The Little Red Diary (January 1981)

1981 was my senior year of high school. As you can see, most of the money I was making at my part-time job was going to buying books, comics, and so on, instead of saving up for my proposed college career, which I had hoped to put off for a year until I was more prepared for it. As you can see from the history of my research paper, which I had months to work on, I have a history of dithering and last moment frenzied completion.  I have recently started a complete re-write of our epic fantasy, "Goldfire". Having got one book in the "Omen Trilogy" my obsessive compulsive nature required me to get them all, popular culture hash though they were. I was really scrambling for input. Those monster mags and the "Fantasia" and Beatles records went to John later. 

JANUARY 1: John started our story [Goldfire] again. The star [conjunction] that hasn't been seen since 4 BC appeared.

JANUARY 2: Dropped a tray at work [Mr. Gatti’s]. Embarrassing.

JANUARY 3: Had to stay up late at Aunt Margaret's. Saw "The Green Slime," "MechaKong," and "The Great Garrick." [The first time I ever watched cable TV.]

JANUARY 4: Worked on my research paper all day.

JANUARY 5: Went back to school. Had headache. Slept after dinner till 10 PM.

JANUARY 6: Worked on sonnets in English.

JANUARY 7: Gave book report on "The Life of Samuel Johnson." Got "Fantasia" [record], "Outlaw of Torn," and "A Swiftly Tilting Planet."

JANUARY 8: Loaned $20 to Mom (repaid). John late for bus.

JANUARY 9: Got this diary, "Flash Gordon," "Forgotten Beasts of Eld." Found $14 at work. Saw "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"

JANUARY 10: Got up late after staying up late at Aunt Margaret's. Got "The Final Conflict."

JANUARY 11: Went to Nanny's. Boring, but no work. Cleaned desk, moved shelf. Saw "Magic." [This could not have been the traumatic night we saw it at the drive-in, could it?]

JANUARY 12: Got flu from Susan. 

JANUARY 13: Sore throat. Went to Writer's Round Table and read story. Good. Mike found a pregnant Siamese cat.

JANUARY 14: Got "Solomon Kane," "Omen II," "Conan 362," Beatles Red Album, and Fangoria #10.

JANUARY 15: Took Algebra exam. Had rest of day off. Tomorrow I have off work.

JANUARY 16: Took Biology II exam. Got "Split Infinity," Thor #306, "The Tin Woodman of Oz," and "B.C.: One More Time." Day off.

JANUARY 17: Extremely boring morning. Read all the books I got yesterday. Worked hard all night.

JANUARY 18: Cleaned closet and room.

JANUARY 19: Moved books, cleaned shelf.

JANUARY 20: Inauguration of Reagan. Hostages freed.

JANUARY 21: Changed into Driver's Ed and Texas History. Got "Omen," "The Sword in the Stone," "B. C. Where the Hell Is Heck?" and "Life is a $1.25 Paperback."

JANUARY 23: A very good day. Got Fantastic Films Special Edition #22.

JANUARY 24: A working day. Nothing even vaguely interesting.

JANUARY 25: Took my books out. Have four days to do my research paper.

JANUARY 26: A headachy day. I have not written any on my paper. Listened to "The Taming of the Shrew." [I think this was the John Cleese edition.]

JANUARY 27: Went to Writer's Round Table. Watched a Christmas show. Loaned Fleming "The Silver Stallion."

January 28: Got "The Sword and the Satchel" and "I, B.C." Was absent today. {Actually, played hooky to give myself more time to work on research paper.]

JANUARY 29: Finished my research paper! Only a few minor adjustments now.

JANUARY 30: Got "Book of Lists #2." Turned in paper.

JANUARY 31: Got two bags of little animals, both wild and farm. Had set-up with John.

The Hobbit Desk Calendar 1978

I got my copy of this calendar when the year was already half over and it was deeply discounted. It is the earliest exactly dated record of some things that happened in my life. At this distance, I wish it had been more detailed.

HOBBIT DESK CALENDAR 1978

 

July 4, Tuesday: Saw fireworks. Went to Dallas's birthday. Got books.

 

July 8, Saturday: John's birthday. He received a checker set, a Friar Tuck doll, and a black book.

 

July 10, Monday: Received this calendar (The Hobbit Desk Calendar 1978).

 

July 18, Tuesday: Kenny's birthday. He received Dr. McCoy and Ape Man dolls.

July 20, Thursday. Went grasshopper hunting. Started Gandalf paper.

 

August 5, Saturday: Got "Fantastic Films." It had a preview of "LOTR" Movie.

What Happened (Part 40, and the End of Chapter One)

 Such were the commonplace joys and fears and the manner of my life until I was six years old.  Looking back I can see I have focused a lot on things as well as people, but then I was highly affected by the animism of early childhood, when things have, if not personalities, then at least characters that can deeply affect you, with aesthetics that influence. They are equals in existence, and can even seem eternal, and not just disposable things. And the people I knew?  “What venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal cherubim! And young men [were] glittering and sparkling angels and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born and should die....all things abided eternally as they were, in their proper places.”

I was growing up in the Sixties, but what that means to most people when they hear that term meant very little to us.  We were still struggling, in a way almost unconsciously, to live up to what President Johnson had called The Great Society.  In Texas, we were about ten years behind most cultural trends, and in Seguin, a little town far away from the big cities, even more so.  Hippies were just weirdoes and bums (a horrible, shaming insult in our family) and drugs were likely to kill you outright.  How we felt about the great wave of songs that Bob Dylan and the Beatles and the like were riding could be summed up in one term lifted from the prehistoric hillbillies on The Flintstones: “bug music;” although we did hear sanitized versions of some songs on the radio or in the variety shows.  Abstract art was “a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.” Pop was totally conservative, but Mom, being a little younger, could be slightly more open to new things: in pop cultural terms of the times, it was as if Andy Griffith had married Laura Petrie. It was a childhood that would not be unfamiliar to a kid from the Fifties.

It was a world where things were made of glass and metal, not plastic, and where phones were stationary and TV channels few. We ordered things out of catalogs and through the mail, and toys could come in boxes of detergent and books with a can of coffee.  We got our clothes and shoes from Sears and J.C. Penney’s, and cheap elegance for the house from pasting S&H Green Stamps. My mental state at the time might best be expressed in the lyrics of the old song: “you’re not too mad, and you’re not too sane, and you don’t compare and you don’t complain’-- or at least you didn’t complain too much -- “all you do is just sit tight.”

There were two circumstances auguring change in the years ahead, though I paid them little heed at the time. For one, Mom was starting to have regular visits from a nice young lady named Irene, where they would sit around, drink coffee and discuss things, like the condition of the world today.  For another, Mike started to go to school. Every morning we’d see him march stolidly down to the corner of the Loop to wait for the bus. I’d watch from the dining room picture window until he disappeared around the corner. I had been told that next year (a year was a very long time to a little boy) I would be going to school with him.  I would ask him about it when he got back, and got some vague ideas as to what went on, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like.  But that’s the future for you, whether you’re five or fifty.  

What Happened (Part 39)

Sunday we would have the fanciest meal of the whole week. For instance, Mom might make fried chicken, or braise and then simmer a roast with onions in the square electric pan she would plug in on the kitchen counter top. There would be gravy and mashed potatoes with that, and in the summer squash or green beans from the garden.  In the winter we might have beef stew, or chicken soup with dumplings made from two or three tubes of biscuits. 

The early evening was given over to The Wonderful World of Disney, which is the one place we got our rare dose of Disney animation.  Usually it was some live-action fare.  The fabled Disney cartoons were more a presence in books and comics than in actual films or shorts.  I always got the impression that Disney was aimed for the upper class, or those who had aspirations for it; Warner Brothers’ characters were more an everyday, working class kind of cartoon. The fact that Disney only came on once a week at Sunday seemed to emphasize that view.  But at Christmas we got to see some honest-to-goodness cartoons.

Sometime in the evening Pop would put on the uniform Mom had ironed for him (light blue shirt with name patch, dark blue pants), pick up his yellow safety helmet, and head out to work. Mom would kiss him good-bye, and we’d all give him a hug.  We never knew quite when he’d be home; it all depended on the run he would have to do, hauling steel and scrap all through Texas and the nearby states.  When he was gone, the whole vibe of the house would change; subtly but noticeably Mom put on extra vigilance.  There might be straightening up for the week ahead, and we’d have to beat our waves of toys back into the toy room, maybe even until they were put all the away back into the closet. At ten o’clock it was time for bed, and the regular cycle began again the next day.

This is My New Favorite Earworm

 WIND ROSE - Diggy Diggy Hole (Official Video) | Napalm Records - YouTube

What Happened (Part 38)

Another Sunday amusement was the family drive.  We’d all get in the station wagon (it was the old white one, then later the aquamarine Pontiac) and Pop would head out into the country, to the sand hills.  We’d look at old farms, and fields of cows (we had a simple game; whoever saw them first would yell out “My Cows!” and whoever claimed the most won), and sometimes we would even stop and pick wildflowers.  A fun part was when Pop came to a dip in the road, he’d speed up, and we’d all laugh as we felt our stomachs drop.  Somewhere along the way we’d stop at some joint or little store to get a snack and a soda.  I remember one time I got a Big Red that smelled like a cigar, but I had to drink it anyway, so as not to waste it.  Lucky I was really thirsty.

Off of the Wish List and Into My Library: Unfinished Tales (of Numenor and Middle-earth)

The last of my Christmas presents. This 2020 edition contains 18 color illustrations by Alan Lee, John Howe, and Ted Naismith, and four pencil illustrations at the head of four separate sections, as well as endpaper maps drawn by Christopher Tolkien. It is what it says on the label, stories and explorations by J. R. R. Tolkien into his invented world of Middle-earth that were never completed. They are written speculations and tales by the author as he tried to flesh out his mythical history, and have no established 'canonicity' as such, but offer glimpses into Tolkien's thinking and creative process, and have been accepted as at least his initial intentions for the facts of his legendarium. "Unfinished Tales" was first published in 1980, between the publication of "The Silmarillion" and before the beginning of the ambitious and inclusive 12-volume  "The History of Middle-earth".

I got my first copy of "Unfinished Tales" on November 29, 1980. I know because I wrote it on the inside cover (this was back when I did such things). While I read it all with some intensity (even deciphering the elf runes on the title page, I was most interested in the parts that had to do with Gandalf and the other wizards, the different take on Bilbo and the Quest of Erebor, and the insight into the Ringwraiths and into Gollum's movements in The Hunt for the Ring.

Over the years I got a couple of paperback copies, more for the interesting covers than as reading copies. Terlizzi's whimsical concept of a hobbit going over Tolkien's papers was especially fun, and pictures showing a take on one of Sauron's incarnations were sufficiently rare to intrigue me.

There have been several other hardback editions of the book, but this is the first one since 1980 that I've felt that I must have, mostly for the illustrations.