Wed 8 May 2013
Collecting Pulps: A Memoir, Part Eight: The Night Pulpcon Almost Ended With a Drunken Brawl, by Walker Martin.
Posted by Steve under Collecting , Columns , Pulp Fiction[10] Comments
THE NIGHT PULPCON ALMOST ENDED WITH A DRUNKEN BRAWL
by Walker Martin
I guess if you live long enough and hang out in the appropriate dives, you will eventually see fistfights and guys swinging beer bottles at each other. Normally you will not see book or pulp collectors try to strike and harm another collector. I’ve always said my favorite type of people are book collectors and since there are so few pulp collectors left, I don’t want to get into any arguments with the few that are still around.
Today, a friend sent me an email about a British first edition by H. Bedford Jones. He mentioned that he might consult the resident H. Bedford Jones expert, Digges La Touche (see above). Upon reading this, I almost fell out of my chair laughing and yelling “So you’re the expert on H. Bedford Jones!” I was thinking back more than thirty years ago when the Pulpcon convention almost ended in a drunken brawl.
Rusty Hevelin, the head honcho and boss of the convention, never scheduled the evening panels ahead of time. He just about always would give you an hour or even a few minutes notice that he would like you to talk about a pulp author or be part of a panel discussing some aspect of pulpish literature.
I remember once he approached me about ten minutes before the start of the evening programming and wanted me to interview Robert Bloch. Sometimes I turned him down due to not being prepared on short notice but other times I accepted.
Evidently, at the last minute, Rusty decided to have a panel discuss H. Bedford Jones. He found three collectors who agreed and up to the stage stepped veteran pulp collectors Darrell Richardson, Harry Noble, and Digges La Touche. All were fans of the author and the discussion kept everyone’s attention.
Everyone behaved themselves and there was no problem. Until the banquet that night. Harry Noble and I were sitting at one of the dinner tables waiting for our food and drinking beer. Another long time pulp collector, Andy Biegel, also sat down. Without any preface or explanation, Andy blurted out, “So you’re the expert on H. Bedford Jones.” At first Harry and I thought that he was kidding and we just laughed. Andy didn’t laugh however and he repeated in a louder voice, “So you’re the expert on H. Bedford Jones.”
We now realized that Andy Biegel was drunker that we were and was in fact insanely jealous because he had not been chosen to be on the Bedford Jones panel. Harry tried to explain that he was not an expert but just a fan of the writer and loved to talk about his books. Andy was having none of it and repeated for the third time, at the top of his voice, “SO YOU’RE THE EXPERT ON H. BEDFORD JONES!”
At this point it was obvious that in another minute Biegel was going to fling himself across the table and try to strangle Harry Noble. Though Harry was older than Biegel, such an action would not be a good idea since Harry was a fitness buff and body builder. Since I considered Harry my best pal, I certainly would have joined in the fight and probably we all three would have been rolling over on the floor punching and flailing.
To make things worse, Andy had a disability involving one leg being shorter than the other. I’m sure Harry and I would have been banned from Pulpcon for life for the drunken beating of a person with a physical handicap. So fortunately we stood up and without saying a word to Andy, we left the room. The next day Andy Biegel evidently didn’t remember anything about the incident and talked to us just as though nothing had happened.
Harry Noble and Andy Biegel are no longer with us but I still remember the Pulpcon brawl that almost happened over 30 years ago. Everytime I hear that someone is an expert on H. Bedford Jones, I start to scream, “So you’re the expert on H. Bedford Jones!”
May 8th, 2013 at 5:39 pm
Welcome back Steve! I hope this post gives everyone a laugh. It’s a true story and shows the violence and jealousy that lurks within book and pulp collectors.
As Frank Gruber said in THE PULP JUNGLE, “It’s a jungle out there!”
May 8th, 2013 at 6:33 pm
I shall forward this to a friend of mine who is an HBJ fan. Fun stuff!
May 8th, 2013 at 10:11 pm
Steve:
Robert Bloch was one of Claude’s favorites, not so much for his fiction, but his stunning autobiography, Once Around The Bloch. If you haven’t had a look, it is worthwhile in spades. If you have, I know you “know” what I am talking about.
May 9th, 2013 at 1:57 am
Wheew, am I ever happy NOT to be an expert on Bedford-Jones !
The things that could happen to you just for that !
The Doc
May 9th, 2013 at 7:07 am
The Doc is right and that’s why the story is so strange and funny. We usually don’t think that book collectors would get so angry and jealous about appearing on a discussion panel. But in this case it happened.
I remember once getting in a loud argument back in the 1970’s with another collector about Ross Macdonald. He didn’t like him and I was insisting that Macdonald was my third favorite detective writer behind Hammett and Chandler. Fortunately it was over the telephone.
May 10th, 2013 at 5:34 am
Andy Biegel was a sweetheart of a guy but I learned to steer clear of Andy in the evening when he was in his cups. I visited Andy and his wife Muriel on a number of occasions and I never saw him drink booze (I have a hunch he did not do it around Muriel). I miss Andy a lot and my experince was longer ago than 30 years I guess it would have been around 1976 and I was a bit more naive about drinking problems back then.
Thanks for the memories Walker.
May 13th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
As the third member of that infamous panel,I am happy to say that Andy Biegel completely ignored me.He probably thought I was unworthy of attention.After all Harry Nobel at that time was a very well known fan and I was not even an expert on H.Bedford-Jones.I still don’t know why Rusty asked me to be on on the panel.He probably couldn’t get Walker!
May 13th, 2013 at 5:41 pm
Digges, all I have to say about this infamous panel is that since you are the only surviving member of the H. Bedford Jones panel, you must be the bloody expert that beat me out on being on the panel!
After over 30 years the jealous rage still burns within me–SO YOU’RE THE EXPERT ON H. BEDFORD JONES!
September 26th, 2014 at 11:57 am
I am the step granddaughter of Harry Bedford-Jones and I’m not an expert on his writing, but he was quite a character in his personal life.
September 26th, 2014 at 2:07 pm
M. A.
Thanks for stopping by. If you’d ever like to tell more of what you know about your step-grandfather, you’re always welcome!