The Volume Library 1976

The Volume Library 1976

Sometime in the 1970s, my mother bought a copy of The Volume Library from a door-to-door salesman.

For nearly the next decade, that enormous book was one of my primary sources of information. Long before I could type a question into a computer and have an answer appear in seconds, if I needed to know something for school, I went to The Volume Library.

I used it for book reports. I used it for homework. I used it simply because I wanted to know things.

What I remember most clearly was its wonderful material on mythology and literature. I returned to those sections over and over again. Greek and Roman mythology, writers, stories, characters, history—the book provided a map of a world that seemed almost impossibly large to me then.

I didn't realize it at the time, of course, but much of what I learned from those pages became permanent. That old reference book still comprises part of the backbone of what I know about mythology and literature.

There is something difficult to explain now about growing up with a book like that in the house. Information had a physical location. If you wanted to know about mythology, you didn't search for mythology. You went to the shelf. You pulled down the enormous book. You found the section. And then, inevitably, while looking for the thing you wanted, you found three other things you hadn't known you wanted to know.

Years passed, and the copy we had in our house disappeared somewhere along the way.

Eventually I went looking for it again.

I found a copy on eBay—not the actual book from my childhood, but the same edition, The Volume Library from 1976. I bought it.

It's on my bookshelf now.

I suppose that's one advantage of getting older. Every once in a while, you get the chance to buy back a small piece of the world that made you.

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My Hot Wheels Redline Alive 55 Lemon Yellow Chevy Nomad

For over two years I had this Hot Wheel on my Ebay queue. But I never had the chutzpah to make an offer I thought the seller would accept. In that two years I probably only saw a handful even close to it sell. For some reason I really wanted this one.

When I was in single digits my friend Brad down the street had the best Hot Wheels collection on any kid in town. We didn't so much play with his Hot Wheels as we gave audience to them. Sure, me and my brother had many Hot Wheels, but we had a nasty habit of actually playing with them. And they often met tragic ends. Many an avalanche of boulders claimed one of our even most prized Hot Wheels.

Because they were only a dollar. Less than a dollar. You got them on your birthday. You always got one for gift exchange at school. They weren't considered special or something to be treasured. They were toys to be played with.

Little did I know somewhere out there were many kids like Brad who thought differently about their Hot Wheels. I thank them now for being such good curators of these cultural artifacts.

The first day we got our baseball mitts my brother and I were out the door and didn't have much time for any toys after that. But a few years ago I just had this desire to start collecting redline Hot Wheels.

Lemon yellow Hot Wheels Alive 55 redline

All Alive 55's were made in Hong Kong. 

Auguest 12, 2026 update: This was the last Hot wheel I sold on Ebay when I let go of the collection. 

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Elvira Thriller Video Standee

I feel like this item might just be a myth, like the Monster's Genealogical Chart. 

Elvira Thriller Video Standee

"It was in an estate we bought out. He was a paper collector and had tons of movie, video posters, standees and magazines. He had video store and movie house connections and his son worked for Peaches record stores in the 70s and early 80s. That's about all I know on this item.

That's all I need to know. Maybe there's not another one of these in tact in the whole Universe.

If you don't own a video store in 1985 where the hell do you put something like this?

What lies behind the Elvira Thriller Video Standee? 

2026 Update: I sold this and my complete Thriller Video collection on Ebay a few years ago when I became a Zen Buddhist. I hope it all brings whoever bought it as much happiness as it brought me. But also that when the time is right they'll let it go and find its next destination. 

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Note To Myself February 24, 2017

Seems like in the past few months the world has been tilted on its axis. Even here in Northern Illinois, right on the Wisconsin border, where nothing ever seem to change very fast, the change is coming so fast and furious none of us can keep up. It was 70 degrees all week here in February. 

In light of all this tumult I wanted to take a small break from the chaos and document that this is my daily reality: I walk down the stairs to find treasure like this waiting for me. I will have dinner with cherished friends later tonight. Although the conversation will no doubt at some point turn to how crazy things are it won't be all that crazy where we are. Not yet at least. 

Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set 11th Printing

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Brother S 1500 Whisper Word Processor

Last free write of the day before I anticipate Jenny will show up and we'll head out to Spring Art Scene. I'm watch The Incredible Hulk on MeTV, and it seems like he's close to Hulking out for the first time. I wonder if the writers had a formula where they were required to make him Hulk out at least twice per episode. 

This is a Brother 1500 S Whisper word processor with an attached printer. I would like to have something like this even though I know there is no way to transfer these files digitally. Maybe I could just write up a few poems, print them out, and stuff them in an envelope the way Charles Bukowski did. 

I think I might have a tablespoon of baking soda before we head out. Sort of settle my stomach and prepare it for whatever carnage might be coming its way. Hard to tell at these art venues. Sometimes they'll be cool and have a few beers or a bottle of whiskey around, but generally its wine, which is an instant migraine headache for me. 

Set off the smoke alarm earlier making chicken wings. There was no smoke at all, I just just think it sense my panic whenever I cook and reacts. I jumped up and managed to grab it from the wall, and it stopped beeping after three sharp, shrill beeps. I ran downstairs with it and hid it under a stack of towels. Now I have to go down and get it. 

Bottom of the hour. I feel like someone is about to twist David Banner's arm within the next minute. 

"You want to fight? I'll give you a fight."

Bad idea, dipshit.

I have been wanting to watch this with Jack since it started airing on MeTV a couple of months ago, but I keep forgetting how early it is on, and tonight he's at grandmas. 

Made a list of Outlaw Poets earlier today. Running Hulk. That's it. Baking soda time.

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This Dude Abideth

August 10, 2026 update:

This Dude Still Abideth

Looking at this picture now, I realize it probably says more about me than I intended it to when I posted it. I have spent a considerable portion of my life sitting in rooms like this, watching old television shows and terrible horror movies, listening to records everyone else forgot, reading books about subjects I had no practical reason to know anything about, and following whatever rabbit hole presented itself until another one came along.

I used to think a person was supposed to turn all those interests into something. Become an expert. Build a career. Find a niche. Become the Dungeons and Dragons guy, the horror movie guy, the poetry guy, the record collector, the publisher, the local history guy, the guy who knows why the original Holmes D&D set didn't have a ten-sided die. During the great blogging era especially, everybody seemed to be searching for the subject that would become their thing. I tried that occasionally. It never lasted. I always moved on.

But looking through this archive years later, maybe moving on was the thing. I wasn't trying to become a cryptozoologist when I wrote about the Dover Demon. I wasn't trying to become a film historian when I wondered what happened to Peter Carpenter. I didn't need to become an authority on Japanese progressive rock because Shingetsu occupied one afternoon. Sometimes curiosity only needs an afternoon. Sometimes it lasts forty years.

The things that did last are obvious now. Poetry. Dungeons and Dragons. Horror movies. Music. Old television. Publishing books. Rockford. Objects that somehow carry their previous lives around with them: vinyl records, eight-track players, polyhedral dice, old photographs, obsolete word processors. I've spent an unreasonable amount of time wondering why certain things disappear and why others refuse to.

Maybe that's why this photograph still appeals to me. Nothing is happening. I'm not accomplishing anything. I'm apparently sitting there changing channels. But somewhere between Dark Shadows, Mannix, The Incredible Hulk, an obscure horror movie, an old record and whatever I happened to be reading that night, something would eventually catch. Then I'd write about it.

Most of it didn't lead anywhere.

It didn't have to.

The Dude abideth.

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The Fonzarelli Effect

The Fonzarelli Effect 

        When I served my time as a schoolkid in the seventies and eighties things were different. Parents weren't cool. There were no MILF moms and 40 year old dads in punk rock bands. Hell, in the entire frickin' universe there probably only 700-800 people tops who were considered "cool." And they had done extensive work to become so. Lunch boxes proved it. You got the wrong lunch box you took a beating. In 1978 it was Evel Knieval, John Travolta and The Fonz.

        What's my point? I'll tell you my fucking point. If you wore Chuck Taylors to school in 1978 it meant you couldn't afford blue Adidas with the three stripes and you took a beating. If you wore brown Toughskins to school in 1978 you might as well have ….  well, something bad.  You remember Toughskins from Sears. A fucking robot couldn't wear them out so what chance did you have to ever be rid of these monstrosities.

        What's my point? I was recently forced to attend an event at a "trendy" night spot. Everyone there was significantly cooler than me. I know this is true because they drank nothing but Pabst Blue Ribbon and wore the same awful military style black frame nylon glasses I was issued as a defenseless seven year old and wore until I was sixteen. More than this they  had managed to find a lost consignment of brown Toughskins somewhere at a forgotten torture facility and were sporting Old School Chuck Taylors. I suffered flashbacks and had to remove myself from the suarez before I started stabbing everyone in the jugular with the shards of an Appletini glass.

        What's your point, Thomas? I'll tell you. In 1978 I wasn't cool in my brown Toughskins, Chuck Taylors and black nylon military style glasses and neither are you in 2006. Pabst Blue Ribbon is horse piss and always has been. My father drank PBR for forty years and he's far from being one of the cooler people on the planet.

        So, The Fonzarelli Effect. What is it? As I mentioned in 1978 no one on the planet was cool. 700-800 people tops. And the rest of us accepted that. There was only one cool table and we weren't at it. When Dungeons and Dragons came out we played it. When Devo made albums we bought them. We were known as geeks, dweebs and nerds and treated accordingly. There were no television shows glorifying us.

        Flash forward to 2007 and of the 6.5 billion people on Earth roughly two-thirds of them are now "cool." Everyone gets it. Everyone has a cell phone and a blog and a My Space site. Pretty much everyone in the entire world is in a punk band and everyone else is a tattoo artist. Every trend is transmitted to everyone simultaneously so no one has to do the hard work of being an individual. Everyone gets it. Even the last examples of uncoolness on the planet, the nerds, geeks and dweebs are now hip.

        The Fonzarelli effect states that if everyone is cool no one is cool. Cool isn't the right lunchbox, awful pants, bad music and deluding yourself into thinking Pabst Blue Ribbon is a palatable beverage, cool is a T-shirt with The Fonz giving you the thumb and saying "AAAAAYYYYYY" just be yourself.  Cool is not getting that dumbass tattoo and looking to past generations for ideas and slogans and trends to steal instead of creating your own.

        You know what else isn't cool? Harley Davidsons. The entire biker culture. Not cool. It's a medival costume party for over the hill middle managers. Here are a few other things that aren't cool: lists, Hooters, Green Day, storm chasers, crocodile hunters, profilers, mobsters, gangsters, athletes, The Onion and Emmylou Harris. If you're on this list you ain't cool.

        When did everyone decide sharing a small part of a global brain and identity was preferable to living a large and adventurous life at the periphery of societal norms and standards? When did everyone become too clever for the room? Pin It

The Hot Wheel That Broke My Heart

The first car I can remember my family having was a lime green Chevy Vega. Probably a 1973. I remember this car more clearly than cars I've actually owned as a result because I have an uncle who is six foot and nine inches tall and it was an exercise in comedy watching him try to get into that car. 

It's odd the things you remember and the things that will traumatize a four year old boy. For me one of the lingering traumas of my childhood was when I lost my pink Hot Wheel in the crevice behind the back seat of this car. I remember the car being a super shiny magenta with a bubble hood and it reminded me of the Jetsons. In my little boy brain it seemed more like a flying saucer than a car. Maybe I didn't even cry when it disappeared into that seemingly irretrievable void behind the seat. Maybe I did and no one thought enough to look for it. Either way I lamented the loss of that toy my entire life. Until three years ago when I saw...

The 1968 Beatnik Bandit. That was it. The thing that was lost forever, found again. Needless to say I bought it straightaway, but I did more than that. I bought myself the entire 

The original 16 Hot Wheels from 1968. Reclaiming lost aspects of your past is a very important component in Gestalt Therapy. Unfinished business. The Hot Wheels I played with as a boy aren't as old as these, but it's nice to start somewhere, and the beginning is often a good place. I have a goal to own one of every redline Hot Wheel ever made eventually. Maybe that's overkill, but it feels good to get this far down the road and be at peace with things. 

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Halloween 1974 (Tiny Drawing Poem)

I got my Halloween costume in 1974 from Ben Franklin's. It was indeed Batman. Adam West TV Batman. The font here was the hardest part because I wanted to use Batfont, which emulates the pows and biffs and sock-os from the show, but it didn't match the somber nature of the poem. We finally decided the Carbon Type typewriter font was the most appropriate.

In 1974 my family moved from Freeport, Illinois, to Byron, Illinois, and occupied an A-frame house my uncle Wesley had built on the ominously named Devil's Lane. My uncle and his family had seven children, so the house was huge. Our time there was short, but full of memories, as I was just starting to form my personality, but my most vivid memory is of Halloween, 1974. The usual rumors of razor blades in the apples circulated early, although no one on "The Terrace" was even giving out apples that year. There was an icy rain, and I remember asking my mother about the telephone wires, and she explained how all the voices of the world were transferred into signals and carried across those wires. 

I have a lot of unanswered questions about who we were as a family then, but there's no one left to ask. The poem expresses that longing to be able to talk to her again. 

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