 In this issue, we've
tried to present a mini-anthology of stories about how
events from our pasts have influenced the way we are
today. Something we haven't mentioned yet, and maybe the
biggest influence of all, is the persistence of
friendship, especially during trying circumstances. The
following article is a remembrance of one of those
times.HOME
Search Site by Topic Literature JUNK PATROL SHORT STORY BY TED WHITE SEPT 1971 ISSUE OF AMAZING STORIES Back to Quacks, Oddballs, and Weirdos CLICK HERE FOR THE YOUTUBE VIDEO No one has ever said "Motherfucker" faster than Harlan Ellison. See here (above) that it is true. OR: See the whole interview here. ART BEER BINOCULARS COFFEE CUPS ROCKS ARTIFACTS FRYING PAN PAGE FOSSILS CARS CHAIRS AND BENCHES T-SHIRTS GUITARS GUNS FISHING LURES MY PIANO BOOK COLLECTION CUCKOO CLOCKS/ BIRD CLOCKS PICNIC TABLES MY COMPUTERS BRIC A BRAC CORRESPONDENCE QUACKS AND ODDITIES TACOS BOOKPLATES TELEPHONE POLES CANALS PLACES HOUSES MUSIC COIN COLLECTION DOODADS BEER T-SHIRTS GLASSES AND PLATES FRYING PAN PAGE HOUSEHOLD TIPS WHITE TENNIS SHOES BASEBALL CAPS AND OTHER HATS COWBOY HATS Ted White's Page http://www.societyartrock.org/dr-progresso.html   This is a story about
how I won -- and lost -- a bet. The bet was with
Harlan Ellison, and it was his idea. He was wrong and
I was right, and in the end it didn't matter.The year was 1960. My first
wife, Sylvia, and I had moved to New York City in the
summer of 1959, finding -- after several weeks of
searching -- a pleasant five-room apartment in the
west Village, a block away from Sheridan Square on
Christopher Street. The apartment was on the fourth
floor of a five-floor building that had no elevator --
good for catching a vagrant breeze on a hot summer's
day, but lousy for easily coming and going. Those four
flights of stairs could get to you after you'd been up
and down them a few times.Harlan moved back to New York
City, after a year or two's stay in Chicago, in the
spring of 1960. He had been editor on Bill Hamling's Rogue
magazine, one of the few Playboy imitators to
make a serious job of it. (Hamling had been offered a
50% ownership in Playboy when Hefner started
that magazine, but turned the opportunity down and had
been kicking himself ever since. Rogue, once a
pulpish 35¢ men's-sweat magazine, was transformed in
1959 into a slick competitor to Playboy.) As a
struggling young writer, I'd been submitting short
items to both Playboy and Rogue (my
first sale -- at 50¢ a word! -- was in fact to Playboy),
and had been getting back rejection notes from Harlan
(although he did send me a check for a five word
sale -- the title for an article Rogue used
which I'd suggested to him at the 1959 Worldcon -- in
the sum of 25¢). So perhaps that is why, when Harlan
returned to New York City, he moved in with us until
he found a place of his own.Of course, I'd known Harlan
for some years by then. We'd corresponded in the early
fifties, and he'd contributed to my fanzines of that
era. (I in turn had illustrated a story for his
fanzine in 1953 -- and in retrospect I'm damned
grateful neither the story nor my awful illos were
ever published; Harlan had a massive file of
unpublished material when he gave up putting out
fanzines.) We met in 1955 at the first Worldcon I
attended, and saw each other on and off in the years
which followed, usually at conventions. I held Harlan in awe in those
days. He had enormous energy, and it fueled not only
his talents (as a writer, editor, and -- now mostly
forgotten -- cartoonist), but his activities. A trip
to a restaurant or a store with Harlan was an
entertainment, with Harlan the Master of Ceremonies
and Star. Harlan decided at the 1955 Cleveland
Worldcon to help George Young select and purchase a
tie at a nearby men's store, and led half a dozen of
us along on a short walk to the store. Along the way
we encountered a construction project: men digging a
deep hole in the street. Immediately Harlan took
charge, issuing directions to the men in the hole and
to the growing crowd of bystanders. He was funny, and
he had all of us -- fans, workers, passersby -- in the
palms of his hands. There was applause when he was
done and turned to continue to the store. Although he
was only a few years older than I, there was a huge
gap between us in terms of experience and knowledge
and I looked up to him.By 1960 I was no longer a
callow high school kid but the gap remained. Harlan
had by then sold dozens of stories and one or two
books, served a tumultuous stint in the Army, been
married and divorced, and had been working at Rogue.
And he had no less energy. He seemed to sleep in half
the time most people did, and to use the extra time to
write new stories. He could write anywhere. In later
years he would write stories in store windows and at
Worldcons. I watched him write "Daniel White for the
Greater Good" (an excellent story) in my living room,
in the midst of a party, pausing every two or three
pages to announce, "Listen to this!" and then read us
what he'd just written. I learned from Harlan how to
write finished copy cold, in a single draft.My own career was just
starting to take off at this point. I'd joined the
staff of Metronome magazine, then the world's
oldest (and best) jazz magazine, which had resumed
publication in the spring of 1960 after a six-month
hiatus, during which a new publisher and production
staff had been found. My article on Ornette Coleman --
then a very controversial and misunderstood figure in
jazz -- was the cover story in the first new issue of
Metronome, and earned me a lot of respect in
the field when Coleman said (in print) that I was the
first to understand what he was doing. This led in
turn to my becoming a columnist for Ted Wilson's Jazz
Guide, getting liner-note assignments, and
covering a wide range of jazz concerts and events for
Metronome, for which I also reviewed books and
records.One major event was the
Newport Jazz Festival, still held then in Newport,
Rhode Island. Sylvia and I drove up, along with Metronome's
associate editor, Bob Perlongo, to find Newport a
scene of near-chaos. George Wein (festival manager)
refused to honor my Metronome credentials
despite Perlongo and Metronome's editor, Bill
Coss, vouching for me in person, so Sylvia and I drove
a mile away to the Cliff Walk Manor, where an
insurgent jazz festival was being held, featuring
Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Ornette Coleman. The
streets along the way were full of rowdy college-age
kids (some were mooning passersby in the
mid-afternoon) and beer cans littered the sidewalks.
During the evening's concert at Cliff Walk Manor, our
eyes began stinging and we discovered that the police
had been using tear gas at the main festival, a mile
away, in what turned out to be a riot by kids outside
the festival walls. We left after the concert, driving
up to Boston to stay with our friends at the Ivory
Birdbath in Cambridge. I called Harlan (who was then
still living in our apartment) to tell him what had
happened."Geeze, Ted," Harlan
exclaimed. "That's a great story. Why don't you write
it up for Rogue? I'll call Frank Robinson and
set it up for you."This led directly to my first
major sale to Rogue, "Riot At Newport." It
wasn't, as I wrote it, a very good piece. But Harlan
rewrote the lead, and Frank edited it into
acceptability. (I've said it before and I'd like to
say it again: Frank Robinson is the best editor I've
ever had. He turned my dross into gold, and always
claimed: "It was all in your piece, Ted; I just
rearranged a few things." I learned a great deal just
by studying the changes he made, and my subsequent
sales to Rogue appeared pretty much as
written.)That summer Harlan found his
own apartment -- three doors up the street, in a
building with an elevator. And he met a woman, Linda
Solomon, who also lived in the same building. Linda
would go on to a career of her own in writing and
editing, but that was mostly ahead of her in 1960.Linda had a small but
well-selected record collection, containing a goodly
amount of jazz. One of the records she had was a
premium offered by Tom Wilson. Now, Tom is worth an
article in his own right. He started up a very
important small jazz label while he was still in
college -- earning an MBA at Harvard. The record
company, Transition, was essentially his thesis
project, but it also released the first albums by
people like Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor, and all
Transition lps are collectors' items now, going for
hundreds of dollars apiece.In late 1959, Tom, with a
partner, began doing jazz radio programming in New
York City. They leased six hours an evening -- six pm
to midnight -- on a local FM station, and presented
some of the big names among jazz critics, like Nat
Hentoff, in one-hour shows, every weeknight. I
listened to it regularly and subscribed to the program
guide, Jazz Guide. The first issue of Jazz
Guide came out the same week as the first
revived issue of Metronome, and Tom liked my
work in Metronome so much that he called me up
and invited me to write for Jazz Guide, which
is how I met and got to know him. (I also subsequently
introduced Harlan to him, and Harlan became another
columnist for Jazz Guide.)The radio thing did not last
-- Tom and his partner had a falling out -- and Tom
dropped radio to get into publishing (he started up a
magazine designed to be sold at record stores, called
33 Guide, to which both Harlan and I
contributed reviews) and return to record producing,
first for United Artists and Savoy, and later for
Verve, where he produced the first Mothers of
Invention album (adding 'of Invention' to their name).But while Tom and his partner
were promoting their jazz radio programming, they
offered albums as premiums to program-guide
subscribers. The albums were in blank, white jackets,
but the actual lps inside (obtained very cheaply sans
covers) were a jazz sampler issued five or six years
earlier on the Period label.And Linda had one. So did I,
but mine had the original Period cover, complete with
liner notes and personnel listings for each track,
since I'd bought it (for $1.98) when it first came
out. Tom offered me one of the ones he was sending
out, but I turned it down; I didn't need another copy,
much less one with a blank cover.I tried to tell Harlan that
when he came over one Friday afternoon to rave to me
about Linda's copy of the album, which he'd just
heard."Great stuff, Ted. There's
lotsa old historical tracks. There's one with Mildred
Baily singing with the John Lewis orchestra!""With who?""With John Lewis! You know,
the pianist in the Modern Jazz Quartet! I know you
like him, Ted -- you've got most of his albums!"In fact his "European Windows"
and "Golden Striker" albums were heavy favorites of
mine then. "You don't mean John Lewis," I said. "John
Lewis never played with Mildred Baily. You're thinking
of John Kirby. She sang with him on
those 1939 tracks.""No, Ted," Harlan insisted.
"John Lewis. It was John Lewis she sang with."I tried to explain that Lewis'
first recordings were done after WW2, with the Dizzy
Gillespie Big Band, and that in 1939 he was probably
still in school somewhere. Then I hauled out my copy
of the Period sampler, to prove my point.But Harlan was not impressed.
"This isn't the same album, Ted," he said, with only a
glance at the jacket. "I'm right, I know I'm right,
and you know I'm right.""Aw, come on, Harlan," I said.
"You know you're wrong. You got the names wrong,
that's all. It was John Kirby. She sang with him for
years.""Oh, yeah? You wanna bet? Huh?
You wanna bet on it? Come on, Ted -- you know you're
right, so let's bet on it, okay?""I don't want to bet on it,
Harlan. I'd win, so what's the point?"But Harlan insisted. Harlan
can be very insistent. "I'll tell you what," he said.
"I'll bet my entire record collection against one
record in your collection, your 10-inch X-label
album by the Original Dixieland Jass Band!" This album
documents the earliest known 'jazz' recordings, circa
1917, albeit by white musicians. The 10-inch lp was
issued in the very early fifties by RCA Victor on its
jazz-historical X label, and was by then itself of
some historical importance. I consider the music on it
of little value (others have other opinions) except as
a historical document, but at that time I was trying
to build a major jazz collection (in part to make me a
more-rounded jazz critic), and the album was important
to me for that reason. Harlan's collection, on the
other hand, was as big as mine (over one thousand
lps), and did not overlap it too much. He had a lot of
classical albums I didn't then have, and a lot of the
more or less 'hip' popular albums as well. He had one
album that I really wanted, because I'd never seen it
anywhere else (and still haven't to this day): a
Johnny Mathis album arranged by some of the top jazz
arrangers of the day, like Gil Evans. It was tempting
to think of owning Harlan's collection.Harlan did not drop the issue
until I said, "Okay, Harlan, if you want a bet, you've
got a bet." When Sylvia came in, he excitedly repeated
the whole story to her, re-emphasizing the bet. One
record in my collection, against his entire
collection.Sylvia got excited. "When can we collect?" she asked. "We can't settle the
bet," Harlan said, gently correcting her (Harlan liked
Sylvia quite a lot), "until Monday, because Linda is
away for the weekend. Monday we'll get together and go
over to her place and look at her record and settle
the bet.""Is this a real bet?"
Sylvia asked."Yeah, Harlan," I said. "No
hanky-panky, now. You don't go over first and alter
the label or anything.""Aw, come on, Ted! Do
you think I'd do a thing like that? This is a serious
bet, man!"Boyd Raeburn was in town that
weekend, and at one point a crowd of us were in a
subway car when the story of the bet came up again,
Harlan excitedly telling Boyd about it. By now the
stakes had escalated again: Harlan was betting not
only his entire record collection, but his custom-made
record cabinets as well. I watched all this with numb
amazement. It was beginning to dawn on me that I was
going to win a lot.I'd had vague doubts. Although
I knew it was John Kirby and not John Lewis --
and I had my own copy of the record to back me up --
Harlan was so dead-set insistent that I couldn't help
wondering if, maybe, possibly, there had been a
typographical error on the radio-premium copies (maybe
the reason they'd sat in a warehouse somewhere for
years), or some other explanation that could cost me
the bet. After all, it was Linda's copy of the
album that would decide the bet, and I'd never seen
her specific copy.If Harlan had wanted to drop
the bet, if he'd come up to me and said, quietly,"You
know, I think I'm wrong -- I don't want to bet on it
any more," I'd have let it drop. I was embarrassed by
the lopsidedness of the stakes. And winning the bet
would be like taking candy from a baby. It wasn't
right.But on both Saturday and
Sunday, Harlan reiterated the bet. It made a good
story and he told it well, to a number of people on a
number of occasions. And every time he told it within
my hearing, I believed a little more that it was
really going to happen: I was going to win Harlan's
entire record collection and cabinets! I started to
feel lust for that collection. I began planning how
I'd rearrange my living room to make space for his
cabinets, handsome furniture in their own right.In the back of my own head, I
knew this was not good: too close to stealing. I'll
winnow out the records I really want and he can keep
the rest, I decided, full of magnanimous feelings.Monday dawned. Harlan phoned.
He was at Linda's and I should come on over, he said,
his voice gleeful. He was already at Linda's.
I was filled with foreboding as I went up to her
apartment.Linda greeted me at the door
and I went in to find Harlan sprawled in a nearby
chair. Without comment, Linda held out the album to
me. I slid the record out of its blank jacket and
looked at the label. There, neatly typed in the
distinctive face of Harlan's Olivetti, was a thin
strip of paper taped over the record label that said,
"Mildred Baily with John Lewis & His Orchestra." I
turned the record over; there was a second Mildred
Baily cut on the other side. Here, too, was a typed
line taped over the actual credit: "John Lewis Again,
Ha ha."I looked at Harlan with what I
believe was sorrow in my expression. "You promised you
wouldn't do this," I said."Yeah," he said, crestfallen.
"Well, you know." He fished out his keys. "Here," he
said, and handed them to me. "I don't want to watch."Do you have any idea what's
involved in moving 1,000 lps? They're heavy. You can't
lift a stack of much more than fifty albums at a time,
especially if you plan to carry it up four flights of
stairs. Sylvia had asthma and tried to climb those
stairs as infrequently as possible. I couldn't ask her
to help carry the records. So I called up Larry Ivie,
who was the only other person I could think of then
who wasn't tied to a rigid work schedule (he was a
struggling artist), and he came to help. Amazing Stories 1971 with Ted White Junk Patrol Story.jpg Click to View a Larger, Proportionally Correct Photo  Books by Ted White that Have Read.jpg Click to View a Larger Proportional Photo It was summertime in New York
City. None of us had air conditioning, except maybe
Linda. I don't recall it being a terrifically hot day,
but it was warm enough. With Sylvia holding fort in
our apartment and Harlan watching forlornly from his,
Larry and I began the long and arduous task of
carrying stacks of records from Harlan's to my place.Midway through the task,
Sylvia, Larry, and I agreed that once we had
everything in our place, we'd tell Harlan he could
have it back -- but that he'd have to carry it
himself.I knew I couldn't keep his
collection and cabinets. It was a silly bet. Hell, it
was a stupid bet, compounded by Harlan taking
an advance peek (Linda, it turned out, had gotten back
Sunday evening, as Harlan had known she would), and,
upon realizing he'd lost the bet he'd foisted upon me,
typing up those silly, obvious, taped-over labels.
Harlan should be taught a lesson, we agreed -- but he
should get his stuff back.By now, Harlan's records were
in stacks covering much of my living room floor, the
cabinets soon to follow. I'd pushed furniture to the
side to make room.I'd arrived at the top of the
stairs at my floor with another stack of records,
Larry Ivie just ahead of me, when I heard quick steps
on the stairs behind me. I was still holding the stack
of records, about to set them down on the floor, when
Harlan burst through the open door behind me. He was brandishing a gun. It
was a small revolver, and I'd seen it once before when
he'd shown me his 'lecturing exhibit', of a gun, a
switchblade, and brass knucks, which he kept in a box
in his closet."Okay, Ted," Harlan snarled.
"Fun's over. Pick that stuff up and take it back to my
apartment -- and I mean now!"He'd been looking more and
more disheartened each time we'd taken another stack
of records from his apartment, but I'd never expected
this. He had snapped. He'd been watching his prized
collection disappear, for all he knew for good,
probably kicking himself for ever getting into the
whole thing, and at some point his disappointment had
turned to anger. Perhaps it had been addressed
initially at himself, but by the time he appeared in
my apartment, waving his gun, his anger was directed
at us."Don't make me shoot you,
Ted," he said. "I'll aim at your legs, but if I hit
your knees that's very painful." His revolver looked
like and probably was a .22, but from a distance of
eight to ten feet, it could not only be fairly certain
of hitting me, but might do significant damage. And
Harlan appeared to be in a state in which he'd not
hesitate to shoot. It was the first time in my life a
gun had been pointed at me, and to this day the
scariest.I'd never seen Harlan like
this, in such a rage. He could easily go over the top,
I thought. He'd demonstrated the capability to do so
in other situations, ones that didn't involve me or
guns."We were going to give them
all back to you, Harlan," Sylvia said."I know you are -- right
now!" Harlan responded. "Pick some up," he said
to Larry, who had been watching all this with a
bemused look on his face.I was still holding the stack
of records I'd just carried up. "Here," I said,
thrusting them at Harlan. "You take them."He dodged back. "No, Ted," he
said, "I've got the gun. You carry the
records. All of them. Back to my place. Now!"So Larry and I carried all the
records -- over two-thirds of Harlan's collection --
back to Harlan's apartment. Back down all those stairs
(and back up again for more). We were covered with
sweat, and getting more and more pissed at Harlan, who
wasn't being 'taught a lesson' after all, but who was
autocratically directing us with a gun. (Harlan waited
in my apartment until the last load went out; Linda
held fort at his apartment, giving us sympathetic
looks but otherwise staying out of it.)That's pretty much how the bet
ended. I'd won, and I'd lost. I'd enjoyed a brief
roller-coaster ride of emotions as I'd contemplated
and then lusted after Harlan's collection, and I'd put
in half a day's physical labor, carrying records back
and forth with the unfortunate (to be caught up in
this) Larry Ivie. It had been a joke gone sour, all
around. Harlan had lost, too. He'd lost a lot of my
respect for him -- not for pushing a stupid bet in the
first place, but for the way he'd handled it at the
end. He should have carried the records back,
at the very least.We fed Larry an early dinner,
in gratitude for all he'd done and gone through, and
were sitting around feeling depressed and let down
when the phone rang.It was Harlan. He was
apologetic. The gun, he said, had been unloaded. I'd
never been in any real danger. He was sorry and he
wanted to make it up to us. Come on over, he said.
He'd bought a cake to share with us as a peace
offering.It was a good cake.  PAY THE WRITER! HARLAN ELLISON. |
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