To make myself feel better I went and found another excerpt from his fanzines to post. When he wrote this, he was 30, going to library school, living in Cleveland.

It may not be a misfortune that I didn’t discover the Christopher Robin stories until a somewhat advanced age. Some familiarity with the subject matter, or its atmosphere, adds to enjoyment, and while I did have a teddy bear once upon a time, I never had a nanny. Nor was there a gardener named Jonathan Jo, or anything else, on the family estate. A.A. Milne had in mind the particular element of upper-class English children to which he himself had belonged when he created Pooh and his friends, and certain of the appurtenances thereto might be unfamiliar to other children.

So why did I get my favorite nephew one of these books? For one very dangerous reason: I like them myself; and for one very excellent reason: children still like them. The projection of adults’ tastes into children’s literature is fraught with peril, to coin a phrase; I think even those supposedly trained in the field, such as librarians and teachers, may be guilty of it. Who knows what kids like but kids? That they do like Winnie-the-Pooh seems amply proven by the survival of the books through many printings.

Little Rickie has no nanny but his mother, the gardener and man-of-all-work is his father, and his life is about as different as can be from that lived by Christopher Robin in the Edwardian after-glow of an age. But does a child’s world change so much after all? If it does — if it has — if fantasy leaves it, then the world is lost, and Bradbury justified.

Every so often, though, Dad’s comments on someone else’s zine can stand alone. He was 26 when he wrote this response to an issue of Driftwood by Sally Dunn; she was apparently discussing hospital work:

It takes a strong stomach and/or a shell of dispassionate unconcern to work in a hospital, even if you’re not a doctor or nurse. I was night-and-weekend cashier in a hospital for a year and now I no longer wonder why hospital workers so often appear callous. It’s a defense mechanism. We didn’t see many battered bodies at the cashier’s window but there were enough tortured minds. And somehow, most of these people indicated by word or action that they were on to your profiteering game, and they weren’t going to pay one cent more than they absolutely had to. I balanced the books at night and if the hospital was ankle-deep in cash gouged from helpless patients it sure didn’t show in the records. But you can’t explain to an indignant patient that the bill he’s paying often doesn’t come close to the hospital’s expense for taking care of him. # Then for a while I operated the machine which stamped out an addressograph plate for each patient’s records. All the information came from the Admitting Record, which was a treasure trove of raw material for speculation– like: Age, 77 (poor old soul). Address, Parsons Avenue (crummy section of town). Widow. Occupation, Retired (Well, I hope). Nearest Relative, none. (How does she live?) Diagnosis: Pneumonia (Worse and worse). And so on. And then we would get impersonal little phone calls from the switchboard– “I have an expiration in room 220. Mrs. Smith, at 3:05 P.M.” And we pull the card from the file, make a notation on it, and go about our business. You had to be callous.

He was 26 when he wrote this.

the loud and the mundane:

“Had a mimeograph salesman in to see me today,” said Randy. “You ever hear of a Gestetner?”

We were sitting in his living room. My job was his old one, and I’d stopped by to get a fill-in from my predecessor and to make arrangements for our trip to Michigan for the annual training course in the job’s essentials — my first year, and Randy’s second. It was my first meeting with Randy, who had moved up to a similar position in another city.

His first statement and question weren’t exactly what one generally greets a stranger with, and I was somewhat surprised; but then I didn’t know Randy then. I admitted having heard the name before. “Quite a machine,” he commented. “The ink comes in a tube.” He looked at me sharply, as if prepared to be contradicted. I mumbled something like Well imagine that, I guess they’re –

“And they’re $200 cheaper than an A.B. Dick! Think I’m going to buy it. They’ve got this drum that…” and he talked on about the virtues of the Gestetner. I said nothing nor, I think, was I expected to. But expressed wonder, amusement, and interest at appropriate times, while the mind dwelt on the smallness of the world and the values of a fannish education and the profane uses to which this mimeograph untouched by enchantment might, and no doubt would, be put.

And speaking of the smallness of the world, and perhaps also of the profane uses to which my dad referred, it seems only fitting that 54 years later, when I searched “mimeograph,” I found this video from Portland’s own IPRC:

I have lots of days like that, only rarely underscored by national celebrations, and on those days, I often read Dad’s writing. Sometimes, like today, I choose to share it with the Internet.

Here he is at 27, fourteen years before he’d become a father, writing in his fanzine Bandwagon about his irritation with holidays manufactured by special interest groups:

happy momsday
There’s this little pamphlet put out as a public service — well no, as a private service actually, you probably never saw one unless you’re in retailing — and it contains some clever humor, though I doubt the publishers think so. Some months ago I wouldn’t have thought it funny at all; disgusting, rather. But time brings all things, including perspective. And from this distance I want to mention a few of the morsels from “Special Days, Weeks, and Months in 1957″, published by the Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.

There is both a chronological and an alphabetical list of these special occasions, and the alphabetical list gives the sponsoring organization and the purpose of the event. The wording of these purposes is interesting. For instance, the purpose of National Education Week is “To create awareness…of the important role of education…” National Family Week is meant to “…emphasize the contribution of religion to the family…” Kids’ Day: “To focus attention on youth.” National Salvation Army Day: “To acquaint the American people with the work of the Salvation Army.” Purposes of other observances are “To enhance…public appreciation of”, “To further public interest in”, “To emphasize”, “To inculcate”, “To Stimulate”, “create”, “acquaint”. Get it?

Here are these hundreds of organizations like the Popcorn Institute and the Swim for Health Association and the Mayonnaise and Salad Dressing Manufacturers Association. They’re all promoting their own pet project, like National Ladder Month and Save the Horse Week and Old Maids’ Day, flooding the media with literature and pictures and material and presumably working like crazy to engineer public consent. Are they a Menace? Are they practising another form of brain-washing? Or are they just a bunch of noisy but harmless little insects whom it is best to ignore?

I dunno. But I think I’m going to start my own special observance. It’ll be called Stop Tinkering With My Brains Year, and when it’s over I’ll declare it again. If anyone wants advice and material on setting up this observance in his own locality don’t write me. You’ll only get nasty remarks about people who don’t want to do their own thinking.

Now I must go sneer at some TV commercials. Take it away, Vance Packard.

– Richard Ryan, Bandwagon, autumn-winter 1957, number 4

Links to the descendants of the organizations & celebrations Dad mentions added by me, of course.

the man who reads dictionaries:

After some years of struggling along with two or three battered and inadequate dictionaries I have at long last come into my own. Now I am not only able to discover the meanings of such sesquipedalian and esoteric expressions as fans are wont to use, but I am also assured that “sesquipedalian” comes from “[L. sesquipedalis, of a foot and a half]” and that “esoteric” comes from “[Gr. esoterikos esoteros, inner, compar. of eso, within]“. There can be no doubt as to the value of this information.

These assurances come from the pages of Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1955 edition. So far, like James Thurber and Mark van Doren and all those, I find it completely satisfying. I’ve not yet failed to find in it a word I was looking for — an event that was about as likely as not under the old system. I had two dictionaries, one on the first floor and one on the second; the one I consulted depended on where I was reading at the time. One was a high school volume of the twenties which I suspected had been censored rather narrowly; at least I couldn’t find “peristaltic” in it. The other was a big fat book which never seemed to have the information I wanted. Neither seemed authoritative in providing derivations, multiple meanings, etc. The annoyances seem to be at an end now, with the New World.

This dictionary is one of three stocked by local bookstores. Students in freshman English courses have their option of the three, but for some reason I had stuck with my old ones until it became obvious that they would no longer do. By a stroke of luck I was able to get a used copy in good condition for about 25% off. What kind of person, I wonder, would sell a dictionary? Could you get that hungry?

Ah well. His loss, my gain…did you know that “science fiction” (un-hyphenated!) is defined on page 1305 — and that “fan” probably comes from “fanatic, influenced by fancier & the fancy“?

AYJAY

My first introduction to amateur journalism was some thirty-five years ago. The quantity of my production probably still qualifies me as a tyro rather than a fossil. Nevertheless; three decades of fiddling about in and out of the hobby, mostly on the periphery, provide the opportunity to observe and reflect on the motivations of the hobbyists. Self included.

Science fiction fandom brought me to it. After a few issues of a fanzine, the next natural step seemed to be joining fapa. (The lower case usage was probably a way of being pretentious while pretending the opposite.) The Fantasy Amateur Press Association seemed to be made up of wild and crazy guys who enjoyed science fiction but even more enjoyed talking and writing about it and anything else that struck their fancy. Belonging to fapa wasn’t amateur journalism; it was “ayjay,” and calling it anything else was pretentious. (See above.)

Word reached me of another group which published small magazines– not fanzines, but “papers” or “journals,” as though they took themselves and their publications seriously. More pretensions. What’s more, they had officers, a constitution, by-laws, and PAID ATTENTION TO THEM. What a bore. Fapa seemed to have one officer who served a useful purpose, the official editor, who, four times a year, assembled and mailed the publications produced by the membership during that quarter. This seemed usually to be the occasion for a party, as nearby members descended upon the OE to assist.

For fapans, the mimeograph was the reproductive method of choice (and wouldn’t that statement have gotten a reaction from the membership), but a few of the sixty-five members had the equipment and inclination to get fancy. They printed their science fiction fanzines with cold type on real printing presses. The contrast was astounding (also amazing, startling, and fantastic) to a youngster who felt triumphant when he’d produced 65 copies of a 6- or 8-page zine with almost every page absent of ink smears. But REAL printing, goshwowohboyohboy. Danner and Wesson and those few other guys (like Walt Willis) must be rich or talented or both.

Such work was admirable, but obviously beyond the reach of mere mortal fans. And besides, who needed to print the kind of wacky ephemera that made up the contents of most fapazines? The idea, really, was just self-expression, wasn’t it? And a way to hold a long-distance conversation with some like-minded persons and practice a little good-natured (usually) one-upmanship? Sure it was. And if your mimeo’d fanzine was fairly well produced and half-way literate, your work was probably above the average. With a Sears mimeo, ink, stencils, paper and a typewriter, you could speak your mind.

And there’s one philosophy of ayjay. “Here’s what I think, take it or leave it — or argue with me.” It moves us all, whether we bring out a publication every month or a few times per decade; whether we do neat work or not; whether we publish our own stuff or write for someone else’s magazine. Nobody involves himself in amateur journalism unless he thinks he has something to say. There are plenty of hobbies for the inarticulate. (But of course they don’t appear in amateur magazines…)

I have copies of the zines he produced, and I hope, eventually, to transcribe and/or scan them all for The Fanac Fan History Project. The issue from which his piece below is taken, Bandwagon #8, was postmailed to FAPA 94. In January 1961, Dad was 30, living in Washington, D.C. and working for the Library of Congress.

I miss him.

Here’s the piece:

let us begin:

It had to be cold up there on the Hill, but when the TV showed the presidential party leaving for the Capitol my sense of history got the best of me. I walked the two blocks to the Capitol grounds, where the several thousand earlier arrivals were sitting and standing around in chilly attitudes. Most of the seven inches of snow that had been dumped on the city the evening before was still underfoot. The bystanders had rearranged it a bit in shuffling for position, and picked up a bit in shoes and cuffs, but the bulk of it was still there, crisp and powdery in the below-freezing temperature.

Both seats and “preferred” standing room had been sold, but there was plenty of space behind the ropes. I picked a spot on a little hump of snow, a few inches higher than the surrounding area. Individual figures on the platform a few hundred feet away couldn’t be distinguished; one citizen, evidently anticipating this, had brought a portable radio. The occasional announcements that something was indeed happening, somewhere, gave heart to us shivering masses as we waited.

For the better part of an hour on January 20, the nation was leaderless. Most of that time after 12:00 was spent praying the new President into office by the greatest assortment of religious functionaries assembled since the last Ecumenical Council. Cheers broke out, non-partisan I’m sure, when the preliminaries were finally over and the oath was administered to Kennedy. The best part of the proceedings was unfortunately the shortest, since Robert Frost had sun-glare trouble and couldn’t read his prepared statement — but he recited “The Gift Outright” from memory.

The Inaugural speech has been highly praised by most (except Max Ascoli of The Reporter, who must be extremely irritating to doctrinaire liberals). Though I thought many things were said that had long needed saying, none of them were surprising. There were cheers at the end, and then the fringes of the crowd started melting away as one final prayer began. I started to leave, and then waited; it seemed like the thing to do.

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