DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Memoirs of a Superfluous Fan, 1944

Transcribe
Translate

Memoirs of a Superfluous Fan, 1944

Page 22

receptive mood that night, as during the morning while walking up to the busline on my way to school, my saxophone case suddenly opened up and dropped a $165 gold-plated Alto Sax into three feet of rapidly running, muddy, silty gutter water. Supernatural, indeed!

The following meeting, March 17, popular author-member Arthur K. Barnes related the havouc [sic] caused in his home district of Tujunga Canyon by this deluge and told a never-to-be-forgotten yarn of his hilarious journey out of the flooded area on an earthworm tractor. While sitting, along with many other washed-out residents, on the hood of the engine Art was intrigued by the sight of several copies of Amazing Stories (pre-1930s vintage) floating down the swollen river. He never did find who the collector in them parts was.

April 1 was a Fool's meeting. Paul Freehafer passed about tickets for an open house at CalTech, which a number of members visited, lured chiefly by the spectacular demonstrations in the electrical laboratories. A month later we had one of our few speakers for the year, Mr. John J. Parson's [sic] of CalTech, who discussed the rocket experiments at that institution where he was on the research staff.

One of the interesting characters of the old LASFL was Charlie Henderson, who stood for the club as long as the club stood for him, roughly 1938-1939. Henderson was an irresponsable [sic] person of Shroyer's tastes but totally lacking the latter's intelligence and personal attraction. Charlie worked for Shep's Shop, the former scientific haven, and eventually is alleged to have run off with Lucile Sheppherd's huge Packard coupe and an unspecified amount of cash.

Henderson's contributions to the club consisted of ribald discussions and fantastic ideas for putting the club on a paying basis, a bad habit often dreamed of by his counterpart, as far as ideas go, Walter J. Daugherty. The meeting of May 19 ended in a verbal riot with Henderson proposing that the club purchase a professional story for $100 and run it in IMAGINATION! for ten or twenty issues. The flaw in this reasoning as a circulation booster in fan circles in [sic] obvious. There are plenty of professional stories to begin with. Finally, with the assistance of demons Kuttner and Shroyer, the meeting concluded with everybody going hog-wild, finishing off with a proposition that newsboys be given copies of the club organ so they could walk down the streets shouting: "Examiner! Times! Imagination!"

AFTER A FEW MEETINGS of peace and quiet, politics reared its ugly head. Old timers will recall the great furor raised by Wolheim and CPASF over McCreary's story "After 3000 Years" in Astounding during 1938. When copies of the Wolheim letter reached the local fans, we were off again on the old merry-go-round. The contention of Bradbury, Brady, and myself was that: what if 3000 years was pro-capitalistic, etc., it's only a story. The fracas only succeeded in getting the discussion of Michelism banned from IMAGINATION!, a procedure which enbittered feelings on both sides of the continent for some time. The upshoot of the thing was to get me into a protracted correspondence with Tremaine and then Campbell, which I prized very highly... especially my letters from Campbell wherein we engaged for a brief while in an interesting psychological discussion.

BOB OLSON was an author-member whom I particularly liked. He was a small jovial swede, a sort of everybody's grandfather. His contribution to the earlier history of magazine scientifiction was well-earned  and established in Gernsbackian Amazing Stories. His first story appeared in the June 1927 Amazing, "Four Dimensional Roller Press," and this was followed by a host of dimensional stories, "Four Dimensional Surgery," "Four Dimensional Robberies, etc., for a long time. During the three years from 1937 to 1939 when Bob Olsen was an irregular

Saving...

receptive mood that night, as during the morning while walking up to the busline on my way to school, my saxophone case suddenly opened up and dropped a $165 gold-plated Alto Sax into three feet of rapidly running, muddy, silty gutter water. Supernatural, indeed! The following meeting, March 17, popular author-member Arthur K. Barnes related the havouc [sic] caused in his home district of Tujunga Canyon by this deluge and told a never-to-be-forgotten yarn of his hilarious journey out of the flooded area on an earthworm tractor. While sitting, along with many other washed-out residents, on the hood of the engine Art was intrigued by the sight of several copies of Amazing Stories (pre-1930s vintage) floating down the swollen river. He never did find who the collector in them parts was. April 1 was a Fool's meeting. Paul Freehafer passed about tickets for an open house at CalTech, which a number of members visited, lured chiefly by the spectacular demonstrations in the electrical laboratories. A month later we had one of our few speakers for the year, Mr. John J. Parson's [sic] of CalTech, who discussed the rocket experiments at that institution where he was on the research staff. One of the interesting characters of the old LASFL was Charlie Henderson, who stood for the club as long as the club stood for him, roughly 1938-1939. Henderson was an irresponsable [sic] person of Shroyer's tastes but totally lacking the latter's intelligence and personal attraction. Charlie worked for Shep's Shop, the former scientific haven, and eventually is alleged to have run off with Lucile Sheppherd's huge Packard coupe and an unspecified amount of cash. Henderson's contributions to the club consisted of ribald discussions and fantastic ideas for putting the club on a paying basis, a bad habit often dreamed of by his counterpart, as far as ideas go, Walter J. Daugherty. The meeting of May 19 ended in a verbal riot with Henderson proposing that the club purchase a professional story for $100 and run it in IMAGINATION! for ten or twenty issues. The flaw in this reasoning as a circulation booster in fan circles in [sic] obvious. There are plenty of professional stories to begin with. Finally, with the assistance of demons Kuttner and Shroyer, the meeting concluded with everybody going hog-wild, finishing off with a proposition that newsboys be given copies of the club organ so they could walk down the streets shouting: "Examiner! Times! Imagination!" AFTER A FEW MEETINGS of peace and quiet, politics reared its ugly head. Old timers will recall the great furor raised by Wolheim and CPASF over McCreary's story "After 3000 Years" in Astounding during 1938. When copies of the Wolheim letter reached the local fans, we were off again on the old merry-go-round. The contention of Bradbury, Brady, and myself was that: what if 3000 years was pro-capitalistic, etc., it's only a story. The fracas only succeeded in getting the discussion of Michelism banned from IMAGINATION!, a procedure which enbittered feelings on both sides of the continent for some time. The upshoot of the thing was to get me into a protracted correspondence with Tremaine and then Campbell, which I prized very highly... especially my letters from Campbell wherein we engaged for a brief while in an interesting psychological discussion. BOB OLSON was an author-member whom I particularly liked. He was a small jovial swede, a sort of everybody's grandfather. His contribution to the earlier history of magazine scientifiction was well-earned and established in Gernsbackian Amazing Stories. His first story appeared in the June 1927 Amazing, "Four Dimensional Roller Press," and this was followed by a host of dimensional stories, "Four Dimensional Surgery," "Four Dimensional Robberies, etc., for a long time. During the three years from 1937 to 1939 when Bob Olsen was an irregular