This year was my fourth year attending Robert E. Howard Days. The annual pilgrimage to Cross Plains has become a special event for me, but this year it was even more so for several reasons. For one thing, coming to Cross Plains early afforded a chance to take part in a tour that wasn't officially part of REH Days. Secondly, Howard Days experienced a couple "firsts" this year. Also, as with the last three years, I was pleased to reconnect with friends, and make several new ones. Adding to the significance of this year's celebration, 2016 marks many anniversaries related to Robert E Howard. Three in particular were observed at the celebration last week: the 50th anniversary of the publication of
Conan the Adventurer from Lancer Books, the 30th anniversary of the very first Robert E. Howard Days, and the 20th anniversary of the release of the film
The Whole Wide World. These were observed and celebrated through panels dedicated to each, and by the guest of honor, Michael Scott Myers, screenwriter of
The Whole Wide World.
As always, I went to Cross Plains with my friend Todd Vick (editor and host of this blog). We arrived on Wednesday night. I didn't know what there would be to do in Cross Plains two days before the event, but I'm always willing for an extra day or two of vacation. To my surprise, I learned that it pays to show up before the official start of Howard Days. The Howard Home and Museum is a natural rallying point for pilgrims, and we weren't the first ones who decided to arrive early. Let the fellowship begin.
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| Cross Plains Review |
On Thursday the Cross Plains Review held a tour of its facility. Founded in 1909, the Review is the town's longest running business, and one of Texas' oldest continuously running newspapers. Jack Baum served as our tour guide, noting an interesting connection between the paper and Robert Howard. Around 1925 Howard worked briefly for the paper, reporting oil news. And since Baum had worked extensively on the paper's printing machines as a boy, he guided us around through the process and explained the tense and often dangerous job of getting a paper to press. Antique fixtures still installed at the paper include a 1922 Linotype, several type cabinets, a guillotine-like newsprint cutter (on which several people lost fingers over the years), and the highlight: an original Babcock printing press, which is so massive it had to be set on the property's foundation before the building was even constructed. As an added bonus original copies of the Review from 1936 were displayed. Pages included obituaries of Robert's and Hester's deaths, and Robert's story, "A Man Eating Jeopard," which was published a week after his death. These come from the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University, and were brought by Rob King, who has been working on digitizing original copies of the paper (which can be viewed here [www.collections.swco.ttu.edu]}.
Activities on Friday always start in the morning with registration at the Howard house. It's a good time to to meet up with other arriving attendees and peruse the tables at the "REH Swap Meet" under the pavilion. In a quiet moment I picked up a few new volumes for my small but growing REH library at the museum gift shop/obsession-enabler, and a bit later I got to spy two original issues of Weird Tales that Patrice Louinet was displaying (to everyone's envy).
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30 Years of Howard Days
(L to R: Cavalier, McNeel Childers, & Burke) |
All of the day's panels were held at Cross Plains High School; the first of these, "Thirty Years of Howard Days" took place in the school's library. Rusty Burke and Bill Cavalier told stories about their first pilgrimages to Cross Plains, and related how the annual gathering we now know came to be gradually organized. And Susan McNeel Childers of Cross Plains told stories from the hometown perspective. Similarly, during the Q/A segment, Cross Plains native and former holder of the Howard estate rights, Jack Baum, talked about the growing receptivity of the town to Howard pilgrims.
I'm a t-shirt and shorts wearing kind of person. In fact, if I were 'allowed' to wear nothing but, that's what I'd wear all the time. In years past, I've bought at least a dozen different t-shirts at the Howard House museum. About 5 or 6 years ago, the museum shop had a t-shirt with a cool design by Michael L. Peters, and I've bought several of those over the years. A couple of years ago there was a minimalist t-shirt that had a single emblem, the REH House & Museum, on the upper left area of the shirt. But this year, the museum shop had two new t-shirt designs for sale, and as soon as I saw them, I snatched them up.
The first design has REH's signature across the top and "Museum, Cross Plains, Texas" across the bottom. There is also a picture of REH in the middle going through his signature, and on either side of the middle pic, two other pictures of REH, with Bill Cavalier's grave-site-foot-stone penciling at the bottom. Pretty cool, at least I thought so.
