 San Diego Comic Con- Once again Forry whipped out his magic mailing list and spread the word about the shiny new event on the horizon: a Comic-Convention in San Diego! And thus,
- The U.S. Grant was a splendid old tyme hotel and afforded a new thrill meeting an entirely engaging, inviting, much more hospitable and much less smelly facet of fandom. And here was a chance to meet fans more like myself
- I remember little about the con itself, but one night, with a handful of friends, we found ourselves in a dark and uninhabited, lower level bar area with a cooler full of bottled beer to which we liberally assaulted. There was a ladder running up the wall through the upper floor onto which one of the fellows applied his best Jack and the Beanstalk and disappeared through the hole in the ceiling. He returned with two lemon meringue pies. Hey, what a great night!
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- Let us not forget another budding con that will prove an equal longevity: BoucherCon. Initiated this same year in Santa Monica and whose GoH was long standing Count Dracula Society member: Robert Bloch.
- 1971 - Moving On
- The Bruckers absolutely refused to advertise their museum. Days would go by; 2-3 groups would come in, I don't think there was ever more than a half dozen people in the place at one time, much less in a day and I thought they were squandering all this cool stuff.
- Von Dutch (Kenny Howard), pulled up in his beat up bus and started working for the Bruckers. He was a cranky sort who looked like he didn't have two nickels to rub together, and he didn't. But he was ever creative and constructed the most amazing things, from machine gun pistols, knives, motorcycles and even a steam powered television.
- He had access to property in Lancaster where he would fire his machine guns, but he had little use for party guys like myself.
  Movieworld seemed like a dead end and wouldn't it be long before I quit; but not before I got them to pay printing costs for my fanzine, Odessey. Printed entirely by a new Xeroxing device, with a front cover by Gray Morrow and back cover by Ed Roth. This 24 pager with stories, movie and con reviews was my first fanzine that looked like a real zine. 250 copies were printed and handed out at Westercon 24 in San Francisco.- In the end, Ed Roth moved on to work for "Knott's Berry Farm", later getting religion and moving to Manti, Utah where he died in 2001, outliving his pal Kenny by two years. Movieworld closed their doors, packed up all their cars and headed back to their ranch in Santa Paula.
- Skip, the guy who ran the model shop and I kept in touch afterwards.
- He had an interesting sideline making historical fakes. One of the great swindles was Hindenberg artifacts. He faked stationary and envelopes; actually had antique German typewriters, exacting rubber stamps and bottles of genuine vintage German ink. Hindenberg passenger lists are readily available and it wasn't hard to fake burned stationary. His main project was making stationary seemingly burned in the crash of the Hindenberg.
- The deal would work thusly; we would take an old shoe box and toss in a load of worthless German stamps, then put in one of the fake envelopes. I would walk into a stamp and coin or antique store and say "My father died and I found this box of stamps, is it worth anything?" They would pour over the stuff and suddenly light up seeing an object of some value. Not once did anyone let me know I had a potential collectors item and they'd offer $10 or $20 for everything. I'd say" Oh well if that's all it's worth, I'd sooner keep my father's stamps". Then they'd offer $50 to $100, Sold!
- I'd go back to the car where we'd fix up another box and move to the next shop. By the end of the day, we'd wind up with near $1000 for a day's work. Skip's philosophy was, "If you don't tell them it's real, you ain't lying and if they think they're cheating you, they get what they deserve!".
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