Tag: Woolworth’s

Roar

Ah, Nancy Drew.

Nancy Drew wasn’t the first kids’ sleuth series I discovered (Trixie Belden’s The Red Trailer Mystery and The Three Investigators’ The Mystery of the Moaning Cave came first), but when I was in the fifth grade, sometime between 1969 and 1970, we had a table of books in the back of the room that had belonged to the (now grown) children of our teacher. I was already reading mysteries checked out from the library or ordered from the Scholastic Book Fair, so when I saw The Secret of Red Gate Farm there on the table, along with the banner NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES, I couldn’t pass it up.

And on the back was a listing of all the titles in the series to that point in Nancy Drew history when this copy was printed. This was very exciting for me–a series? Of mysteries? I’d never heard of such a thing, and my life was about to be changed forever.

I recently found excellent replacement copies for my collection at the library sale–my copies of Crossword Cipher and Red Gate Farm are seriously dilapidated and wrecked–and I don’t remember if I have a revised text copy of Twisted Candles, so I picked it up, too. I do sometimes wonder if my collecting this books isn’t part of the neuroses I think it it is and part of a tendency to hoard things, especially books.

It probably will not come as a surprise to anyone that it always really bothered me that I didn’t read or acquire the books in order. There were other volumes in the series back on the table, including The Mystery at Lilac Inn, The Hidden Staircase, and The Haunted Showboat. (There was also a Dana Girls, The Secret of the Old Well. I eventually acquired the first and third books, The Secret of the Old Clock and The Bungalow Mystery, from the Woolworth’s on 26th and Pulaski in Chicago.) Nancy Drew was my first real foray into collecting a kids’ series, and of course, my parents were delighted that I moved on to the Hardy Boys without argument as ordered; they never liked me reading books with female heroines, which of course made Nancy Drew even more appealing to me because it was forbidden. (So, of course, I kept reading and acquiring them whenever I could when I wasn’t being supervised. So, yes, I was even in the closet as a Nancy Drew reader,)

But even as the revised texts appealed to me more because the font was better and the books were illustrated, I did notice, even as a kid, that Nancy was a lot more passive than she was in the original texts. Things happened to Nancy in the newer books, and her personality was bland to the point of being beige. It also irritated me that of course this rich lawyer’s daughter didn’t have a job, didn’t go to school, didn’t seem to have any responsibilities whatsoever other than traveling around doing as she pleased and stumbling over mysteries (sometimes the mystery came to Nancy). Her friends all adored her, would do anything she asked, and she was good at everything she tried. As someone who was not good at everything he tried, this annoyed me. Why not give her some flaws? Why make her this super-character who was perfect in every way? As I got older and revisited the original texts more, I could see why aficionados preferred the older versions, despite being dated and rife with racial and racist stereotypes; because Nancy wasn’t perfect in her original incarnation. She was a bit arrogant, definitely classist, and very headstrong to the point of being willful. She was also absolutely fearless, and had very deep convictions about right and wrong, and how wrongs must always be righted. She was fascinating but realistic. She’s aware of her privilege–even as she uses it as needed–but tries to use it to help others less fortunate, which is kind of admirable. The original text Nancy was the kind of character a girl between the ages and nine and thirteen would find aspirational, would want to be like, a role model of sorts presented at a young and formative age that they, too, could be smart and independent and liked as themselves, rather than as someone’s daughter or girlfriend or wife.

Even as a kid, I was drawn to strong, independent female characters. That has never changed.

Most of my collection of Nancy Drew mysteries–and all the other kids’ series I collect–are currently in boxes in my storage attic. There just isn’t room to have them out on display (which makes me crazy, but it’s either that or the copies of my own books, and my vanity trumps not displaying the books every time), because I do have copies of every Nancy Drew except for maybe one or two, and there are some revised editions I don’t have. Shortly after I got to the age where I could actually buy them with my own money, the editions changed; they went from the old flat matte covers to what aficionados and collectors call “the flashlight editions”, because there’s a flashlight as the logo on the spine (rather than the little black box with Nancy in profile) and they went to a glossy cover; also on the cover where NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES was changed to a banner across the top in yellow (the Hardy Boys’ banner was blue), and I didn’t like the new glossy covers or the flashlight editions or the banner…plus, I wasn’t going to start over and collect them all in this new format; this was when I started looking for them at yard sales, second hand stores, and flea markets (before the Internet and ebay).

I’ve also noticed how rabid the fans for both Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys can be. I belong to several Facebook groups for fans and collectors, and those people can get worked up really easily–and of course, it always has something to do with bigotry and change. They hated the new Nancy Drew series because (gasp, the horror!) Ned was Black and even greater horror, she has sex. There was a lot of pearl-clutching over this, as there was about the new Hardy Boys series, in which Joe was made much younger, their mother was killed off, and there were a lot of supernatural elements to both (I never finished the Nancy Drew show, but not out of distaste; I always appreciate new interpretations and find the changes made interesting. I never finished because I forgot about it, in all honesty)–again, pearl clutching–but every so often it amuses me to think about writing a book built around this fandom. But it would of course have to be a fictional series, but it could be really, really funny.

And I think the Hardy Boys may now be in the public domain? I don’t know how that works, but I’d love to be able to write my own. I’ve always wanted to, and if I could actually use the original characters…how fun would that be? I’ve also always hoped to get a gig ghostwriting for either series…I suppose it’s not impossible, but I’m not sure they are still releasing new titles in either series. There have also been spin-off series, too–but I’ve never read outside the original canon. Once they stopped being published in hardcover, I don’t care about collecting the paperbacks or reading them, either.

But Nancy was important in the formation of my interests in reading and what I write, and maybe she wasn’t my favorite series of them all, but I have an appreciation for her and the books still to this day.

My goal is to write an entry on every series I collect–I think I’ve already done The Three Investigators–but so what if I have? My blog, my entries!

Next up, I will probably read the original text of the Hardy Boys’ The Mark on the Door, which I picked up in a tweed edition sans dust-jacket at the library sale.

Until then, hang in there.

Causing a Commotion

Last Saturday, as you may know, the Hard Rock Hotel, currently under construction at the corner of Rampart and Canal Street in the French Quarter, collapsed. Today, they are going to set off some controlled explosions to bring down the damaged cranes, which are no longer attached to the construction and present a clear and present danger to the area. Many of the businesses in a very large radius from the construction site are closed until further notice, causing the businesses and their employees financial hardship.

Several people were also killed as a result of the collapse.

I no longer drive to and from work on Rampart Street–we moved into new offices for the day job last November; it’s much easier for me to get on the Interstate coming and going to work now–but I pretty much made that drive every day from 2005 through last November, other than the years the street was torn up in order to resurface it as well as put in the Rampart/St. Claude streetcar line. The construction site was where the Canal Street Woolworth’s was for decades; the very Woolworth’s whose lunch counter was protested during the Civil Rights era because it was segregated. I always hated that the Woolworth’s closed and was torn down, because I felt that it was of no little historic significance; particularly at a time when the Confederate monuments still polluted the city.  But Woolworth’s is no longer in existence, and what else to do with a prime real estate lot that wasn’t being used? There’s already a Hard Rock Hotel on Bourbon Street, but this complex was going to be much larger and was, I think, going to house a Hard Rock nightclub, if I’m not mistaken–because a nightclub at that corner is precisely what the city needed (eye roll).

The construction collapse also exposed some typical New Orleans corruption; the contractor is allegedly shady and has an apparently well-earned bad reputation on every level. There was also some bribery going on, and someone at City Hall, who was signing off on permits, and safety inspections that weren’t being done, was also arrested this week. I am very curious as to what that is going to mean for the future of the Hard Rock Hotel; even if they hire a reputable contractor, I would imagine everything already built will need to come down and be rebuilt; and how do you recover your reputation from that?

It will be interesting, and of course, I am thinking there’s a book or a story in this somewhere. I’ve already created a shady contractor in New Orleans, by the name of Sam Dreher, in Royal Street Reveillon; I can certainly use that character again, and who knows? French Quarter Flambeaux just might make a terrific Scotty novel.

It’s hard to imagine, though, at this point how the Hard Rock Hotel can continue to be built–I would imagine it would have to be torn down completely and started over, but what do I know? I am neither an engineer nor an architect. But I would also think it would be hard to get past the fact that several people died in a construction disaster while it was being built; here is the perfect set up for a French Quarter horror novel about a haunted hotel, don’t you think? One that is cursed with death and tragedy; similar to the Overlook in The Shining.

Interesting.

This also reminds me that Arthur Hailey’s bestselling novel Hotel, which was adapted into a television series in the 1980’s (it came on after Dynasty), was also set in New Orleans; the St. Gregory Hotel in the novel was on Common Street in the CBD, one block from the French Quarter–a grand old hotel of the city (the television show moved the setting to San Francisco; which I still think was a mistake. An anthology television series along the lines of a more serious The Love Boat, set in a hotel with guest stars every week playing out individual stories as they visit the hotel, to me, would work better in New Orleans than San Francisco; then again, I may be biased heavily) in desperate need of some financial investment.  Hailey, who is not so remembered today, was a huge bestseller of his time, and he wrote sprawling novels about industries, and the people who worked in them, and the people who got involved with said industry somehow; with the stories all intermingled. He also wrote Airport, which became one of the first disaster movies, and eventually a series of sequels about plane disasters; he also co-wrote the novel Runway Zero-Eight, also filmed–and that film was what Airplane! spoofed. He wrote about banks (The Moneychangers), hospitals (The Final Diagnosis), power companies (Overload), drug companies (Strong Medicine), car companies (Wheels), and news broadcasts (The Evening News). He also wrote a political thriller, In High Places, which was one of the most thoughtful cold war thrillers; it was written from the perspective of the Canadian government, negotiating desperately with the United States since the skies over Canada were going to be the battleground between the US and the Soviet Union.

I reread Airport after I actually went to work at an airport, and have to say, Hailey’s research was excellent; he really captured the behind-the-scenes activity of an airport impacted by a blizzard perfectly. Likewise, I read The Moneychangers when I was working at a bank–he actually researched Bank of America for the book, which is where I worked–and again, spot on.

Now I’m thinking about rereading Hotel, if only to see how it was done, and how he depicted New Orleans in the 1960’s.

Anyway. I’ll continue to follow the story of the Hard Rock Hotel collapse, and see where it goes, and maybe–just maybe–it could be the basis for something. As you can see, I’ve already had any number of ideas spring from the incident…as always.

And now back to the spice mines.

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