Holiday Flu

By Richard A. Coyle

This was rewritten for the Rebirth First Issue

Well, I guess I have a real bad case of fandom-itis. We are going through one of the big holidays and unlike a more normal person, I do not find myself pining away for the old family get-togethers. Instead, I found myself missing the big conventions of yester-year.

This is being written at home over the Thanksgiving weekend. I found that I was feeling a little down and blue. As I searched my soul for the cause, I could only find sadness that I was not away at a convention. Thoughts of family caused no longing, no sense of lost of anything missing, only sadness over the fact that there was a lack of a road trip and a convention brought tears to my eyes.

I think this sadness is because I, like maybe many of us, never really found that sense of home and belonging anywhere else but with other fans, with our *own* kind. I think that for many of us, even our own families put us off and made us feel a little out of it, a little like outsiders even at home.

After all, what are the highlights of this holiday? A big dinner, some stuffing (ourselves included), a grand family gathering (usually with fights and bickering) and football. All of this happens on one day, leaving three dead days to sit around and regret doing what we did that one day. No wonder so many flee into the crushing crowds and traffic to shop on the day after, anything to get out of the house. For me this always was/is a big waste of time. I have no family, we don't do the dinner and I hate football. Like most holidays, this has always been a bore for me.

 

Then I found fandom.

Now these holidays meant something special to me too, big three to four day conventions. And I went to some of the best I ever seen in the early 80's. For those of you reading this and having only known the Creation Cons, pull up a chair for a tale of long ago and you will learn why I refuse to call them any thing but *cons*, like the kind con men use to fleece you out of your money.

For I am talking about three to four day, twenty-four hour conventions, held in some of the nicer hotels like the Hyatt Regency, or the L.A. Bonaventure (where they filmed parts of "Buck Rogers", and one like it in Atlanta for "Fantastic Journey". Man, did it feel like coming home and felt that I were living in a part of the show.)

In these hotels, we would have so many function and activities to attend that you would have some difficult choices to make.

Let me list a few:

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