Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Kiss Daddy Goodbye by Thomas Altman aka Campbell Black aka Campbell Armstrong

Kiss Daddy Goodbye (1980) is another from  Thomas Altman aka Campbell Black and Campbell Armstrong, following up on last week's post. If you think about it, the Altman novels kind of anticipate the  current domestic thriller era.

This is actually a hardcover book club edition I bought from a remainder house, Publisher's Central Bureau. The True Bride actually followed this one followed by Black Christmas, not a movie tie-in, though the author did write a tie-in to Dressed to Kill as Campbell Black. 

SEE ALSO:BIBLIOHOLIC'S BOOKSHELF - MR. APOLOGY BY CAMPBELL BLACK  

Dark Places followed this one and The Intruder rounded out the Altman novels. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Mr. Apology by Campbell Black

As I've discussed here from time to time, I worked at a newspaper for many years. After a while in general news, I moved into the features department. They asked for me after my first novel came out because it seemed to indicate I could write descriptive prose. I was more interested in writing about arts and letters and entertainment anyway, but it never proved to be a good fit.

Surprisingly the editors were not particularly interested in arts and letters, movies, music, books or many of the things that usually go into, you know, the arts and entertainment section of a newspaper features section. 

Despite that attitude, I always tried to bolster book and author coverage when I could, since I was working in that vineyard and knew what that meant to writers as well as readers.

Often, in spite of that, I was peripheral to decisions. 

SEE ALSO: THE HUSTLER - FIFTIES MAINSTREAM FICTION

An author from, I believe, New Orleans came by one day with the cover art from his upcoming techno-thriller style book. He'd just received it from the publisher.

His selling point was a shadow of a helicopter, almost an Easter egg the artist happened to drop into the mix. It was maybe a stretch to get editors interested. Didn't work even though he was a Louisiana writer and had something new from a New York house in a popular genre.

Somewhere in the process they introduced him to me, though I wasn't getting assigned to review his book. I think they had me busy on something exciting like "People Who Own Dogs in Cenla." 

In the course of conversation, he mentioned a friend, Campbell Armstrong whose real name was Campbell Black. "He sometimes writes as Thomas Altman."

I'd read Black Christmas and The True Bride. I said, "Yeah, I've read him. He puts out some things as Campbell Black."

"NO, HE WRITES AS CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG," the guy said emphatically. Wouldn't hear of different.

I let it drop, but I knew my own book holdings, and I had the one pictured at my house though this is not my copy which is in storage at the moment. 

The editor never took an interest in the guy's cover nor his technothriller. 

He sent postcards a few times after as reminder, escalating his tough sell, but there were stories about refrigerator magnet collectors to be assigned. So it goes. Today we have this thing called the internet that at least settles disputes. 

All of that came back to me for some reason. Conflict sticks with you, I guess. 

 

 ADDENDUM

Got my copy from storage, so here's the back cover.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels

I got this one from my older cousin. It was in a stash with some issues of Galaxy and a book assessing the James Bond book series, things from his youth. I think he was out of college by then, and I was still a kid. 

It was tucked away in a corner of an abandoned house on his parents' property that was now being used for storage. 

The Asimov entry introduced me to the three laws of robotics. Well, actually my cousin had told me about that. I learned that's where he'd discovered them. 

SEE ALSO: NEW PEOPLE TV TIE-IN NOVELIZATION

There's Just Something About A Snow Day

The weather forecast made it sound iffy, but I walked into the home office this morning to find Christine peeking out the blinds. I thought she might have heard something like a dog howl, but she quickly announced we had snow and some of it was sticking. 

We have quite a bit in the vicinity of ye olde town home apartments this morning. 

Not an unpleasant way to begin the day.  

Zoë Moonshadow (Feline) Settles In

It's been a while since we've had a new cat in the household. As I've mentioned in one spot or another, Oliver Littlechap's death in 2019 ended a feline era stretching back to 1997 when Christine and I adopted Daisy and her brother, Cleo.

All of our cats lived out their lives with us, and in later years, they craved warm laps and companionship. Mostly warm laps. 

Zoë Moonshadow is about five and still has those bursts of energy that send her streaking across the living room up the stairs, around the second floor and back again in a heartbeat, with a thunder of footfalls that sound like a herd of wildebeest. She sits on laps but briefly before she's off on other business.

She's settling in with us and seems to like us. There is a bit of unwinding yet to do, though. One two many strokes of her head and coat results in a warning bite. Not too hard, but not a play bite either.

The humane society noted she'd been terrified of large dogs in her second household. Christine likens her situation now to PTSD. I've noticed Zoë's muscles tense as she cocks an ear to an unrecognized sound, as if a dog's approach might be imminent. 

Daisy never knew that kind of fear, but she had her own agenda early on, cuddling was a small part of it. You took affection when it came your way and let her move on when she announced the time for new business.

I'm reminded now of that time. 

I suspect in time we'll get longer, lazy lap sits, but there's no need to rush that. We can spend time in play and hijinks.

Christine read somewhere that Russian Blues like feathered toys, so we grabbed a card of those when we bought her a bed and scratching post. They proved so popular they quickly disappeared. Tucked away in a summer shoe or some other hiding place found and forgotten. 

I bought a few more and a feathered toy on a stick that proves a joy. She chases, nabs if lobbed in the air and if a toy misbehaves enough it gets a pummeling with the hind feet.

In the absence of toys, she likes to hop on the bed and paw wrinkles in the blanket. They seem alive to her and in needed of subduing. 

 "I'm so glad we got her," Christine said one Saturday morning as wrinkles were trapped beneath paws. 

I was reminded that cat ownership often involves sharing the world as much as immediate bonding, watching habits and instincts at work. Coping with a fearful moment if a dog strays too close to a window. Supplying food of course. Seeking to mute some instincts, of course.

With the world made small by pandemic, limited to the walls of home more than ever, having a friend sharing the space expands the universe. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Dark of the Moon by Dan Ross

A gothic by Dan Ross aka WED Ross who wrote many Dark Shadows novels under the name Marilyn Ross. This one's copyright 1969.

Truman Then and Now

I was fortunate enough to cover David McCullough discussing his Truman bio once upon a time. 

As research, McCullough went to the location of President Harry Truman's vice presidential office where he received the news of FDR's death. 

When that word came, Truman ran to the Oval Office. 

McCullough, along with a couple of Capitol Police officers, ran the same route Truman would have followed. He noted Truman would have run, I believe, along Statuary Hall.

There he would have caught a sense of history and the weight of what had just been placed upon him as he glimpsed those historic figures in blurring past in his peripheral view. 

A New York Times correspondent in commentary Dec. 20 observed that the usually jovial and backslappingJoe Biden was showing signs of grim sobriety, no doubt contemplating what he faces.

I guess it's no surprise that amid pics of family, now President Joseph Biden has chosen statues of historic figures and other important leaders to decorate his Oval Office. The decorating indicates thoughts of more than self but more importantly of taking the job seriously and with the resolve to serve.

It has to be daunting and awesome. There will be stumbles, setbacks and battles. I'm an optimist but no Pollyanna, but I can't help but feel and think we're better off this moment than we were a week ago. 

My cat Zoë meets Bernie

 

It Was Still There

I know a lot of people cried on Wednesday. I was teary-eyed pretty much from the time the band tuned up until the ceremony wound down on Inauguration Day, but when Lady Gaga sang the national anthem and hit "our flag was still there," a great torrent of tears spilled down my face. 

It was, honestly, the best rendition of the hard-to-perform song I've ever heard, delivered with just the right nuances. 

I noted the moment on Facebook because I guess I felt the unexpected relief so many have spoken of. It was a rush, a knee-weakening feeling, an exhale. Everyone's called it an exhale too, so nothing profound there, but it fits.

Sometimes I fail to note to myself how stress is affecting me, a remnant of "be a man" admonitions from my old man, I guess. He was stoic in the face of pain and adversity. I inherited some of that, though it's tempered by my mother's emotional traits. 

But those words and the way Lady Gaga delivered them and really the whole song began to unwind the coil of tension that had wound tighter and tighter as the events of Jan. 6 unfolded.

We've never seen the flag or the capitol threatened in that way, and though they're symbols, they're powerful symbols and they matter. The flag's been co-opted in many cases, but it is our flag, not just the flag of those shrillest "patriots" who cloak themselves in it. 

It is our flag, and it was threatened. They tried to replace it with Trump flags. 

They tried to replace it with Trump flags.

They tried to replace it with Trump flags.

Trump flags.

But they failed, and the assault on democracy abetted by the worst of our leaders, the most cynical, leading blind followers, failed. 

They failed, and amid all the tumult and the horror and the death, we got an inauguration and a reminder of who we are. When Vice President Dan Quayle walked in I cried too. First of the high office holders, a member of the opposing party, representative of an administration with a leader who's passed on. President and Mrs. George W. Bush followed then the other ex-presidents. It was an important show of who we are, a democracy with procedures and symbolic gestures, the true patriot's dream.

And she nailed it all in that lyric. All had been threatened, all that we took for granted for so long, all that had been routine, pedestrian, everything was revealed to be so fragile. 

But it was still there, still in place, ragged around the edges, perhaps, strained, still imperiled, but still there. 

And maybe for a little longer. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Death Cuts the Deck by Robert L. Fish

Robert L. Fish is probably best known for his Sherlock Holmes parodies featuring Schlock Homes of Bagel Street. Ebook editions of many of the tales are available.

As Robert L. Pike, Fish penned the novel Mute Witness which became the police thriller classic Bullit with Steve McQueen. 

This one's a cozy mystery set on a cruise ship, so deck has an extra meaning. It's from 1971, published by Ace Star. 

SEE ALSO: BIBLIOHOLIC'S BOOKSHELF - THE D.A. GOES TO TRIAL

 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Devil Day - basis for the film Madhouse

I'm a big fan of the Vincent Price vehicle Madhouse (1974), in which he plays a horror star whose return sparks a series of murders. To me, it along with Theatre of Blood from United Artists, are interesting, seventies tales of horror and revenge that showcase Price in diverse roles. Madhouse was his final excursion with American International Pictures, however, ending an era. 

The film's based on the British novel Devilday. Editions with Price on the cover exist, but this is the British edition from Sphere that's dated September 1970. The ACE edition with the same cover is listing for $768 on Amazon right now, with $3.99 shipping, so I'm glad I got it when I did. 

 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - To the Devil a Daughter

Home For the Holidays - Mining Moments

 The holidays seem vast and brief at the same time. I always feel a little tinge of something when I'm putting away Christmas decorations.

I open a box to put something back and find an item I tucked away in November when I took everything else out. And it hits me that the time has passed quickly, as all time does. It immediately feels as if it was long ago the boxes were put back in storage and as if it was seconds.

I had a nice holiday season with my wife Christine, and it did stretch a bit in spite of the flash feeling. I watched a lot of movies, of course. We're working to stay safe and sane.

Happiest Season on Hulu caught my interest early on because it was not just another Christmas movie. It's LGBT-themed and semi-autobiographical for writer-director Clea DuVall, and I thought it was fun and equally poignant in its exploration of people finding their true selves while coping with family pressures.

Christine and I watched and liked The Queen's Gambit together,  at the same time everyone was. "You always have liked smart girls," Christine reminded me. 

I got on a Bond kick later in the season. Friends were rewatching and a common podcast led to several concurrent purchases of the Nobody Does it Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond. 

Several Christmases ago, a lot of Christmases actually, I got boxed sets of the films up through the Pierce Brosnans. (Later, as they came out, I got Blu-Rays of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.) During the holiday break that first year of ownership, I rewatched most of the flicks starting with Dr. No and enjoyed the disc extras with each.

That was long enough ago, the new viewing experience was fresh.  

Doing that again was a different but fun experience, and afforded a bit of "where was I when" thinking. The first ever Bond on my radar was On Her Majesty's Secret Service. 

My mom got her hair done in a hair salon across from the theater in the little town where I grew up. One of the younger stylists mentioned the film and that a new star was taking over. I remember looking out the window at the poster of George Lazenby on skis. Didn't  actually see a Bond other than the David Niven Casino Royale until Man With the Golden Gun, though I recall ads for Diamonds are Forever and Live and Let Die. I can't recall ads for You Only Lives Twice, but it open roughly the same time as The Dirty Dozen, for which I saw ads on TV and in magazines. I went to see that with my dad and my uncle. My uncle feared I wouldn't sit still for a feature film, but I did, half of it on the upper edge of a theater seat because my weight didn't push the folding cushion down. 

SEE ALSO: The Red Cardigan

Back to Now
In the mix this season, I kept up with The Mandalorian though there were still a few spoilers in spite of everything. You can't watch fast enough. When I saw You-Know-Who's Instagram post of himself going Shhhh, I knew what that had to mean. Clearly, as I just noted, you gotta watch it when it drops. 

I fit in a Christmas Day showing of A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim as well, the classic 1951 rendering that holds up so well. It was a nice alternative to Bells of St. Mary's or It's A Wonderful Life, both of which I love but also have memorized.

We got enough cold in Williamsburg for it to feel like the holidays, though it deterred walking a bit too, which Christine and I enjoy.

Christine and I fit in a few walks to look at decorations in spite of the cold, and we got to see the Saturn/Jupiter alignment, though with streetlights and surprisingly busy sidewalks, we didn't get quite the view we were hoping for. Part of the time I thought it might be distant radio towers we were seeing before deciding that had to be the view. So it goes.

We adopted our new friend Zoë right before the holidays as well, so part of the time we enjoyed the journey of her feeling more and more at home. I put Band Aids on a few bites and scratches as she was getting comfortable. 

I also spent a good bit of time shaking out shoes and looking under furniture for feather-tailed toys she enjoyed but had a tendency to lose. 

Nothing profound here, just a few notes so that I'll remember later, because with my friend Lee's death, I've realized how much days can blur together and how hard it can be to mine moments from memory. 

Once that wasn't as hard, but there were fewer years to look back on. Now there are more with more thoughts crowding the attic.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Butterfly Revolution by William Butler

I suppose The Butterfly Revolution by William Butler fits best into a sub-genre somewhere along side something like Glendon Swarthout's Bless the Beasts and Children and maybe even Lord of the Flies. The cover blurb suggests that as you can see. You can also read a brief review here. 

The book focuses on an uprising at a summer camp and the establishment of a new, brutal order by the victorious young revolutionaries. It's copyright 1961.

It's not a slasher film, though the marketing and poster for the loose movie adaptation, Summer Camp Nightmare (1987) channels that vibe at least at a glance. 

The big name in the cast is Chuck Connors as the camp director with Melissa Reeves of Days of Our Lives in a supporting role. 

This Ballantine edition is from December, 1973, the 11th printing. Butler's other books include The House at Akiya and The Experiment. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf- The Scarf by Robert Bloch

Memory and Loss

 I've been in a remembering mode for the last few days. I guess my last post on "A Christmas Memory" touched on that. Maybe it's the holidays or just COVID times. My cousin, who is deeply immersed in family history, sort of fueled it further with a Merry Christmas email that mentioned places my mom and grandmother lived before my parents were married.

That sent me to Google Street View to check out my childhood home. It's still there, though looking different on a little street across from the high school in my home town. The siding's new along with a few other features, but the back porch with its red brick steps and ornamental iron posts looks the same. It's only four or five steps, but it seemed mountainous when I was a kid.

It's hard to describe how looking at a recent photo makes me feel. It's a bit bittersweet, though that's not quite the right word. It's just a rush of emotion and memory.

I can recall the guy down the street got a pirate costume one Halloween, just one of those crappy, in-a-bag jobs with the shiny fabric they call vintage these days. I remember him before Trick-or-Treating hanging out and climbing onto that irorn work with a toy hammer and declaring: "Me gonna fix this ship."And I remember sitting on those steps and reading Superman No. 199 in which he raced The Flash. 

So that's the place I was in when I got word last night one of my old friends from high school and college days passed away. Not the kid in the pirate suit. The segue's a little awkward. 

This guy's name was Lee. 

I immediately thought of him calling and waking me up on what would have had to have been June 1, 1984. I'd started working the 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift at the newspaper, so an early call was like the middle of the night. I grumbled, but then I realized Star Trek III: The Search for Spock opened that day and we needed to find out how things turned out with our favorite Vulcan. 

Seeing Trek was a tradition. We'd been Trek fans a long time. We'd been friends a long time. He lived around the corner from me, and we rode bikes as kids. 

He'd actually been the one to purchase the Star Trek Concordance, which was a handy guide in the days before the internet. Gaming was on a Commodore 64, by the way. We explored Zork and other worlds of Infocom. 

We actually missed seeing Star Trek II together because he was running late, and we couldn't get into an opening night showing. I saw it the next day with my girlfriend at the time. She was not a Trek fan. Her friend, who did get in the night before, had been saddened. "Paula said somebody died." Yeah, that spoiler was on Lee. 

We got past that, and we continued to see movies during our early working life.

I'm not sure when our paths diverged, but over time we drifted into different circles. He went back to school, I got married. He later worked in IT at the company where my wife worked, so I'd hear of him a lot more than I saw him, then I left Central Louisiana.

We caught up on Facebook a couple of years ago. He found me, and we kept in touch via posts. He'd moved to Baton Rouge for new IT jobs and was active in a church music program. He'd always been in choir and played the piano well. 

I noted his occasional post about bad service at a quick stop or other steps along his path, noticed not too ago he was dating someone. I was happy for him. Saw pics at a high school reunion I didn't attend because of COVID. He was there in the mix of old friends. 

I shared a meme about Louisiana foods not too many days ago. How many have you had? Along with a lot of other people, he responded adding a quip, a familiar Cajun exclamation. Not something that warranted a response by me in a long thread, but a reminder he was out there living his life. 

Then word came he'd had a heart attack in his home. Someone I didn't know remembered him fondly. 

And suddenly 30 years are compressed, and I'm contemplating, amid this year of death and chaos, yet again how fast it all seems to have been when you look back.

And you start mining your memory. Yep, we saw Raiders together, my second viewing. Dune, Never Ending Story, Krull. All early '80s. 

Okay there were films and dinners. Was he in that mix of friends discussing 30's onslaught? When did we go our separate ways. 

Couldn't tell you. 

But he scored 22 out of 23 dishes on a New Orleans food test. Which one was he missing? Shrimp BBQ or turtle soup?

Ayeeeeee. I should have asked when I had the chance. 

Favorite Short Stories - A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote

I read "A Christmas Memory" first in junior high. 

It was assigned reading in our textbook. I didn't know who Truman Capote was yet. My Weekly Reader neglected coverage of the Black and White Ball and didn't review In Cold Blood. 

It was just another story in the reader back then, but Capote writes in that little tale of an elderly cousin who was a friend to him in his childhood. 

As I was growing up, my grandmother, my mother's mother, lived with my family. She was my babysitter when I was little since my mom was a high school teacher.

The relationship between Buddy, the narrator, and his cousin reminded me of my relationship with my grandmother. 

She was as much a friend as a guardian. She worked hard to keep me from killing myself, but she didn't worry much if the afternoon movie was playing Them or The Incredible Shrinking Man. 

She told me stories of her youth, an early bad marriage, an early widowhood in a second, happier union. She was an ally against my mom who'd inherited a strict approach from a Baptist minister grandfather even though we were Methodists.

My grandmother cooked though she didn't have the inclination toward fruitcakes exhibited by Buddy's cousin. I don't remember a signature dish.

I do recall her liking Delaware Punch, a soft drink. It's all but gone I read the other day. I haven't seen a bottle in years. But at a little grocery store back in the day, we'd slide bottles out from the case-style soft drink machines where the bottles dangled inside and cool air rushed up when you looked in.

The family lore held, since she'd lost a son to a heart attack two months before I was born, that taking care of me revitalized my grandmother.   

She took me to kindergarten on Fridays until I went every day the following year. We took a cab driven by a guy who looked to me like The Skipper from Gilligan's Island. She dressed up for those occasions, wore a hat and waited for me at the bottom of a flight of stairs outside the classroom. 

My grandmother was still alive, still living with us when I read A Christmas Memory for the first time. She'd live three, maybe four years longer. Happily at that time in my life years didn't tick past like seconds and certainly not like the blur 2020 has proved to be.

But even then, in reading, I could see that the world was finite. The story offered a bit of a bittersweet portent, especially when it reached this passage:

"...more and more thirteenths are not the only days she stays in bed: a morning arrives in November, a leafless birdless coming of winter morning, when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim: "Oh my, it's fruitcake weather."

I guess in some ways, the tale prepared me even as it celebrated the relationship of Buddy and his cousin. My grandmother passed away the day after I finished my first year in high school. I always suspected she held on to let me finish final exams.

I picked up the boxed 1966 edition of the story for probably a dollar years later at a library book sale. I keep it around for Christmas re-reads. It triggers good memories. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Dark Shadows Book of Vampires And Werewolves

Happily as I mentioned recently, the original Dark Shadows novels are being reissued. This is another adjacent, branded book from the original Paperback Library era. It includes classics such as John Polidori's early tale of a gentleman vampire,"The Vampyre." That was begun, of course, during the same writing challenge that produced Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.  It seems an appropriate public domain choice for a collection adjacent to the world of Barnabas Collins. 

The complete contents are listed on Goodreads. 

This one is copyright August, 1970 by Dan Curtis Productions.  

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Dark Dominion 

Season's Greetings - Robin and Red Berries

Just happened to spot a robin while walking the other day. Looked seasonal. 

 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Dark Dominion - A Dark Shadows Adjacent Collection

As you're probably aware, the Dark Shadows paperback novelizations were wildly popular when the gothic soap was on the air. Happily those are coming back into print from Heremes Press. 

A few adjacent titles were released in gold editions from Paperback Library. One of those was The Dark Dominion, dated December, 1970, with a vampire looking a lot like Christopher Lee on the cover and a werewolf looking a lot like Lon Chaney, Jr. The tales, maybe classic, maybe obscure, that are included are listed on the back cover pictured below and are available at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

SEE ALSO: Comics Catuch Up featuring a Dark Shadows/Vampirella Crossover

A Dark Shadows-licensed collection, The Dark Shadows Book of Vampires and Werewolves, was also released by Paperback Library in 1970. That'll have to wait for another post. 

Friday for Writers: A Character Description Lesson From Stanley Ellin

If not a household name, Stanley Ellin's still a not-inconsequential figure in the history of mystery and suspense fiction.

A new article about his unique private investigator novels popped up on the excellent Crime Reads website the other day.

That took me back to days when I was a kid and discovered Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine on the drug store magazine rack.

I found after reading numerous issues that Stanley Ellin's stories were among those I usually liked. 

His picture appeared on the cover during a period when the mag did a run of author portraits. Eventually EQMM released an edition of Ellin short fiction, Kindly Dig Your Grave and other Wicked Stories.

The Crime Reads article prompted me to pluck an anthology off my shelf, Ellery Queen's Grand Slam (1970). That included an Ellin story I hadn't read, "Coin of the Realm." It's a great collection that also included Joe Gores' Edgar-winning "Goodbye, Pops."

"Coin" is an interesting "all is not what it seems" piece from Ellin. 

I was struck enough by the way he slipped in the physical description of the POV character that I decided to share the passage with some writing students, and it seems worth a look for all writers making decisions about how to slip physical description in seamlessly. 

"You look like a million," he said, soberly nodding his approval.

Her own expression, as she eyed him from head to foot, was anything but approving."

"I wish I could say the same for you. Is that how you expect to go out? That ridiculous Hawaiian shirt and not even a jacket?"

"It's too hot for a jacket. And we're only going to Flea Market, for Pete's sake, not the opera."

"Even so. And that camera and that great big camera bag slung around your neck. And that awful cigar shoved into your mouth. Do you know what you look like?"

"What?"

"An American tourist, that's what. A real corny American tourist."

Walt glanced at the beefy, red-faced, bald-headed image of himself in the full-length mirror...

The things he's carrying are ultimately significant in the story though it meshes perfectly with his wife's dissatisfaction that fuels the tale's opening exchange.

The guy does eventually look in the mirror--as many fictional characters are wont to--to study his appearance, but I thought the way Ellin built to that made it a natural move, and a great way to provide the reader needed information in an organic way.

If you haven't discovered Ellin as a reader and/or a writer, dig up his work and check him out. 

Ellin, Stanley. "Coin of the Realm." Ellery Queen's Grand Slam. Ed. Ellery Queen. New York: Popular Library, 1970. 29-43. Print.

 

One of My Favorite Holiday Train Ads

 

I like train travel and had started doing more of it right before the pandemic hit. When Christine and I were moving from Orlando to Williamsburg, we did a couple of car train rides. It was the easiest way to get two really packed automobiles from point A to point B.

SEE ALSO: A Vintage Ad That Looks About Right for Coronavirus Times

Train ads capture the flavor of a different era, and the New York Central Railroad did some of the best, part of its competition with rival Pennsylvania Railroad. The two would later merge as train travel waned.