God forbid Don should have a good time, calling it quits early and would not be back. I had a great time and was looking forward to the next day and all this impending fannishness. I had some soul searching to do for it was either the Westercon or attend the traditional Crummy Loogie Bomb event.
I opted for Westercon.
Diane and Bruce Pelz
Sylvia Dees and Me
Don and Katya Hulan
Starship Troopers
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Was getting a late start on Sunday; Jim and Jerry wanted to go back to the convention and offered to drive. There was a momentary impediment to our evening which had been resolved By the time I got to Jim's. His sister had shown up and decided to hit the town with the mom, leaving her 6 year old kid in Jim's care. Things looked grim.
"So where's the kid?" I asked.
"He's with the babysitter" Jim replied.
"I thought YOU were the babysitter". Said I.
Jim opened the door of the coat closet in the hallway and said "Meet the babysitter" and here was the kid. . . gagged and hog-tied on the floor.
"You realize if this kid grows up he's going to beat the crap out of you" I offered.
"Well" said Jim, "I have things to do."
John showed up just in time and ready to go.
"I got'er started" said Jerry coming through the kitchen door. He had hot-wired the sister's car and off we went, hoodlums leaving a hostage in the closet and driving a stolen car.
All I remember from this night was discovering the parties. Frankly, I had never been completely stewed before, but all four of us were, in the nicest sense of the word: "shitfaced". Clearly, cheap drunks all and I found when in this condition I become mellow and contemplative. Jim swore he could fly and ran about the parking lot leaping into the air. At some point, I lost everyone which only became a concern when I returned to the parking lot to find the car had vanished!
"Holy crap, I've been left behind!"
It would be a long, long night and one hell of a walk. I may have been walking for hours when I heard a peculiar 'beep, beep" behind me. It was John - he too had been left behind and not up for the walk, had "borrowed" the hotel's utility cart. I hopped on and off we went. Not fast, but it beat walking. He dropped me off at my place and disappeared into what was left of the night.
Long Beach Press Telegram Article on Westercon 18 .
The Alternative
A few days after the convention I got the full report about July 4th and the Crummy Loogie Bomb which I will relate at this time. All things went as tradition demands, placing of the Sacred Container (this time a 33 gallon aluminum garbage can) in the equally Sacred position (the middle of the street) touching off the sacred fuse and running like hell. The garbage can ceased to exist in the wink of an eye except for a handle which was stuck in the side of a tree. One spectator a half block away had a minor cut from shrapnel, several windows were blown out and a goodly sized crater was put in the ground. Someone called the fire department but by the time they showed up, there was nothing but a cloud of sulfur covering the entire neighborhood. Turns out this bomb was more of a statement than an attraction. I'm glad I wasn't there.
Wrapping Up 1965
All tolled, it was a hell of a year and there was still some time on the clock.
I graduated from R.A. Millikan High School; now what? Oh yeh, wait to be shipped off by Uncle Sam. There was one chance in hell to avert the inevitable and that was to attend college. Uncle Sam was lenient with college kids and who could pass an opportunity to go to college if for no other reason than to avoid the onset of "Life"?
1966 - Something for Everybody
Cerritos College was handy and cheap, but my God was I unmotivated, even with the threat of jungle warfare staring me in the eyeball, school was still an absolute bore and I took many paths unchallenging; excelling at Archery, Badminton and a class in theatre production, designing sets and costumes. I turned George Orwell's "1984" into a stage play which got me my only "A" grade that year.
Terry was an odd one. His family belonged to some folksy religion that allowed for no books or TV. Because he couldn't do without his school books, he was forced to live in a ratty old trailer behind his home. But God is just and somehow allowed Terry a totally sharp 1963 Chevy Impala, pearlized blue with glass-pak pipes that could blow your hat off a block away or deafen inquisitive children.
So he'd never heard of Red Skelton or Boris Karloff, he really showed me around the town. Bellflower and Whittier Blvds.; were the places to cruise come the weekend. Up and back, bumper to bumper, hang out at the Clock Restaurant or Chan's Chinese for hours chatting up the gals and looking cool. Oh yeh, right down the road was Larry Watson's Custom Auto Shop <Photo by Pete Angress where I spent many an hour with nose pressed against the glass. That was the place to go for custom body work, flakes, spiderwebbing, getting your ride lowered and your antennas Frenched for God sakes!
I went back after college for a last peek in the window and there was the car. . . a gorgeous thing - "Crystal Blue Persuasion" lettered across the hood - a dream on wheels.
Thoughts of warm summer nights cruising the boulevard in a dream-state, full of chrome, lights, the roar of engines, heat simmering off the hood of a candy apple '57 Bel Air and a promise of adventure just around the corner proved more rewarding than any thought of school could conjure. And thus, after a single semester I was handed my scholastic walking papers and booted from the campus.
I cried the day my 4-F card came. Partly from a sense of surprise, overwhelming relief and again from a sense of failure that Uncle Sam would probably draft my furniture before me. On the otherhand, it was determined I had a heart murmer which would be an object for contemplation at a later date.
Being released from any threat of military service was my own "Get Out of Jail Card". I had been holding off buying a car because of the draft, but now, here it was: a 1963 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Not only did it broaden my horizons, but offered - the onset of a sex life.
Forry and Tor on Tour. I just happened to be walking past a store parking lot in Norwalk and wondered what the ruckus was about. Nobody was more surprised than me to see Forry and Tor Johnson in the center of 2 dozen screaming kids. Forry appointed in his "Time Travelers" outfit and Tor in complete Lobo drag. Interesting I thought he was wearing a bald cap. I thought he was already bald enough. They appeared thusly at several shopping malls, handing out copies of Famous Monsters, having monster quizzes, jokes, general hobnobery and such. A little embarrassing I thought.
My father and I enjoyed an annual pilgrimage to the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles for Milt Larsen's "It's Magic" shows. It was terrific Milt was a member of the Count Dracula Society allowing a number of meetings at his sumptuous home. Brimming with all the amenities, from his own theater with pop-up movie screen, recording studio, rooms full of vintage vaudeville and show-biz memorabilia and lots more. Three years before, he had opened "The Magic Castle" a Victorian Playboy Club of sorts, moving panels, up-close magicians, a restaurant, theater and ghostly goings on. In a few years he would create the "Mayfair Music Hall" in Santa Monica which would prove not so successful although the stage can be seen in Mel Brook's "Young Frankenstein" in the "Puttin' on the Ritz" number.
With Milt's recording collection & Don Glut
Don, Christopher Lee, Me
Orriel Smith & Eric Hoffman
Orriel Smith was the darlin' of the Dracula Society. Cute, talented and would put on mini-concerts with songs just for us, like "The Carnivorous Cookie" (a fifty pound seething Hydrox!). She appeared on a number of TV shows and cranked out a few albums. The last things I heard about her was she had redefined her musical pursuits into "Chicken Music"! With several albums known as the "Cluckoratura Arias".
Nah, Orriel wouldn't give me the time of day, but her mother Bonnie was a hoot! We spent many evenings getting a bite and hanging out. Don Benge was a jeweler making many of the pins for the society. He was heir to the Benge Trumpet family and a champion fencer, but in April, 2007 he was killed in a head-on collision by a drunk driver heading the wrong way.
Things were not so happy for Milt. On March 5, 1966 his fiancé was one of the 37 Americans killed on the BOAC flight crashing into Mt. Fuji, Japan.
Bellflower and Whittier Blvds.; were the places to cruise come the weekend. Up and back, bumper to bumper, hang out at the Clock Restaurant or Chan's Chinese for hours chatting up the gals and looking cool. Oh yeh, right down the road was Larry Watson's Custom Auto Shop <Photo by Pete Angress where I spent many an hour with nose pressed against the glass. That was the place to go for custom body work, flakes, spiderwebbing, getting your ride lowered and your antennas Frenched for God sakes!
be an object for contemplation at a later date.
