Do you know if they bore any relation to the dime Westerns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which were all written by people who had never gone farther West than New Jersey?
Do you know if they bore any relation to the dime Westerns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which were all written by people who had never gone farther West than New Jersey?
So they were kind of the men's equivalent to the women's penny dreadfuls? Interesting. In one of the later Betsy-Tacy stories, Mrs. Ray is upset that the maid's penny dreadfuls are falling into Betsy's hands. That was my first encounter with the concept of cheesy Victorian novels. I should read a few! (My inner grammar nerd thinks the plural of penny dreadful should be pennies dreadful, but I think my inner grammar nerd is off-base.)
As a Grammar Nazi I would agree, until someone pointed out that English grammar had no solution to the ultimate split infinitive problem: I want to really dance.
This same srt of thing was replicated in airport terminals in more 'mordern times', making authors like Stephen King rich. I found THE DENIAL OF DEATH by Earnest Becker in an airport terminal in Dallas, Texas on my flight back from Lackkland AF Base, after being discharged from the US Air Force in 1966.
Becker's book led me to Otto Rank's book ART & ARTIST. These two books were the foundation of my interest in psychology, which I have studied closely ever since. That led to an interest in sociology which then led to my fascination with sociopolitics. And that is what has led me to forums such as Glenn Greenwald's, which is very much something I found on th rebound from being banned from Quora...My, what a long strange trip it's been.
Ah, the slings and arrows suffered by an impassioned polititcal commentator....
Thank your for this fine bit of literary history Kathleen!
You & Johnny Cash at Lackland. My husband came back through Ft.Lewis in '68. I haven't flown since COVID but I always study the books at airports and the bookstalls are not as good as they were in the 60s and 70s. Maybe because people read on their phone. I remember going to DC in the mid-80s and noted that 50% were reading pbks of _Hunt for Red October_. I think our own personal reading histories are fascinating (today fewer people have them with such easy access to streaming movies). i think the older platforms like QUORA aren't so good now & the Substack provides an even place to explore ideas we don't see in the usual places. I'm glad for that. I'm glad even this site about book & library history has a place.
What may interet you about my experience at Lackland AFB is that I was only there for 3 weeks before I was discharged!
As soon as I got off the military bus that brought the new recruites from the aiport in San Antonio, I realised I had made a dreadful mistake in joining the military.
After the barber took all my hair and left me with about half an inch length of that 'buzzed' look, while I was eating my first military meal, "shit on shingles' (creamed chip beef on toast), I began plotting my escape from the base. This has a humorous aspect to it, as just as we were unloading from the bus, a jeep with MPs and a guy in civies drove up, and there was a hubub between the MPs and some sergeants. It turns out that this kid had departed the bus and took off running! They supposedly caught him just as he reached the exit gate about 3 miles away.
As I figured it, running was definitely not an option, although the though occered to me that the scene at the bus may have been staged.
No, 'Passive Resistance' was the onlt viable option. I wouldn't make my bed 'tight' and always had to remake it every morning. I refused to 'march' I simply walked along with the group I was in.. I didn't pay attention to wearing my fatigues right. My gig-line was nerver straight, my shirt was not neatly tucked in, just makeshift tucked. I didn't button my shirt all the way up to the top button, it was uncomfortible.
I got "Pinkslips" beginning on the fist day.
I never even looked at the book of 'Rules of Order' I spent 'study timr writing letters to my girlfriend back in Phoenix.
My first real stressful encounter with my drill sergeant involved my not knowing my rulses of order. After ticking me back from "what is the 7th Rule of Order Airman Whitten?" I would reply, I do not know my 7th rule of order Sir!"
By the time I replied, "I do not know my first rule of order Sir" The sergeant was in a rage. He jumped up and charged around his desk and charged at me with his fist raised and his face purple.
I had been standing at attention, but as he came at me I simply relaxed and took a very slight "horse stance' turning ever so slightly to my left. I smiled passively. It was like he hit a wall he stopped so fast about two feet from me.
I had been studying martial arts since I was 12, he could tell. He cleared his throat and went back to his desk and sat down. In a very calm voice he said, you are dismissed airman.
It went on like this for a couple of weeks, A visit to the base psychologist. "I'm sorry airman but you are totaly healthy mentally, I cannot write anything other than that in my official report." I told the doctor that it was a mistake joining the Air Force, that I only joined to please my dad...
Then a meeting with some drill sergent across base about half mile from my barracks.
I knocked on the door, and heard the man say. "enter". as I walked into the room I noticed several things that made me wary. The sergeant was sitting behind a big fild desk with nothing at all on it. Not a paper, not a lamp...nothing. The blinds were pulled down and it was very dim in the room. There was a door to the right that was slighly ajar. I thought I heard whispers behind it.
I took a few steps towards the desk and stopped just before passing the door on my right. I did not salute, I did not come to attention. I just stood there looking into the eyes of the sergeant, After about a minute of us looking at one another. He cocked his head a bit and said, "You are dismissed airman". So I left, didn't shut the door behind me, and just spent about half an hour walking around the base before returning to my barracks. When I arrived there. everyone else was gone. So I sat down and wrotw another letter to Gina, my gal back in Phoenix.
A few more encounters with other sergeants giving me pink slips, a hassle with a corpral in the messhall one day...his sergeant reading me the riot act when I left the building without my cap on...The little bulldog looking sarge screaming two inches friom my face - just like in the movies. It made me giggle, and REALLY pissed the little jerk off. But I couldn't help it, it was all so absurd...like a scene out of a Kafka story.
A few mornings after that, the Team Member, an assistant to the Drill Sergeant, took me aside as everyone else left for breakfast. Sergent Whte was obviously simoathetic to my cause. He had "rescued' me from the corpral in the mess hall who I had challenge to a fight when he had hassled me while eating. The guy asked who my sergent was, I pointed to White, the corpral said lets go talk to him. I shrugged and followed him over to Sgt. White, who raised his eyes as we approached. The corpral started to speak, White raised his hand to silence him, then looked at me and asked what the problem was. I explained that the guy had stood there glaring at me while I sat conversing with my pals at the table, I had leaned back in my chair and said, 'Do you have a problem bub?" The corpral had pointed to the stripes on his shoulder, and said, "Do you see this? I said, 'yea you've got a chip on your shoulder, you want me to knock it off?"
I explained that to Sgt. White, who responded, "well go back and finish your conversation and leave this poor man alone, nodding his head toward the corpral.
So I did. It was when I walked out of the building that I saw that corporal standing with the little fat sergeant.
So Sergeant White took me aside and handed me a 'base pass' with a little map to where I was to report. White winked at me and said, "good luck!"
So I went to the place on the map, which was more like a house than the other buildings around it. I opened the door and walked into a large room with a lot of desks and filing cabinets, but no one was around, it was lunch time.
I heard a voice come from another room just up the way., that said, "C'mon in"
I went into the office and there was a colonial sitting at a desk. I came to attention and saluted. He looked up and said, have a seat, let's chat for a while.
WE talked about many things for at least an hour. all the while him sitting looking down at a file folder on the desk in front of him.
He asked all sorts of questions, one was if I had ever been in any fights growing up. I said that I had, don't most kids?
Finally he said, "what do you think about the war in Vietnam?"
I replied that I thought it was illegal, a war of aggression that was not declared by Congress.
He nodded and then said, what would have happened in World War Two if everybody was like you?
I said that if everybody was like me there wouldn't have been a World War Two.
Tha seemed to set him back, and he did physically lean back in his chair, eyeing me closely.
After a few moments he said, well Mr. Whitten, you are a conscientious objector. I am going to recommend you be discharged on those grounds. He stood and I stood and he reache out to shake my hand as he walked me to the doorway of his office.
I just said 'thank you sir'.
But after I left the building and walked a few yards I threw my cap in the air and hooped and hollered in a state of relief and almost disbelief.
I spent another week in the 'Casual Barracks' as my processing was complete.
As I stepped out to the curb in my civies with my suitcase, my unit was passing by with Sgt. White in the lead! He calle halt and at-ease, and called a smoke break. He walked up to me and shook my hand and wished me good luck. Most of the other guys did the same, the guys I had made friends with.
I was back in Phoenix the next day. When Gina opened the door and saw me standing on the porch she exclaimed, "you look like a pumpkin head!"
Do you know if they bore any relation to the dime Westerns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which were all written by people who had never gone farther West than New Jersey?
Do you know if they bore any relation to the dime Westerns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which were all written by people who had never gone farther West than New Jersey?
So they were kind of the men's equivalent to the women's penny dreadfuls? Interesting. In one of the later Betsy-Tacy stories, Mrs. Ray is upset that the maid's penny dreadfuls are falling into Betsy's hands. That was my first encounter with the concept of cheesy Victorian novels. I should read a few! (My inner grammar nerd thinks the plural of penny dreadful should be pennies dreadful, but I think my inner grammar nerd is off-base.)
As a Grammar Nazi I would agree, until someone pointed out that English grammar had no solution to the ultimate split infinitive problem: I want to really dance.
I used to mark them all the time then gave up.
This same srt of thing was replicated in airport terminals in more 'mordern times', making authors like Stephen King rich. I found THE DENIAL OF DEATH by Earnest Becker in an airport terminal in Dallas, Texas on my flight back from Lackkland AF Base, after being discharged from the US Air Force in 1966.
Becker's book led me to Otto Rank's book ART & ARTIST. These two books were the foundation of my interest in psychology, which I have studied closely ever since. That led to an interest in sociology which then led to my fascination with sociopolitics. And that is what has led me to forums such as Glenn Greenwald's, which is very much something I found on th rebound from being banned from Quora...My, what a long strange trip it's been.
Ah, the slings and arrows suffered by an impassioned polititcal commentator....
Thank your for this fine bit of literary history Kathleen!
\\][//
You & Johnny Cash at Lackland. My husband came back through Ft.Lewis in '68. I haven't flown since COVID but I always study the books at airports and the bookstalls are not as good as they were in the 60s and 70s. Maybe because people read on their phone. I remember going to DC in the mid-80s and noted that 50% were reading pbks of _Hunt for Red October_. I think our own personal reading histories are fascinating (today fewer people have them with such easy access to streaming movies). i think the older platforms like QUORA aren't so good now & the Substack provides an even place to explore ideas we don't see in the usual places. I'm glad for that. I'm glad even this site about book & library history has a place.
What may interet you about my experience at Lackland AFB is that I was only there for 3 weeks before I was discharged!
As soon as I got off the military bus that brought the new recruites from the aiport in San Antonio, I realised I had made a dreadful mistake in joining the military.
After the barber took all my hair and left me with about half an inch length of that 'buzzed' look, while I was eating my first military meal, "shit on shingles' (creamed chip beef on toast), I began plotting my escape from the base. This has a humorous aspect to it, as just as we were unloading from the bus, a jeep with MPs and a guy in civies drove up, and there was a hubub between the MPs and some sergeants. It turns out that this kid had departed the bus and took off running! They supposedly caught him just as he reached the exit gate about 3 miles away.
As I figured it, running was definitely not an option, although the though occered to me that the scene at the bus may have been staged.
No, 'Passive Resistance' was the onlt viable option. I wouldn't make my bed 'tight' and always had to remake it every morning. I refused to 'march' I simply walked along with the group I was in.. I didn't pay attention to wearing my fatigues right. My gig-line was nerver straight, my shirt was not neatly tucked in, just makeshift tucked. I didn't button my shirt all the way up to the top button, it was uncomfortible.
I got "Pinkslips" beginning on the fist day.
I never even looked at the book of 'Rules of Order' I spent 'study timr writing letters to my girlfriend back in Phoenix.
My first real stressful encounter with my drill sergeant involved my not knowing my rulses of order. After ticking me back from "what is the 7th Rule of Order Airman Whitten?" I would reply, I do not know my 7th rule of order Sir!"
By the time I replied, "I do not know my first rule of order Sir" The sergeant was in a rage. He jumped up and charged around his desk and charged at me with his fist raised and his face purple.
I had been standing at attention, but as he came at me I simply relaxed and took a very slight "horse stance' turning ever so slightly to my left. I smiled passively. It was like he hit a wall he stopped so fast about two feet from me.
I had been studying martial arts since I was 12, he could tell. He cleared his throat and went back to his desk and sat down. In a very calm voice he said, you are dismissed airman.
It went on like this for a couple of weeks, A visit to the base psychologist. "I'm sorry airman but you are totaly healthy mentally, I cannot write anything other than that in my official report." I told the doctor that it was a mistake joining the Air Force, that I only joined to please my dad...
Then a meeting with some drill sergent across base about half mile from my barracks.
I knocked on the door, and heard the man say. "enter". as I walked into the room I noticed several things that made me wary. The sergeant was sitting behind a big fild desk with nothing at all on it. Not a paper, not a lamp...nothing. The blinds were pulled down and it was very dim in the room. There was a door to the right that was slighly ajar. I thought I heard whispers behind it.
I took a few steps towards the desk and stopped just before passing the door on my right. I did not salute, I did not come to attention. I just stood there looking into the eyes of the sergeant, After about a minute of us looking at one another. He cocked his head a bit and said, "You are dismissed airman". So I left, didn't shut the door behind me, and just spent about half an hour walking around the base before returning to my barracks. When I arrived there. everyone else was gone. So I sat down and wrotw another letter to Gina, my gal back in Phoenix.
A few more encounters with other sergeants giving me pink slips, a hassle with a corpral in the messhall one day...his sergeant reading me the riot act when I left the building without my cap on...The little bulldog looking sarge screaming two inches friom my face - just like in the movies. It made me giggle, and REALLY pissed the little jerk off. But I couldn't help it, it was all so absurd...like a scene out of a Kafka story.
A few mornings after that, the Team Member, an assistant to the Drill Sergeant, took me aside as everyone else left for breakfast. Sergent Whte was obviously simoathetic to my cause. He had "rescued' me from the corpral in the mess hall who I had challenge to a fight when he had hassled me while eating. The guy asked who my sergent was, I pointed to White, the corpral said lets go talk to him. I shrugged and followed him over to Sgt. White, who raised his eyes as we approached. The corpral started to speak, White raised his hand to silence him, then looked at me and asked what the problem was. I explained that the guy had stood there glaring at me while I sat conversing with my pals at the table, I had leaned back in my chair and said, 'Do you have a problem bub?" The corpral had pointed to the stripes on his shoulder, and said, "Do you see this? I said, 'yea you've got a chip on your shoulder, you want me to knock it off?"
I explained that to Sgt. White, who responded, "well go back and finish your conversation and leave this poor man alone, nodding his head toward the corpral.
So I did. It was when I walked out of the building that I saw that corporal standing with the little fat sergeant.
So Sergeant White took me aside and handed me a 'base pass' with a little map to where I was to report. White winked at me and said, "good luck!"
So I went to the place on the map, which was more like a house than the other buildings around it. I opened the door and walked into a large room with a lot of desks and filing cabinets, but no one was around, it was lunch time.
I heard a voice come from another room just up the way., that said, "C'mon in"
I went into the office and there was a colonial sitting at a desk. I came to attention and saluted. He looked up and said, have a seat, let's chat for a while.
WE talked about many things for at least an hour. all the while him sitting looking down at a file folder on the desk in front of him.
He asked all sorts of questions, one was if I had ever been in any fights growing up. I said that I had, don't most kids?
Finally he said, "what do you think about the war in Vietnam?"
I replied that I thought it was illegal, a war of aggression that was not declared by Congress.
He nodded and then said, what would have happened in World War Two if everybody was like you?
I said that if everybody was like me there wouldn't have been a World War Two.
Tha seemed to set him back, and he did physically lean back in his chair, eyeing me closely.
After a few moments he said, well Mr. Whitten, you are a conscientious objector. I am going to recommend you be discharged on those grounds. He stood and I stood and he reache out to shake my hand as he walked me to the doorway of his office.
I just said 'thank you sir'.
But after I left the building and walked a few yards I threw my cap in the air and hooped and hollered in a state of relief and almost disbelief.
I spent another week in the 'Casual Barracks' as my processing was complete.
As I stepped out to the curb in my civies with my suitcase, my unit was passing by with Sgt. White in the lead! He calle halt and at-ease, and called a smoke break. He walked up to me and shook my hand and wished me good luck. Most of the other guys did the same, the guys I had made friends with.
I was back in Phoenix the next day. When Gina opened the door and saw me standing on the porch she exclaimed, "you look like a pumpkin head!"
Lol
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I thought Corporal Klinger's wardrobe was a better approach.