Sunday, July 21st, 1974

I found out that AIRPORT 1975 is scheduled for October 18th opening at the Valley. EARTHQUAKE will be at the Carousel and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN at the Times at Christmas! 100 new screens are to be put up around the area in the next 3 years including 6 at Erlanger!

I went with Terry to see 99 AND 44/100 PERCENT DEAD and M*A*S*H together. It was great. I had already seen the latter. I gave him another model and he gave me my remaining comics although it turned out I already had three of them.

Over at his house, he's got a great Raquel Welch poster on his wall. I also snuck a peek at his dad's PENTHOUSE. Wasn't much really but a good bargain with about 200 pages for $1.25. I pay that much for only 75 pages in some I buy! Boy!

I missed the stupid bus and had to walk. I crossed the road to the unopened new bridge and found 4th Street. When I came within sight of the 4th street bridge, though, my chest hurt so I caught another bus there at the stoplight to take me across. I'm glad I did.

That mag had at least 50 pics of naked women--completely naked! But I truthfully feel I'd rather see pics of Linda fully clothed than any 100 naked women. Linda is lovely in every possible way. Wow!

NOTES: In retrospect, the movie was a thoroughly forgettable, somewhat campy crime flick starring future Dumbledore Richard Harris, notable mainly for introducing him to the woman he soon afterwards married, Ann Turkel.


As far as PENTHOUSE, you'll note that I was impressed by the 200 or so pages and yet only 50 or so pics of naked women. 


Somewhere I have a photo of Terry's Raquel poster, literally snapped with my camera on one of these visits. 


At the time, he was living in Bellevue, KY. I was in Covington. You can see by the blue line how far that walk was. I started walking from Terry's house (B). I caught a bus in Newport just before the bridge to Covington, then got off just on the other side of the bridge and was half a block from home. Luckily bus fare was only a quarter back then.

Saturday, July 20th, 1974

New books weren't supposed to be out today but they were. Including SPIDEY & THE ELECTRIC COMPANY. I got one book with lots of stuff on Lovely Linda! Also I finally got that Donny and Marie album and the song COME SATURDAY MORNING. Hadn't heard that in years until yesterday. It was one of the ones Debbie and I had heard on the radio the night we babysat for her friend's baby. Oh, how this one reminds me of her.

I may go see a double feature tomorrow with Terry. Probably not, though.

Doug came up and I helped him try to start a scrapbook like mine. He stayed 'til after 10 but we didn't get too much done. Maybe he'll come back.

I saw an episode of STAR TREK that I had never seen before.

I got a new Wonder Bread card--Clark Kent.

Mom stayed up to watch MISS UNIVERSE.

NOTES: Seems so odd to see how COME SATURDAY MORNING reminds me of Debbie here. Not only doesn't it do so anymore but I can;t recall that it ever did. At this point, I knew it only from AM radio. A couple of years later, I would finally catch THE STERILE CUCKOO, the movie that it comes from. It's still a lovely song.


As long as Doug and I had been friends, another thing he simply never did was come over to the house. Nor did I go to his except during the school year when I'd walk the extra block past the school to his house and then walk back to the school with him. Seeing as how we really only lived about 4 1/2 blocks apart, that just seems strange to me now. 

Friday, July 19th, 1974

I got up to see I DREAM OF JEANNIE at 6:30AM like I also did on Tues and Thurs. There was a bad storm just after Mom left for work.

Doug called about school this evening.

I wrote a short story with 200 more titles in it! It was fun and I hope to do more like that.

Somebody took 2 of the 3 cans I put out last night and now today we're out of bags. I broke my work record though. Previously 35 minutes, it's now 27!

I finally saw SILENT RUNNING on TV.

Looked up Debbie's phone number. Maybe I'll call her on Monday.

NOTES: SILENT RUNNING was a not quite successful attempt at a serious sci-fi movie saved by a partly solo performance by the great Bruce Dern. 


I DREAM OF JEANNIE was, of course, the classic sixties sitcom with Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman. I'm definitely more a BEWITCHED guy myself but I've had my Jeannie periods, too!


And HEY! 15 year old me! That Debbie thing is over, dude! Ya'll were just kids! Move on! 

Thursday, July 18th, 1974

Terry decided to give me only some of the comics he owes me. I think I've talked him into giving me the rest but won't know until tomorrow. BOY!

Still been kissing the Linda poster and now the SEVENTEEN cover, too! So beautiful.

Nick Clooney cut off new episodes of TEMPERATURE'S RISING for the next seven weeks! Starting tonight! BOY!

We were late getting to work because some of those dumbSocial Security people stayed until 8:15! I didn't get back 'til after 9:30. That was okay, though, since there wasn't anything good on until 10.

NOTES: Nick Clooney, of course, is George's dad and literally a living legend of Cincinnati television. I've been privileged to meet and get to know this handsome, humble, talented man and his equally talented and absolutely lovely wife Nina quite a number of times in the years since. Have no idea what type of show he had at that point that was pre-empting one of my favorite sitcoms. 


Actually though, TEMPERATURE'S RISING was, at that point, called THE NEW TEMPERATURE'S RISING and was not the show it had been in Season 1. At the beginning of the 2nd season, they had taken a wonderful, silly sitcom spotlighting the great Cleavon Little with James Whitmore as straight man and trashed everything but the setting and Cleavon. Even then, though, they toned down his character significantly and put him opposite Paul Lynde. Now Lynde was nobody's straight man (pun intended) and even William Asher, who had used him with great success on BEWITCHED, had no clue on how to use him here. 


The series had actually been taken off in January and starting this night the network was running off the final 7 unaired episodes during the summer.

Wednesday, July 17th, 1974

I was very, very tired this morning. I drifted off into dreamland off and on for most of an hour after Mom left.

When Terry got off work, I went with him over the river. I got all the new mags plus an issue of FF I needed. Got a kung-fu mag plus a mag with a (bad) parody of my current favorite flick.

This morning I read through my Shang-Chi collection.

Later i learned that ABC was rerunning WONDER WOMAN and the previously-cut-off-by-dumb-old-channel-12 MEN OF THE DRAGON as a double feature. I hope they don't cut it off again!

Speaking of channel 12, I got channel 12 on the radio! Weird! I managed to hear HOGAN'S HEROES while I was at work tonight!

Terry bought my "men." All of 'em! For three bucks and five or six comics which I don't get 'til tomorrow anyway. Og, well. I didn't want 'em anymore anyway.

NOTES: My "men" would have been my action figures--Captain Action, Mike Hazard, Johnny West and the like. Comics I didn't outgrow but those I did. We had spent large parts of the preceding six years carting our "men" between houses and playing with them. As I understand it, Terry still has them in 2012!


MEN OF THE DRAGON was a made for TV martial arts movie that I don't really recall anymore at all. 


Shang-Chi, on the other hand, was the star of the single best-written Marvel comic from around this point 'til pretty much the end of the decade. Started out by Steve Englehart but Doug Moench made the book his own. I went on a radio talk show around 1980 and they asked me who I thought the best writer in comics was and I answered without hesitation, "Doug Moench." He's now a FB friend. 


Shang-Chi seems doubtful to be reprinted in its entirety as the character was the son of Fu Manchu, not only a licensed property to which Marvel no longer has any rights to but now a controversial example of political incorrectness toward Asians. Too bad. It really was great stuff when Moench made it essentially a James Bond martial arts epic movie on paper with the help of artists like Paul Gulacy, Mike Zeck and Gene Day.

Tuesday, July 16th, 1974

A very cool day. Well, not a VERY cool day but pretty cool.

I stirred up old memories on a trip I took from King Kwik to Horn's to Scroggins to Woolworth's. I walked up Bakewell past the house where we lived more than ten years ago now. It's still there and not very different. Didn't buy many books at any of the stops but the nostalgia was fun.

On the way, I also mailed Linda's letter. Hopefully that will provoke future memories.

Tried to work on my story but just couldn't get into it, not even to Simon and Garfunkel.  Oh, well.

When we went in to work, there were two people in there as well as two dogs tied up and waiting outside. I did about half my work, then asked Mom to do the other half after hers. Then I left so I didn't disturb them. Too bad really as I'm sure I would've beaten my 35 minute record.

I've decided definitely what I'm saving up for. To meet Linda. I asked her where in my letter and if she answers I can afford to go almost anywhere. If that doesn't work out, I may have to use it for school. Boy!

Mom told me this morning and, since, I've seen it on TV and in the papers. A Florida newswoman referred to the "blood and guts policy" of her TV station and then announced an "attempted suicide."She then pulled a gun from her handbag and aimed it at her head and fired. ON THE AIR! She died later. Apparently she was expecting only to critically wound herself but not fatally. The whole thing including a report of the incident was in the script she had written earlier.  Wow. What will happen next?

Saw a good TV movie starring Carrie Snodgress and another with a title I couldn't resist--LINDA.

I blew kisses at my Linda poster at least 50 times today. Now I know I'm crazy...about her!

NOTES: What is it about teenagers that so many are fascinated by suicide even if they'd never actually so it tehmselves. I know I was. This story really hit me. If I knew the story in more depth, I'd long since forgotten but I looked it up online. There's a long and detailed Wikipedia page on the reporter, one Christine Chubbuck, and seen here is a clipping from that time.


The house where I lived on Bakewell has long since become a parking lot as has the house where I lived on Fourth Street and the house where I lived on Greenup Street. The house where I lived in 1974 is still there, however, and looks exactly the same. David and I walked down by it while waiting for Rene at the Unemployment Office last week.


As far as wanting to travel to meet Linda, I have a hard time remembering a time when I actually HAD a savings, let enough one that could take me almost anywhere. But I did. As much as I was spending on comic books and movies, remember that they were all less expensive back then. I was getting money for working and still getting a sort of allowance, too, and I managed to save quite a bit. Held onto it until I bought my first VCR in 1980. Haven't really been able to save anything since, darn it!

Monday, July 15th, 1974

IT.

It rained hard early this afternoon. I spent all that time writing my new letter to Linda. Oh, it was wonderful. Just the writing while the rain poured! Going to mail it tomorrow. Have to write my pen-pal letter, too.

This summer may turn out great, yet!

I watched a movie on TV that was written by William Peter Blatty.

At the SS office, they threw out some old issues of THE WASHINGTON POST. Unfortunately the movie sections were missing.

NOTES: Been going through a writer's block lately but that's still how I feel about writing. I'd still rather do it than eat.


Blatty had a long career as a screenwriter and his old films were apparently being trotted out to cash in on his EXORCIST success that year.