1960 - The Year I Make Contact I don't know where you lived, but in my neck of the woods, monster magazines ranked in the same literary purgatory as pornography and commie propaganda.- Yeh, there was always some guy who had a rolled up monster mag in his back pocket and a porno shot in his shirt pocket; surreptitiously giving you a peek at either or both during recess. The first monster mag I saw was "Monsters and Things" in 1959. I had never given thought to actually purchasing one of these until. . .one day near the end of 1960 I walked into the corner drug store on my way home from school to find two kids by the magazine rack, furtively glancing over their shoulders as they thumbed through the pages of a magazine. "Would your mother let you have it in the house?" one said to the other; and with that, I was hooked. Waiting for them to tire of their random page flipping and inspecting the object of their curiosity: Famous Monsters of Filmland #10. Ahh, the magic, the illicit thrills pouring over me, an incomparable sense of empowerment and thus I shelled out the mere pittance and buried myself into what would become my personal manifesto of things to come. Undreamed terrors, unseen photos, unknown movies; all wrapped in a sense of arcane adventure.
- It seemed forever till visiting the newsstand brought me face-to-face with the next issue of "Famous Monsters" #11 still bailed on the floor boasting Gorgo yearning to break free. Entreating the counter gal the whence of Gorgo's release, her response came thus: "We're sending those magazines back to the distributor because they're bad for kid's minds". I was prepared right then to show her just how bad for kid's minds they really were but controlled myself.
- I then set upon an adventure through all the markets and liquor stores in town until I found my Famous Monsters fix.
- The Craven
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- How distinctly I remember,
- it was in a bleak November
- and so cold it froze my member
- as I approached the Thrifty store.
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- There I spied them: Famous Monsters;
- issue 11 upon the floor.
- Still wired and bound upon the floor,
- with the Gorgo cover I adore.
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- Then said I "Madam truly, your
- forgiveness I implore;
- when will they unleash the terrors
- of that magazine (still bailed)
- upon the floor?"
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- She turned slowly, as I remember,
- from the counter, bending o'er,
- She unfurled a knarled, boney finger
- at that which I sought upon the floor.
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- "Never!" she cried with exultation,
- shall we unbail that on the floor!
- Turn and leave from our my store.
- Shall you possess them?
- Nevermore!"
| - Urgently I sought to buy them,
- by any means please don't deny them;
- for in those pages do I explore
- the realm of monsters, ghouls and gore.
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- Again she cried in pain and fear;
- "Watza' matta sonny, can'cha hear?
- These mags will rot yer mind they say;
- you'll become a killer, a commie and gay!
- So on our shelves they cannot stay,
- they're going back to Hell today!"
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- "Oh woe" I cried, "This cannot be!"
- A stake driven through the heart of me.
- But still her flaming gaze unending,
- still her moral code unbending.
- And I'm too young to keep defending
- those mags upon that tiled floor.
- Whereupon I left the store
- and to return there, nevermore.
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- Still today I remember well
- that battle of wits on the edge of hell;
- how I was beaten, broken and gored;
- so I bought the mag at the place
- next door.
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- With Apologies to Mr. P.
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- Much like pulp magazines decades before, "Famous Monsters" not only had the goods, but through the letter column, proved there were fans out there and being a fan need not be a lonely thing. PLUS, by joining the Famous Monsters Club, you got the hotline to that mystical kingdom known as the Ackermansion!
- Yep, once on the official mailing list, you'd receive periodic postcards with info and invites to the next Forry Ackerman Ackstravaganza!
 And thus it came to pass I was invited to the Ackermansion. My ever doting mother drove me from Long Beach to the hallowed address of 915 S. Sherbourne Drive, Mecca to which all fans must journey. In fact, as I was walking up the driveway, Tor Johnson, (who is hard to miss anywhere) was crossing the yard, brandishing a huge smile and a hand that engulfed mine. - Words can't convey the sensation of entering the Ackermansion; dumbstruck with awe usually reserved for the Sistine Chapel while Forry, I found dispensing a welcoming, yet distant cordiality. The house was packed with fans receiving the same postcard. My mother eyed suspiciously the selection of adult material, both gay and straight arrayed on the living room coffee table. This led (at a later date), to a battery of questions to the tune of: "But did he ever touch you?"
- My visit to the Ackermansion was not, however, without an agenda.
 I acquired all the back issues of Famous Monsters via the legendary "Captain Company", except issue #4 which had already been cleaned out. I asked Forry if he could spare one and he quietly obliged. From a forlorn closet down a dark hallway he produced the bright shiny issue of my desire. "$1.00" he requested. I winced, as up till then, that's the most I'd ever paid for anything, yet slowly I parted with a fresh dollar bill, the solo inhabitant of my Red Ryder wallet but now I was complete. - I had always assumed Forry and Wendy were married, but they had divorced in 1958. Divorce decree Here. I understand they were re-married some years later.
- At last it was time for the ride home and off we went, whizzing down the Harbor Freeway, homeward bound with windows open, spirits high and hair ablow. At some point, I thought to check out my new treasure. Placing it gingerly on my lap, I turned the first page, the next and next, when suddenly there was a flurry of small bits of paper flying around the front seat of the car. "Damn" I thought, my magazine has been cut up!" But such was not the case. Upon closer inspection, the bits of paper were actually small pornographic photos showing couples doing all manner of things I had not yet begun to imagine.
- I have to hand it to my mother, who neither slammed on the brakes nor careened off the road, but keeping one hand on the wheel, grabbed my magazine and flung it from the window without missing a beat! My last sight of the magazine was skimming across the gravel before disappearing forever. It was a long, quiet ride home.
- On further visits to the Ackermansion, Don Glut would screen films in the living room produced by L.A.S.F.S and a daylong assortment of his own cinematic home brew. "Funny" mom offered, "He's made movies for 10 years and never got any better". Perhaps true, but I was impressed. It appeared this "Fandom" had everything! Print, film, monsters and fans!
1961 - Meanwhile, Back in Hell- Starting Junior High, meant being confronted with older and more aggressive tormentors. But I wasn’t the only one who had problems. A few weeks into the school year, my Social Studies teacher spent the class speaking on the folly of suicide. That night he did a Hemingway. My math teacher had a heart attack and dropped dead on the spot; while my english teacher, a novelty for his remarkable likeness to Jerry Lewis was high strung and accusatory. Every day we would enter the room to find our desks completely rearranged. Sometimes facing one way or another, sometimes at each other, once a theatre in the round and so on. He once asked us to bring in a book, so the next day I brought Andre Norton's "The Stars Are Ours". When he spotted the book on my desk, he picked it up, yelling “When I said a book, I didn’t say Science Fiction!” and threw it out the window! He disappeared halfway through the year among tales of fondling the girls.
- I was never given an iota of instruction in any sport and when the teacher yelled “Run to the line of scrimmage”, I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about which called for an immediate pummelling by the jocks for my stupidity, much to the delight of the instructor, a brutish beast with a buzz cut, plastic jacket and penchant for separating the men from the boys.
- 7th grade also boasts your introduction to "Sex Education" and just who was the instructor for such a delicate class? The Gym Teacher! The first class he strode into the room, still wearing his plastic jacket and the first things out of his mouth was "If you are caught masturbating yourself or anyone else, you can be arrested and your picture put in the newspaper"; thus setting the timbre for the next few weeks.
- The only sense of justice I had all year was being in the audio visual department and getting to chose an after school film completely unsupervised. I selected “Black Scorpion” from the Janus Films catalogue claiming it was a nature film. It played to a full house of kids who weren’t allowed to see it in the theatre. A few kids ran screaming from the theater; a few patted me on the back. The next day I was made hall monitor.
 1962 - The Neighborhood- There was a brief moment I rode the wave of the surfing craze; yeh, yeh, Dick Dale and the Del-Tones and all. It was fun enough, but getting board-bonked on the noggin a few times made me rethink the surfing thing. Besides, skateboards and bottle-cap flipping were the new signs of ultimate coolness!
- So while my surfing days only lasted one hot summer, I discovered the surfers had created their own fandom also dealing with art and publishing. No, not the quaint and primitive mimeography, but something more substantial. My first fanzine was Gene Brown's "Hodads Beware".
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- The local newspaper allowed kids to list free classified ads come holidays. Mine read "Science Fiction Magazines Wanted" but I received only one phone call. . . from Bjo Trimble, who it turned out, lived a short distance from me! She put me on the LASFS mailing list and suddenly my eyes were open to the world of fanzines! Shangri L'Affaires, Bjottings, Pong and others. Through these pages, I read about fans; which names got the most ink, conventions and events - Wow! Another door opened to the mysterious world called fandom.
- There was a mysterious fan named Bruce Pelz trafficking zines from his home and for a mere pittance, transforming every trip to the mailbox into an adventure.
- These fanzines were a shot in the arm and convinced some friends and I to make our way to Silverlake Hall for a LASFS meeting
- Turned out an auspicious occasion for club elections were to be held that very day. Voting consisted of writing a name on a piece of paper and handing it in. "Odd" I thought, we were given ballots since we knew not one person in the building.
- My friends thought it a hoot to write my name on their ballots and turn them in. Bruce read the ballots and each time my name came up, he exclaimed "Who the Hell is Alan White?". I said nothing.
- Turns out, I came in second.
- Phil Castora noted LASFS rules said nothing about being a member to hold office, which would be immediately changed!
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 I too wanted to produce a fanzine. Alas, I had no means to produce one and nothing to say nor talent to write it. My mother, however, worked in an insurance company who had a primitive form of document duplication device consisting of a tray of chemicals and a pair of rollers. Taking your original document and some photographic paper, you plied them together, running them through the chemicals, making a negative. You repeated this process and voila! a poor copy of your original document! The process was unbearably tedious and thus only five copies of my first fanzine "Recoil" were published. Just as well for by anyone's assessment, it was crap of the first water, consisting of 12 single-sided pages about monsters, vampires and such with a photograph from "The Blob".
Birds of a Feather- Being an absolute failure at anything to do with practical thought, I chose a path of least resistance and repeatedly found a way to ensure my being placed in the “incapacitated student” (aka Spaz) classes. Here it was during a session of general languishing, chatting with one of my classmates who asked “Does anyone know Forry Ackerman?” While the others asked “Who the hell is that?” I had the pleasure of meeting Jim, one of the most unforgettable people I would ever encounter.
- He too was a fan, collector, social leper and as I would find out later, one of the biggest thieves in fandom. After school we headed home where he lived with his indulgent and doting mother and his room was appointed with all the ephemera of monster fandom; movie posters, stills, paperbacks. He spent his earlier years in the same torment as myself and at last I felt a kindred spirit. I remember, while being an excellent swimmer, floundering and spluttering in the school pool that I would be kept in the "retard" class and spend the semester talking monsters with Jim.
- Theaters would change their bills on Wednesdays and thus we would make the pilgrimage by bus downtown to catch a movie. Maybe we would walk around the Nu-Pike, watch someone getting tattooed and just hang out.
- Jim's pal Jerry lived with his mother in an older Hollywood apartment. She was a trashy, boozy New York Jew who would dress in ball gowns to go to the market. There was a garish sex appeal about this old crank I’d never experienced and had many the daydream of pulling all that chiffon over her head and giving her what-for. Tim was a character as well. A totally bumbling and loud individual having the amazing ability to add any column of numbers in his head. He too lived with his mother in a dilapidated shanty off Santa Monica Boulevard. On one visit, boards of the porch gave way plunging Jim up to his knees. We spent as little time there as possible as Chico and Pedro, the two horribly flea bitten, endlessly yapping Chihuahuas would pass their fleas to anyone who dared tarry. Tim’s older brother Mike stormed flamboyantly out of the closet at an early age for a career in interior decorating and bondage supplies.
 Even though we were the same age, Jerry was more advanced than me, already having his driver’s license and a police record. We loved walking from one end of Hollywood Boulevard to the other (from Vine to Graumann’s Chinese and back). Bert Blum's Cherokee Books> with an upstairs collector’s corner of movie material and comics. Another place demanding frequent visits was another place we would frequent, Zuckerman's Book City and Larry Edmund's Cinema Book Shop; an eternal landmark and movie material emporium from the dawn of time. One employee, equally from the dawn of time was Claude Plum, a lively old fruitcake who made an offer of keeping anything I could carry out of the shop if he could lick all the hair on my body. I hate to admit that I actually thought about it, but declined.- But that was the world of Hollywood Blvd. Hell, Larry Edmunds offed himself via oven, terrified of the little men coming through holes in the walls of his apartment.
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- Bert Blum Photo: Copyright Regents of the University of California, UCLA
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