NOTE:
all of these
pictures were taken a few years ago when the place was less cluttered.
All text is in the present tense anyway.
Here we
will travel along one wall of the Fortress, beginning with the back of the
entrance door.
This
Superman figure was picked up at a thrift store before I started living in
them. He’s stitched together pretty
cheaply with a screen-printed face. He’s
got no tags or identifying labels. This
was probably part of a lot of hundreds of “toys” that were illicitly
manufactured in bulk somewhere and destined to be prizes at carnivals or some
such.
The name
placard dangling around ole Supes’s neck has an interesting history. It hails from April 1987, when NOSFA (the
Norman Oklahoma Science Fiction Association) held its first convention, a
one-day affair on April 18, called PseudoCon.
I quote from The STAR OKC Chronicles:
On April
18, NOSFA holds its first PseudoCon, aided by STARs Claire Stephens, Mike
Hodge, Syd Henderson, Larry Nemecek, “Mike” [actually Mark] Alfred, and later
STAR Karen Dorrell. One of the day’s highlights is a panel, “The Ersatz Vulcan
vs. the Reel McCoy,” in which Mark A. as Spock and Larry N. as McCoy indulge in
an hour’s worth of verbal wrangling and blustering.
This
placard hung around my neck, and Larry Nemecek’s said of course “Larry Nemecek
‘McCoy’,” or something in that vein. I
can still remember how long it took for the spirit gum (holding my latex ear
tips on) to dry. Good ol’ Larry stood
behind me in the Student Union bathroom waving a hair dryer at my ears for a while.
Above the
door (on which you can see stuffed Superman hanging) are a series of plastic
lunchboxes. The blue one on the left is
from Star
Trek: TNG and the rest are Super-related.
Blocking
the bottom half of the Superman doll thing is one of those bouncing saucer
things.
It’s a plastic ring, in the
middle of which is an inflatable ball just like a smaller version of those red
textured-rubber dodge balls we had in grade school.
The ring is sitting on top of a couple of
metal file-card drawers, sitting on a metal file cabinet that contained mss. of
various songs, poems, novels-in-progress (only one completed but with rejection
letter), and other writings.
On the wall
above all this is a plate shelf with various Star Trek and Super plates. That lime-green thing is an inflatable
carnival-type prize, bearing clip art from Superman: The Animated Series.
The books in
the shelves in the middle ground are from when I had my books dis-integrated --
that is, grouped separately as “Mysteries,” “Media,” and general stuff.
You can tell the category by a couple of the
spines (recognizably DC Archives) that you can spot with your eagle eyes.
Now, at the
center of the tallest shelf you can see the yellow front of a stuffed dog in a
super costume.
This is a
photo of one of these little guys for sale.
Now, mine has no tag, but is otherwise the same. It’s a promo for the Mighty Dog brand dog
food, from the 1980s. One of my drivers
at the thrift store came across this in a donation. Randy knew that I was a Superman fan, and he
tossed it to me. He said the “MD” on the
chest stood for “Mark’s Dog,” which was a pretty good spur-of-the-moment
confabulation!
At the
closest to the camera are the shelves holding audio cassettes. All these are gone now, dubbed and
donated. The actual wood-grained shelves
bearing the cassettes-in-plastic-drawers are originally from the convenience-store
trade. They were merchandisers for
cartons of cigarettes, and originally had clear plastic barriers across them. They wanted people to see (and want them) but
not be able to snatch-n-steal them.
Now sitting
atop these shelves you can see the edge of a metal kids’ TV tray with a picture
of Mr Spock at his science console from ST:TMP.
The most
important “thing” in the photo is the farthest away from the camera -- that’s
Joyce far away on the right of the shot, “upstairs” in the kitchen.
Now here is
a close-up of the plate shelf glimpsed in the middle left of the previous
panorama. At the far left edge of this
photo is that lime-green Superman inflatable I mentioned, below which are an
alarm clock with a Superman background, and the edge of a plastic Mighty Mouse
lunchbox.
The
leftmost plate features the same art of Superman as was used on the cover of
the Filmation VHS releases in the 1980s.
The two smaller items on either side of the center Star Trek plate are
part of a 1980s-era kids’ eating set.
The art for both look like Jon Bogdanove art, or at least in his rawboned,
big-jawed style.
The
central, biggest item is one of the Franklin Mint Star Trek sets. It has an
interesting history in that about 1986, when my oldest Matthew was two or three,
he was goofing around and banged into the wall where this plate was originally
hanging. It fell down to the floor with
a crash, and several small pieces cracked off the edge. Matthew started to cringe and cry. He knew his Grandma (my mom) had given me the
plate and that it was a special gift. He
was afraid that I was going to spank him until he couldn’t walk straight.
But I
explained to Matthew that I wasn’t going to spank him. I told him he should have been more careful,
but that I knew it was an accident. He
should be more careful. I told him,
“People are more important than things.”
I sure hope he remembers that forever!
On the far
right of this shelf is a Bakelite-style plate copyrighted 1967, with a Wayne
Boring Superman swooping across it.
In the
foreground you can see that Superman bouncy-ball thing.
Leaning
against the plate rack, behind the bouncer, is an adaptation of Monopoly I made
based on
STAR OKC.
Someday I’ll do a STAR OKC blog post about this…I made something
specialized to STAR OKC’s history for every property and every Community Chest
and Chance card.
This is a four-sheet Star Trek
color-your-own poster set. According to this website, this came out in 1976
but it seems to me that it must have been sooner than that. I had these posters on my walls before I
graduated high school in 1974, it seems to me.
Of course,
some day in the future I will have to unpack this set, scan them, and post them. In the frame are all four posters and the
(flattened) box. As you can see from my photo, I've colored all four of the posters.
Well, that’s stop four
in our tour of the Fortress of Markitude.
Hope you found something interesting.
Feel free to comment and share some of your own memories or reflections!
