Where have I been...

Now, I ask you what is wrong with this picture?!  I mean check out this guy in front of me, I mean really, what the hell is HE thinking?  This is about a month ago at where I-55 and I-40 meet in Memphis, TN.  I was there for about 5 hours, moving about a mile an hour, really in the ballpark of the Atlanta, GA. affair where everyone abandoned their cars and walked!  Oh, and tell me America's needs do not travel by truck, look at all of them.  And, here's a shot of the other side of the road!

So, your thinking what does one do in a thing like this, well the first thing was try and get around it, routing in a big rig is hard to change, so I was told to stay on the interstate, not a good concept!  But, a i-Pod helps lots, as does a CB radio, but mostly, I'm the kind of guy who reads, especially when you have the air brakes pulled and your not moving, of course!  This then is what I reviewed, a short read in any case, but a nice mag I picked up at a antique store about a mile from my terminal in WI.

It was a in a stack of Hunting and Fishing mags and a pretty good size pile of Dime Novels  all were Tip Tops,  all by Street and Smith publishers.  So, every last one of those Tip Tops was a sports, hunting, fishing, story, not high on my list.  But, in the middle is this Top Notch Vol. 1 Number 1, March 1st 1910 and hell, its got a western cover!  I would have bought the thing if it had a fishing cover, hard to find one of these!  Cover is uncredited, and is familiar for some reason, nice comic book like drawing.  It illustrates the Albert W. Tolman story In The Coulee.  Here's the table of contents.

Really the mag was intended for it would seem about say 12 to 15 years old, back in the day.  The first story is Bob Halliday, Freshman by Edwin Larkmore, who did all his magazine fiction for Top Notch to about 1910.  Its a story that was OK, Bob is a "top notch" athlete at Princeton who take off in the middle of the season to visit the Athletic Club in New Orleans and get involved in a car chase of over 40 MPH, pretty exciting stuff.  Don't know how they could have afforded the train ride, let alone renting a car in 1910!  Its a serial and Bob meets the sister of the guy who gets hit my the other automoble-ist, and she's a mysterious one.  The guy they chase is of course involved in all this.  Not a favorite.

Second story by Gilbert Patten The Deadwood Trail is much better a western set in the Black Hills of the Dakota's.  This one is much better, a kid sets out to meet his uncle and go to his gold claim, misses him and chances after him.  He at least has a sensible explanation of why they would send so young a kid from the east out there by himself!  He meets a girl and her brother and you have an idea where it goes from there!
William George Patten is his real name and his other writing name is Burt L Standish, who as it turns out is the Editor for the mag. 

Best Story for me in the issue is In The Coulee by Albert W. Tolman a short story with a tough steer!  He wrote quite a bunch of fiction from 1910 to about 1944, which being that he was born in the 1860's was probably his last bit of wordage. 

There's a Julian St Dare Baseball story, I'm not big on, and a Robert Russell one on football, OK, but not my style. 

So, very interesting reads for back in the Pre-Pulp days of Top Notch, by October of this same year, it had switched from its 8x10 32 page 5 cent (go figure when they call them Dime novels) mag to the better known 7x10 128 page pulp mag.  With a much more diverse set of stories and more to my liking.  Oh, and I was looking at the Fiction Mags site ( you can Google it and see) where most of the info I found  was and low and behold there's my copy of the mag, tape and all.  Pretty cool, I found the issue awhile back and posted on the Pulpmags list page about it, and was placed it on the opening page. 

Action : Adventure : Treasure Trove

1. 

That's what I saw this week hunting up some pulps when I had some time.  I was at this antique store and notice the above looking out at me from a rack of magazines.  Being the good pulp hunter that I think I am, pulled it out to find this great mag.  Sea Story Anthology #1 and only, 1948, Street and Smith publication.  Filled with great stories of the sea,  and mind you some excellent western writers too!  Ernest Haycox, and Tom Roan are here as well as better know sea writers, Linclon Colcord, Albert R. Wetjen, and James F. Dwyer.  Most of the stories are reprinted from the 20's, but some good ones none the less.  I read the Roan story because I had to know how he would handle a sea tale, it does have a tendency to read like a western, right down to his use of the words savvy and gat (which is more like a later detective term, the story is hard to put a time to). Either way a good story.  The cover by H. C. Murphy, is an excellent painting, being that he died in 1931, was probably used on a early Sea Story cover.  The cover at one time was a nice slick paper, but after 64 years has faded somewhat.  The whole mag is printed on what looks to be coloring book paper and about the size too!  Dunno, I really like the bed-sheet size pulps like this.

 And, speaking of  bedsheets, the mag,

 I found next to this was nice too, a Blue Book December 1947 it was a cover-less copy, but tucked into the mag was the cover!  And, just to set everything off the price on the Blue Book was Free!  OK, the price on the Sea Stories was $1, yup, a buck!  Man, can't beat that!  I just love these Blue Books, Bed Sheet size, cover by Stoops covering his states issues, this one on New Jersey.  The stories are  just amazing to me, I mean to start off with Theodore Goodridge Roberts' Strike Hard! Bite Deep!  The Quest of the Mazed Knight in ancient Britain/ King Arthur's day.  Its the first story I'm gonna read here and there are some others too. The illustration is by Frederick Chapman, very nice, he worked largely for Woman's Home Companion and The American.  Other stories here include Grandpa and the Werewolf by Georges Surdez, The Golden Cup By H. Bedford-Jones a cool looking story about clipper ships and the China Trade, but the most interesting story is by Ross De Lue called The Flight of the XS-102 a SF story with great illos  by Wilson Thomson, don't know much about him, or de Lue.  Should be a good read.  Finally in this issue, there looks to be a wonderful story by the prolific Wilbur S. Peacock  called A Gambler's Reputation with some great drawings by one of my favorite artist for Blue Book, John Russel Fulton, I can't look at Blue Book without thinking of his work, so good.

I just love Fulton's dry Brush technique and I like the use of color too, it adds some depth to the black and white drawing.  I like to think that Fulton added the color, but suspect that they had a color guy or gal doing that.  Check out his women, especially the one with the fan in the foreground, man that's good!  I've read, I think in the Mike Ashly story of Blue Book in Pulp Vault #14 that Fulton was fazed out because he had an old fashion style, whoever thought that was a good idea, I will never know, these drawing he did are fantastic, and will never be anything but outstanding in the world of illustrations, IMO. Be sure to check out his Facebook page his grandsons have put up for him, some great information and a photo of him working at a painting can be seen there. 

Next time the rest of the pulps from the very same store....all at a buck a piece!