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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Star Wars Original 12 Figures From Kenner

(o) KENNER (o)

VINTAGE STAR WARS

FIRST 12 FIGS WITH STAND!

THIS IS THE COMPLETE SET OF THE FIRST 12 VINTAGE STAR WARS FIGURES WITH ALL ORIGINAL VINTAGE WEAPONS. THERE IS NOTHING REPRODUCTION IN THIS LISTING!

I BELIEVE THE DEATH SQUAD COMMANDER IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A DARK BLUE GUN BUT HERE HE HAS A LIGHTER BLUE IMPERIAL BLASTER. ALL OTHER WEAPONS ARE CORRECT INCLUDING LEIAS BLACK BLASTER. THERE ARE NO MAJOR FLAWS IN ANY FIGURE EXCEPT FOR LEIA WHO HAS A SMALL RIP IN HER CAPE (PICTURED). ASIDE FROM HER RIP THERE ARE SLIGHT PAINT CHIPS ON A FEW OF THE FIGS BUT IN GENERAL THEY ARE ALL IN VERY GOOD SHAPE. THE STAND HAS A SMALL CHIP ON THE BACK (PICTURED). 

Star Wars original 12 Kenner action figures, all original, with original capes and weapons, on a Kenner stand I believe you had to mail in from a General Mills cereal offer. I know this because my mom got this for us, although I don't remember having most of these action figures, just Darth Vader, C3PO, R2D2, Chewbacca, and a Jawa. We had no interest in the human characters.

We saw Star Wars at the Robin outdoor theater I think the summer after it came out, when it was re-released. Of course it was awesome, and we were blown away, but we didn't really collect the toys very much. 

C3PO and Obi Wan Kenobi

We called Darth Vader Dark Vader the entire summer until school started and the other kids corrected us. I still persisted in believing his name was Dark Vader, and it was not apparent to me until The Empire Strikes Back that he was a human in a suit of Space Agre armor and not a robot. 

We never had or wanted either one of these action figures. In 1978 it just didn't seem to make any sense to us. 

Chewbacca and Princess Leia

To us R2D2 and C3PO were the true stars of the movie. I didn't detect until much later how much of a jerk C3PO was.

We're far enough down that no one is reading anymore, so I'm going to tell this awful story. We didn't have these toys, because in general we couldn't afford them. For Christmas 1978 all I wanted was the Millennium Falcon from the Sears catalog. I knew that wasn't possible. I did get the Land Cruiser, however, and I was happy. Knowing my brother could only have been four years old at the time makes this story all the more awful, and adding to that awfulness that the man who owned the Ben Franklin lived across the street from us, but we coerced our youngest brother to shoplift a Jawa. I think the action figures might have only been like $2.98 at that time, but we didn't have it. 

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I Have Groat's Disease, But It Doesn't Have Me

It is an entirely fictional disease that has been fabricated in the script of HBO's Emmy nominated show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Groat's Syndrome, also known as Groat's Disease, is a neurological disorder, marked by excessive hyperactivity and spasticity.

I disagree that it is a fictional disease, because I know many Americans that suffer from Groats and may not even know it.

I went to Arkansas once to visit my cousin and my cousin Robert said I bet you can't say "Fruit froat" five times in a row and I tried and I ended up saying "fruit fart" and he thought that was the funniest thing. I was funny the whole weekend as they had some sort of Arkansas plumbing and when someone went to the bathroom the turds would float down a cement channel to the creek, and we'd stand there and laugh. I then fell into that creek a few hours later when a rope broke. That's about all I remember from that trip.

I was in Arkansas again a few weeks ago on my way to and out of Louisiana. 

Groat's Disease is serious business. 

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My Original Club Devo Energy Dome

I saw Devo perform live on Fridays in 1980. I flipped my lid. I was only 11, so the full context of what was going on was largely lost on me, but even then I knew it was something that applied to me and whatever it was that I am. By the time I bought Freedom of Choice at the Lincoln Mall in Freeport the next year I was savvy enough to know that a lot more was going on than just "Whip It." Thirty-five years later I drove to the post office on Harrison Street to pick up an original Club Devo energy dome. There are others like it, but this one is mine. And that was the last time I will ever put it on my head. Whipped it good.

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You're a Scapegoat, Charlie Brown MGM Musical LP

Original MGM cast album of You're a Scapegoat, Charlie Brown

Song List

1) Thanks For Fucking Up Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown

2) I'm Confused About the Fact That I'm Probably a Lesbian, So I'm Taking It Out On You, Blockhead

3) Little White Boy Blues

4) You're The Only One Who Can Understand Me, Franklin, Because You're Black

5) You're My Best Friend (Queen cover) P.S. Can You help Me Bury a Body?

6) I Hope That Head Gets Smaller As You Get Closer, Because, Damn

7) Wandering the Desert (Instrumental)

8) A Boy and His Dog

9) Azazel Built My Hot Rod

10) You're To Blame For All Our Shortcomings (cast)

August 10, 2026 update: I should probably explain that I've had an ongoing grievance with Charles Schulz for most of my life over the way he treated Charlie Brown. As a boy, Charlie Brown was the character I identified with. He was awkward, uncertain, usually on the outside looking in, and he kept getting kicked around by people who were supposedly his friends. Lucy pulled the football away. The other kids insulted him. His baseball team lost. The little red-haired girl barely knew he existed. Even when he tried to do the right thing, humiliation usually seemed to be waiting for him.

I don't think I experienced that as particularly funny when I was a kid. I experienced it as depressing. Charlie Brown was the kid I was being asked to identify with, and week after week Charles Schulz seemed determined to demonstrate that nothing was ever going to work out for the poor bastard. I suppose the persistence is supposed to be the inspirational part—Charlie Brown always gets up and tries to kick the football again—but as a boy I mostly wanted someone to let the kid kick the fucking football once. So if I seem unusually hostile toward Charles Schulz in these old posts, that's why. I took what he did to Charlie Brown personally.

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Tom T Hall and Writing For Children

I can attribute most of the reason I have written at least one children's book, The Toughskin Rhinoceros Wrangler Company, to my grandmother, Tom T Hall, and this particular album, which she used to play for me all the time, and which I just bought on Ebay this week.

Tom T Hall and Writing For Children

The question any childrens' book author gets asked  the most is how is writing for children different than writing for adults. I suspect there are many similarities, and also many differences in the answers writers give, but as someone who wrote exclusively for adults until recently, the dichotomy between what is appropriate for young readers and what is right for adult readers is rather clear. It's not much different than what is appropraite speech at the pub with your mates versus what is appropriate having brunch with your grandmother. Words have meanings, and when writing for children the meanings of words are vital. Okay, that's not much of an insight, but as someone who has written everything from zombie screenplays where the most grotesque and explicit descriptions of people being devoured, to adult novels where every perversion on the human menue was permissable, nay, essential to keeping a reader's interest, the difference between what is right for a young reader is not only important, but could keep one out of jail.

Also, there are heavy expectations about what children want. Believe me, I asked before I started writing my first childrens' book, Atrocities from A To Z. I asked librarians, I asked other childrens' writers. Just for fun, I even asked some actual children. And the reults of my questioning was you can't go wrong with the following list of topics: poop, farts, snot, cooties, belches and garbage. Alright, I thought to myself, I understand why zombies eating brains might not be a topic suitable for a young reader, but why are bodily functions, toxic substances and bad poetry so permissable? Why treat children like fools, or future customers for the drek culture they will be exposed to in modern society? I know some children, and the ones I know don't seem to be stupid, Sure, they like a fart joke, but they also have a remakable capacity to be enraptured by science, music, philosophy, and all the hard stuff we sometimes come to avoid as adults. They haven't been told yet that they don't like poetry or Mozart or can't understand quadratic equations or organic chemistry. I don't want to short-sell minds like that by writing words that are anything but a challenge and an invitation to explore words and all the places they can take us. They can learn all they need to know about bodily functions on the playground, I'd rather lead them down the path of becoming lifelong adventurers and explorers of all that the written word can lead them to.

That's a pretty high-fallutin' answer. Yes, it is. And the reason for that is when I write for children I'm writing for children I know. Then I'm extending the same credit for being intelligent human beings I give them to all children. These are future readers of Shakespeare and Voltaire and  Schopenhauer and Hawking. They may go places I could never dream of in my writing and I owe them the best I can offer. 

So, how did I start writing for children? Seems like an obvious place would be to read what other people have written for children. Sort of get a lay of the land of the modern market. I didn't do that. Because I couldn't care any less what other people are writing for children. I didn't care when i was a child. I didn't read children's books. It may be heresy to admit this, but I've never read Shel Silverstein or Richard Scary. I saw other kids reading those books, but from the first moment I entered a library I wanted nothing more than to devour every book no one else was reading. I started at the Mary Morgan Library in Byron, Illinois by reading an entire shelf of biographies in plain brown casing. Jim Bridger, Abraham Lincoln, Molly Ptcher.

I imagine all writers have this similar experience and go through this exact metamorphosis. First, they are encouraged to write by teachers who give them a silly form to fill in to complete a "poem." This literary masterpiece is intended to be taken home and given a place of prestige on the refrigerator, BUT should any child start to taking writing seriously and even be so brazen as to read books in her free time or (gasp) write poems just for the fun of it, the literary police are called in. Assessments are made. Threats are levied. The sad fact is that after being taught the basic building blocks of reading and grammar the educational system seem to do everything in its power to dissuade children from being avid readers or writers. By early adolescence anyone who persists in these proscribed activities often has to do so in solitary shame. And that is shame.

So, if my concept of children's literature wasn't formed by reading Silverstein or Scary, where did I get my ideas? Aside from real books, I'll tell you... Tom T Hall. That's right, country music artist Tom T Hall. Because both of my parents worked, I was left in the care of my grandmother, and the second that door closed we started listening to country music, and often Tom T Hall. 

Anyway, that's how I got to Memphis, and all that. Buy my books Concave Buddha, Detached Retinas, Flesh Wounds, Submerged Structure, and my first children's book, The Toughskin Rhinoceros Wrangler Company when it arrives June 1st 2012. Go to my blog Zombie Logic Press to see webcomics like Single Zombie female, Celery, and Dr. Strangedog, plus Poem Photos, zombie movie reviews, and commentary on the events of the day by me, Thomas L. Vaultonburg. 

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My Vinyl Collection: The Moody Blues, In Search of the Lost Chord

The second acquisition in my new old vinyl collection arrived last week. It's "In Search of the Lost Chord" by The Moody Blues. There are several factors that made this my second choice to add to my new collection: I like the album, the cover art is great, and I have a lot of personal history with it. 

In Search of the Lost Chord by The Moody Blues. 

I'd heard most of the songs on this album on AOR radio long before the bus trip where it became a permanent part of my adolescent experience, but being a concept album, In Search of the Lost Chord really needs to be heard in its entirety a few times to sink in. And it's an easy experience. It can be done over any mellow-inducing substance. My favorite has always been a cup of tea. A rainy afternoon is usually best, but I suspect other weather conditions would be equally effective. 

When Jenny saw I had bought this album, she played the opening and the kids stopped what they were doing and said "That's scary." It's very unusual for anything to divert their attention from their screens. Trust me, the civil defense sirens have accidentally been sounded here, and they didn't look up, so to get their attention you know something has to be unusual. After that opening the album goes right into the most famous song on the album, and the only true single, "Ride My See Saw." Maybe "Voices In the Sky" was released as a single, not sure, but after "Ride My See Saw" the album goes into the sequence of concept songs about searching for the lost chord. I remember from my reading this is from a poem where a musician strikes the perfect note and angels sing and the heavens open, but he is never able to replicate that note and is driven mad by the experience of trying. 

My mother's musical tastes ran towards British Invasion bands and pop like Abba, and my father listened to country and roots bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Moody Blues is a band that doesn't fit into any of those categories, so when I heard it on a long bus right headed towards a cross country meet in central Illinois, it was my first experience hearing most of these songs. My friend Royal had the cassette tape, and since we were senior members of the team nobody had the juice to complain that this was completely non-motivational running music. Can you imagine a school bus full of athletes in 2014 headed towards a sporting event while listening to Moody Blues "In Search of the Lost Chord." That in itself made my introduction to the album a very unique experience, but it was the music. I just dug it. And I misremembered. This event occurred two years earlier than I thought, and the reason we were allowed to play such an unusual album isn't that we were older, it was that the meet was a fresh-soph meet, and none of the older guys were there to shout it down, which no doubt they would have. Maybe even a few of us were just in the back of the bus listening softly, but no matter, this was something that didn't happen very often, if ever. 

What fifteen year old can't identify with the themes of searching for truth, meaning, and identity? 

I ran badly that day. Again. It was cold and rainy, of course, and I probably didn't even eat anything before I got on the bus. I didn't learn until nearly thirty years later the valves and vessels in my heart resembled the St. Louis cloverleaf, and I wasn't getting enough blood to vital areas to be competitive in an endurance sport. I'd like to run those competitions again with my new heart. That will never happen, but I have the keen memory of that bus trip, and the guys I was friends with then. They'd probably be surprised that moment in time had such a lasting impact on me. Maybe not. 

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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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