I haven’t yet seen the Netflix mini-series The Queen’s Gambit. It has, along with sheltering in place at home from the coronavirus, reportedly greatly increased demand for chess sets. Actual, physical boards and pieces.
Me? I’ve been playing Electronic Hand-Held Battleship. A gift for my son many years ago, that he no longer plays, now with a new CR2032 battery.
Yesterday I received my copy of Atlas at War!, an excellent collection of pre-Marvel war comics. The book includes six stories illustrated by Joe Sinnott, whose passing continues to sadden me.
I am enjoying the Atlas war book, and the recently released Marvel mini-comics book, and the new CD compilation of psychedelic singles from the defunct White Whale record label. I am looking forward to an upcoming graphic novel illustrated by Colleen Doran and, most of all, a companion book to Peter Jackson’s long-anticipated re-release of Let It Be in a greatly expanded edition.
But I have a problem with all of this enjoyment by acquisition. It goes back to everything I had to do after my father’s death, nearly three years ago. One part of that was the monumental amount of work clearing everything out of the house. It was a painful process, from first shipping the items that were wanted by my siblings, through making the threat of legal action to get money from the company that ran the estate sale. Dealing with the Kia dealership in Peoria, Arizona that bought my father’s 2014 Soul was a comparable nightmare.
My point is that, being an old retired guy, I want to begin the process of de-cluttering my possessions and, in turn, my life. Buying more stuff isn’t the way to do that.
The 1971 World Science Fiction Convention, aka Noreascon, was my first fan convention. I wouldn’t have been able to attend if I didn’t have more money than I’d ever had in my life. How did I get the money? I worked, for one night only, as a carny.
A town fair was held at the end of each school year. After the 10th grade I attended the last night of the fair with money earned by filling in for my sister, who had double-booked a babysitting job. Word got around that the carnival operator was hiring helpers to shut down the operation. Fifty bucks for however long it took to get everything done. As I recall, they didn’t have many takers, and I was hired.
What a night that was! They put me to work doing all sorts of things from picking up trash to loading trucks. What I remember best was helping to take some of the rides apart. Taking down the Ferris wheel was difficult and dangerous, but it all turned out OK. No, I wasn’t tempted to run away from home and join the circus!
I forget exactly when we were finished, but I recall the sun was starting to come up as I walked home. Exhausted and absolutely filthy, I was genuinely surprised that the crew — a rough bunch, to be sure — said I had done a good job. I was handed $50 in cash, equivalent to almost $350 today, and that was my spending money for Noreascon. A month after the convention, I started a part-time job washing dishes.
The summer of ’65 is a source of fond childhood memories. I saw the Beatles in HELP!, and my eldest sister attended the first Beatles concert at Shea Stadium. I was captivated by an original James Bond Aston Martin DB5 that was on display over a weekend at a local shopping center, as a promotion for Thunderball.
The biggest event that summer was my family going to the New York World’s Fair. We were there for only one day, but I was enthralled by the fair and the memories remain vivid. As a kid, I knew nothing about the fair’s contentious origin or its controversial promoter, but the presence of Walt Disney couldn’t be mistaken or missed.
The problem with old family snapshots is they don’t document themselves and, when there’s a note, it assumes knowledge on the part of the viewer. That guy in front resembled myself as a young guy, but he couldn’t have been my father, who enlisted in the Navy after turning 17 at the start of 1945, and was part of the Japan Occupation Force. The men in this picture were soldiers, not sailors.
Regardless of the family connection, whatever that may be, the questions are, what was the ship, and what happened after it reached Guam, assuming it did?
Follow-up: Were they Marines, and not Army? I’m told the caps might tell the story.
Follow-up: Mystery solved. The guy in back looked enough like my late father-in-law that I looked up his brother, also deceased, and that’s him. To my surprise, given the fatigues they were wearing, he was a Navy Seabee.
After my freshman year of high school, until I left for college in Western Massachusetts, I mostly listened to WBCN, the legendary alternative radio station in Boston at 104.1 FM. ‘BCN was where I first heard David Bowie, Ten Years After and Captain Beefheart, along with the comedy troupes Firesign Theatre and Monty Python. Progressive music was well-represented on WBCN, and I remember enjoying this King Crimson record in particular.
