Now, please. Don’t eat them all at once. I got to all the time and trouble to give you daily Bleats while there’s a pause in the regular Bleatage, and you go and spoil it all on the first day? Pace yourself! Let there be shunning of whoever romps through the comments and leaves “FIRST” on all the pages.

Annnnnd some of you are already skipping ahead to see if anyone’s done that, aren’t you.

Well, this will be a short hiatus. Every day I’ll give you a preview of stuff to come either this year or next, and yes, I know that sounds hopeful and absurd. But I really do have two years of material ready to roll. You won’t see today’s previewed material until I finish up Frank Reade, and yes, there’s more Frank Reade - in color! - and it’s not even scheduled for this year.

As I may have said before: if this site was a magazine, it would be 80 pages a month, covering old movies, roadside architecture, ancient cartoons, advertising, matchbooks, two eras per issue (the 40s and 70s, the 20s and 70s) along with twenty essays on this or that. You’re really getting a good deal.

Anyway! We love Frank around here for his all-American derring-do. But he wasn't the only boy's story series. Behold the tales of both Pluck - something any good lad should have - and Luck, which provides an opportunity where you can apply yourself.

 

You're thinking of the TV show, right? Nope:

John "Grizzly" Adams (also known as James Capen Adams and Grizzly Adams) (1812–1860) was a famous California mountain man and trainer of grizzly bearsand other wild animals he captured for menagerieszoological gardens and circuses. When Theodore H. Hittell met Adams in 1856 at Adams' Mountaineer Museum in San Francisco, California, Adams first represented himself as William Adams,  then a short time later told Hittell (also incorrectly) his name was James Capen Adams, an alias he maintained until 1860.

I don't think this nickle novel was about that Grizzly, but a subsequent version. It has no dates that indicate the story took place 30 years before; it's mostly just circus hoo-hoorah.

I've about six pdfs of this, and I can't remember how I got them. Here's another, with another historical figure boys would love to know, or be:

I think that's the 1896 equivalent of a trailer that gives away the entire plot.

This one hit all the sweet spots:

 

School Boy Explorers! Oh by cracky that would be the devil's knuckles, wouldn't it, lads? To be out of school, in the mysterious Yucatan - where is that again? Father's atlas is somewhere around here. It doesn't sound like Africa. Africa doesn't have ruins, anyway. It has secret Diamond Mines and Hidden Lakes. It must be South America - or perhaps Mexico? It would be grand fun to go Mexico and discover things and shoot revolutionaries.

 

 

 

It's a long way to this place, I suppose:

It's based on an 1870 adventure novel, and later a folk song. Or the other way around. There's honor and valor involved and some stabbling, I presume.

Ah, my people get their own story:

 

They're up against those fearless Levitating Voyageurs, and it would seem one of them has got it hard.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing recognizably Minnesotan about the story or locations.

Finally: another keen profession any stout and true lad would love to have:

Someone's selling it on Amazon as "steampunk single."

Born and raised in the lighthouse service, young Larry Lee reports for duty as head lightkeeper of a brand-new tower on a lonely speck of rock and sand in the Florida Keys, Manatee Light. But Larry and his assistant Lem soon find the remote coastline is neither as lonely nor as deserted as they expected; rather, the reefs and beaches are the domain of a piratical crew of “wreckers,” callous brigands who lure ships to their doom on the jagged shoals, murder the crews, and loot the cargo.

Steampunk. Criminey. Oh, content warning:

Ssome material in these stories from the late-1800s and early 1900s may be deemed culturally or socially objectionable by modern readers. Language, terminology, and characterizations, particularly in reference to nationalities, races, cultures, disabilities, or belief systems, may not be fully in accordance with the sensitivities of the present day.

If you have to be warned, it's a miracle you can read at all.

More tomorrow - but it'll be entirely different.

 

 
blog comments powered by Disqus