The New York City area is also center stage for this next visit to fandom past.
Dave Kyle's latest article for us is bracketed around the 1930s, but takes us far
and wide as he continues his personal journey through fandom's past days.
 Food is as much a part of fantasy and
science fiction as it is in he real world. Alice was urged to 'Eat Me!' and 'Drink
Me!', and H.G. Wells told of The Food of the Gods. The most famous sf double
entendre of all time is the story "To Serve Man." Ruth Kyle published her
Fandom's Cookbook in 1959 for friends, and years later Anne McCaffrey wrote
her sf cookbook for the world.When I was young, in 1939 and three
years into my personal fannish journey beyond the typewriter, future Nebula winner
Dick Wilson and I stood up at the counter of Nedick's on 42nd Street, Manhattan,
and slaked our hunger and thirst, each with a hot dog and root beer. Those two
items were purchased for the price of one nickel. Five cents for his, five cents
for mine! I would never have believed then, despite my extravagant sf visions of
the future, that one day the few pennies would become many bucks. One day we would
be prominent participants in fancy worldcon banquets. However, the exposition of
such epicurean epics -- worldcon banquets, the food food and drink of organized
fandom -- is not to be told here in this, my more personal view.My first encounter with food and
fandom was in 1936, when I went to New York City out of high school and entered the
world of the infamous International Scientific Association (ISA) fan group, in
which Don Wollheim, Fred Pohl, Dick Wilson, and Harry 'Dirk Wylie' Dockweiler
became my close teenage friends. I had found the personal world of fandom beyond
the typewriter and the reader's pages of the magazines. For the first time in my
life, I was eating and drinking regularly away from home and my parents. I
discovered the fast food places of the Depression Era: automats, cafeterias, and
Nedick's counter service. And Dirk, the would-be Hemingway clone, introduced me to
the hip flask and the insouciance of the wearing of the cigarette.Don and his cohort Johnny Michal ate
humble food like the rest of us, but Don didn't drink spirits, whereas Johnny
(later in harness with Cyril Kornbluth) most certainly did at appropriate times.
Come to think of it, Don was, in this and other ways, a sort of conservative(?!)
east coast Forry Ackerman.After an ISA meeting out there in
the Borough of Queens, there was a ritual involving ice cream gluttony by the way
of a concoction we called 'The Science Fiction Sundae'. I was initiated into the
routine. Fred Pohl explains the phenomenon thusly: "You see, what we science
fiction fans mostly wanted to do with each other's company was to talk about
science fiction, and about the world. ... We formed the habit of The Meeting.
After the Meeting. ... [We would] walk in a body to the nearest station of the El.
On the way, we would stop off at a soda fountain .... It supplied us with ice
cream sodas..."Another favorite hangout for those
Meetings After the Meeting or other socializing moments was the Horn and Hardart
Automat on 42nd Street. We would linger for hours over a few cents worth of food.
I'm not sure, but I think we occasionally had some tomato soup concocted from the
free catsup and the hot water taps. I am sure, though, that I occasionally amused
my companions by eating the flower in the vase on the table with some pretense at
shaking a dash of salt and pepper on it while pretending that I relished it, to
emphasize my low finances and acknowledge those days of The Great Depression.In my experience-filled year in the
Big City, to which I would return in other years, I had sampled the rudiments of
fannish food and drink. The future held for me the wild -- well, not so wild --
parties of my convention days. The very first convention, in Philadelphia in 1936,
was held in a bar that was closed for business. None of us from New York or
Philadelphia had any thought of alcoholic beverages then. Times would change.Some of my past Mimosa
articles have mentioned food, like Arthur Clarke's cheese and wine bachelor party
{{ed. note: "Golden Ages,
Silver Screens" in M13 }}, and that 1940 trip to Chicago {{ ed. note: "Chicon Ho!" in M8 }} when we
chose to buy a bag of groceries instead of a couple of tickets to the banquet --
which later prompted Californian Elmer Perdue to treat us to 'one decent meal' as
our car limped back to New York.Going out to restaurants or fast food
places at conventions is obviously a necessity, and you often unexpectedly meet
friends there. Isaac Asimov confessed that after he tricked Ruth Landis (my future
spouse) away from me on the Saturday night at the 1955 Clevention, he "...and
Randall Garrett and Forrest Ackerman ... kept squiring her here and there ...
[eventually finding] an all-night diner [where they] sat up all night with Ruth
... talking all sorts of gibberish and loving it." Long talks into the night
accompanied by food and drink have always been commonplace but don't often get
mentioned in autobiographies.Possibly the most propitious time for
combining food and good fellowship at conventions is breakfast time (at least for
my advanced years). Then, the wilder element is still abed recuperating from the
all-night parties. The hangover crowd and sleep-deprived are almost non-existent
in the dining room or breakfast cafe, but old-timers and the sedate seem to be
leisurely fueling up for the day ahead. Some of my most pleasant encounters have
been then. In New Orleans, at the 1988 Worldcon, if I hadn't wandered out to the
waterfront for rolls and coffee, I would have missed George Price. And I would
have missed his reminiscence of a forgotten time when we had our picture published
in the New York Daily News just after the war. We were in uniform helping
Jimmy Taurasi (who was wearing his FanVet cap) prepare packages of sf magazines
"...for our boys, somewhere over there." I had forgotten that. Then there was my
visit with Ray and Diane Harryhausen (who were eating undisturbed, except by me) to
recall the old days. I remember the special meals for con guests before and after
the main weekend. Most memorable, because it was so shocking, was the morning I
met Ben Bova in the lobby and we breakfasted together. I told him it was my first
chance in years to socialize with him. (I had introduced him to the science
fiction world in 1956.) "Why so?" he asked. "Because you were always surrounded
with people," I explained, "as the prominent editor of Omni and I didn't
want to intrude."He regretted my reluctance, then came
the shock: "When I left Omni, they left me," he said. Fair weather friends,
sad to say, are to be found in science fiction circles, prevalent among
'professionals'. That didn't seem to be so in the good old days, when most (if
not all) pros were genuine fans, unsegregated and not aloof.Free snacks and some drinks appeared
with the advent of hospitality set-ups for the early conventions. As con-goers
became more affluent, food and drink refreshments began to spread with the increase
in hotel room bookings, leading to small gatherings of friends and private parties.
At my Newyorcon (the 1956 Worldcon), I arranged a welcome party subsidized by the
publishers, at which everyone got at least two free alcoholic drinks.
This leads to a discussion of
drinking at conventions. The patron saint of science fiction, St. Fantony, brought
forth the 'waters for the trufen' in merrie olde Englande and this century's British
fans concocted 'blog', that legendary fannish drink. It was as potent as could be
devised for 'The Test' to determine such trufen. Fandom's Cookbook, Ruth's
booklet, has three recipes for blog, as submitted by Bill Donoho.Alcoholic spirits flowed generously
on both sides of the Atlantic. The youth and affability of those drawn to the early
years of cons created an atmosphere very much like something to be found on college
campuses. Drinking hard liquor became the smart thing to do, and drunkenness was
all too common. I think the drinking problem developed postwar when more money was
around and booze flowed freely. No bidding party or hospitality room was worth
attention if whiskey and beer weren't available.The best drinking party I ever
enjoyed took place at the Detention, the 1959 Detroit Worldcon. The invitation
read: '10pm Cass Room, Bheer Party. Bring your Bheer Credits. Meet your favorite
authors. Light Bheer, Dark Bheer, Rhoot Bheer. The Detention Committee is host --
if you can still read this, go find a party.' After the masquerade -- which unlike
today's affairs was simple, brief, and over with before eleven o'clock -- pitchers
of beer were placed on tables. Ruthbegan a bridge game with Detention co-chairmen
Roger Sims and Fred Prophet, and (probably) Carolyn Hickman while I kibitzed. About
eleven o'clock, a panel began in the next room, which may well have been the
longest-running worldcon panel of all time. It went on hour after hour into the
night... and so did the card game. Various persons would wander in from the panel
and report its progress to the bheer drinking players, then wander back. The
panel members were in a perpetual state of flux. Several times I rotated in and
out as a panel member or spectator, catching Ruth's score and trying to slake my
unquenchable thirst. The pitchers of beer seemed unending. It was the best dark
beer -- dark bheer, that is -- I have ever drunk (and I speak as a veteran resident
of England). That night is memorable -- ask anyone who was there!In addition to convention-sponsored
hospitality, fans have always had the knack of finding free food and drinks at
gatherings where other events have been simultaneously held in the con hotel.
Private, non-sf room parties have often been crashed. In 1952, at Chicon II, a
wedding reception upstairs from the worldcon area seemed fair game to some fans.
Lloyd Arthur Eshbach (Fantasy Press) and I (Gnome Press) looked in, but Lloyd was
intimidated by the scene and left. However, two other fan/pros, Bill Hamling
(Amazing Stories) and Mel Korshak (Shasta Publishers), also sub-committee
chairmen for Chicon, amazed and embarrassed me with their chutzpah. When their
presence was challenged, they brazened it out, lingering to sample the food and
drink, while I silently slipped away. Bill, in fact, acted self-righteously
belligerent and Mel later "...had several delightful waltzes with the bride."
(Lloyd has reported this incident in greater detail in his fascinating book,
Over My Shoulder.)My strongest, most dramatic memories
of all about food and drink, however, were of my days as a struggling artist when
starvation seemed to hover over us. 'Us' was Dick Wilson and me, when in 1939-40,
we lived in a tiny apartment on the upper east side of New York that was called
Ravens' Roost. We often subsisted on the kindness of families, friends, and fans.
Dirk Wylie regularly raided his mother's larder in the wilds of Queen's Village,
far from the end of the subway line. My mother would send us packages of food
along with concerned notes from my old home town of Monticello a hundred miles
away. Mrs. Wilson would occasionally send us some home-cooked supplies, and Jack
Gillespie would show up frequently with cartons of chocolate-covered Goobers
"...which had fallen off the back of the truck..." that his father drove. We
bought oatmeal and potatoes -- plenty of potatoes. For weeks we would have a
varied menu of fried potatoes... or boiled potatoes... or mashed potatoes... or
baked potatoes, with oatmeal every third time to break the monotony.We also had our cake -- our emergency
ration. We had made it one day out of flour and slightly sour milk, with some
melted red and green candies for sweetening. We baked it for a long time in a deep
pan. When the top was a dark golden crust, we pried it out of the pan with great
effort. It was as solid as a rock, and the chips of red and green crystals
studding its surface gave it a jewel-like quality.It was impossible to cut. It was
impossible to break. We attacked it with a dull knife and a hammer, and when the
thing stubbornly refused to surrender, we altered our thinking. It became our
permanent protection against starvation while serving as a very effective, heavy
door stop. This unusual cake was a marvel which, for its beauty and practicality,
was admired by all. Other Ravens came to replace me and Dick, and they became its
guardian. I don't know whatever finally happened to our fabulous possibly-edible
door stop. Damon Knight, struggling at the Roost toward his future success,
should have known, but he has never told me.Maybe he ate it...  All illustrations by Kurt Erichsen |
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