numbers in the of science fiction all through sf’s history as a population at large. genre. The host of one of the New York Science I’ve always wondered why this was and have Fiction League chapters was black, as I believe never seen a satisfactory explanation. Was it Rob Hansen has discovered. It’s possible that primarily for economic reasons? Was it cultural? someone with time and access to genealogical Was the lack of black writers in genre, or the lack databases could track down the many letter writers of black heroes and realistic black characters, to featured in the sf pulps to discover their ethnic blame? Was it due to active bias from white fans, backgrounds, and this could be useful information. or subtler unconscious attitudes perceived as But were there black men and women involved in unwelcoming? I’ve seen all these suggested, but in active fandom, attending conventions and speculation and anecdote, and not very participating in fanzines? Andy pointed me to a persuasively. Despite many panel discussions at Fancylcopedia article on Beatley’s, the motel cons and articles in fanzines, this remains for me a venue for Midwestcons, which mentions one Bev vexing question. Clark, turned away because Beatley’s would not rent to African-Americans.
------Original art by Ulrika O’Brien (page 11). ------
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