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Post by linefacedscrivener on Apr 30, 2020 7:53:25 GMT -5
 "Returning to the tourist camp where we were staying . . ." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 When REH wrote the above line, he had been at a service station in Sweetwater. Although it is not a fact that the above postcard of Camp Joy is the tourist camp where the Howards were staying, it is the most likely location as this was apparently the most popular tourist camp in Sweetwater. Still, if it is not, it does convey what a "tourist camp" looked like during that time period. He does go on to recount a story of meeting a little girl and there is a playground set in the postcard picture, so that might further suggest this was the camp. |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Apr 30, 2020 18:12:16 GMT -5
  "Next morning we turned south, a hundred miles or so to San Angelo, traversing a rugged and rather barren country I hadn’t visited since we lived in that region, more than twenty years ago . . . We ate breakfast in San Angelo, which is about 105 miles from Cross Plains, and reached home shortly after noon, having driven nearly 1000 miles in about three days." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 The postcard on top is from the 1920s, while the postcard on the bottom is from the 1940s - the Howards were there in the 1930s. The two of them give you a good idea of what they saw in San Angelo though. |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Apr 30, 2020 18:18:34 GMT -5
 "After returning from Amarillo, I did little travelling for some months. My motoring was limited to a few trips to Weatherford." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Apr 30, 2020 18:20:13 GMT -5
 "As you possibly know, Weatherford is the most famous water-melon market in Texas, which State is approached only by Georgia in the quantity of melons produced, and approached by none in the quality of the vegetable. Trucks come from all over the Mid-West and the West to buy the melons which are displayed by the thousands in the big square in Weatherford. But it was a poor year for melons. They were not as good as usual, and were higher. For a hundred pound melon they demanded a dollar, or sometimes even more. The best melon I tasted the entire season was a fifteen pound melon I bought for a nickel in Comanche." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 Everything's bigger in Texas! |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 1, 2020 6:56:16 GMT -5
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 1, 2020 7:01:46 GMT -5
 "She stayed at Marlin two weeks. It is a small town." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 1, 2020 7:10:14 GMT -5
 "We drove there in my car, through the . . . the towns of Goldthwaite . . ." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 1, 2020 7:13:01 GMT -5
 "We drove there in my car, through the . . . towns of . . . Gatesville . . ." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 1, 2020 7:17:06 GMT -5
 "We drove there in my car, through the . . . towns of . . . Waco." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 1, 2020 7:19:39 GMT -5
 "Near Waco the country changes to the lowland plains of East Texas. Marlin is a few miles east of the Brazos River, in a rich, but, to a hillman, a monotonous prairie country." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 5, 1935 |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 12, 2020 15:10:09 GMT -5
 "Texas is Texas, capable of developing her own civilization and her own culture. Her history is unique; and she does not need to copy anything or anybody. She is not an imitation or a duplicate of something in the East, or in the West, or somewhere in Europe . . . I simply do not wish to be a copy of anything. I don't want to be somebody's understudy, and I don't want my state to think she has to imitate somebody else." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, July 1933.
Now that is a sentiment that is still heard today in Texas, typically made by Texans. This is another one of Robert E. Howard's statements about Texas that would have to go in the introduction to "An Unborn Empire." |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 18, 2020 14:24:38 GMT -5
 “By the time I met him [Robert E. Howard], he was reading just about any good book that he could lay his hands on. He would go to the Carnegie Library, and, moving along the shelves, race through the books, for he was a fast reader. He scanned through some of them, and read others more thoroughly, eager to get their contents, keeping with with, at the same time, trends in the pulp fiction field, as well as reading everything connected to boxing, from The Police Gazette to The Ring, for he was well balanced in his interests, and enjoyed some sports as much as literature.” -From "Adventurer in Pulp" by Tevis Clyde Smith writing about Robert E. Howard in his book Pecan Valley Days (1956). Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835 - August 11, 1919) was one of the men who built America, particularly through his expansion of the American steel industry. In addition to being an industrialist, he also became a philanthropist, and one of his most significant contributions came in the form of libraries. He gave out grants that eventually built 2,509 public libraries from 1883 to 1929, of which 1,689 were built in the United States and 32 were built in Texas: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_TexasThe Carnegie Library that Robert E. Howard frequented was the Brownwood Carnegie Library, for which the city received a $15,000 grant in March of 1903 to build the facility. It proved to be a stately building and can be seen better by clicking on the postcard above. The library is located in the upper left-hand corner (the other two are the theater in the upper-right and the post-office at bottom). Sadly, it was torn down in 1965. |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on May 22, 2020 12:26:07 GMT -5
.jpg)  "Tomorrow, if nothing happens, I start for the East Texas oil fields." Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, April 1932
Howard didn't make it very far on that trip, but he was already familiar with the East Texas oil fields at the time. The following video is from this same time period, 1929 to 1932, and features what the oil fields looked like, the oil towns (note the small shacks that served as homes for the oil field workers), and the problems of a raging oil fire. It is a fascinating time piece showing the same sights that Howard saw and knew about in his short lifetime.
Here is the link to the video: texasarchive.org/2009_03682?b=0]
texasarchive.org/2009_03682?b=0 |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jun 1, 2020 11:41:18 GMT -5
 “You see, for instance, men leave their farms and go work in the oil fields; the first wells drilled are almost invariably the property of small promoters; the big companies won’t take any risks. They leave the wildcatting to the little fellows. Then when the field is going in full blast, they come in and start grabbing. Maybe there is an oil war on, or they want to freeze somebody out. They shut down the field and leave hundreds of men out of a job. The farms have been ruined by the oil boom and there’s nothing to do but pack up and move on to some other field. This is the ruination of this country.” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 1930 Howard, on numerous occasions, writing to numerous people, explained how destructive the oil industry had become to the way of life in Texas. In this letter to Lovecraft, he talked about the Texas "wildcatters," people who took the risk of exploring for oil on their own in the hopes that it would pay off for them. In most cases in left them destitute, or so far in debt that when they did discover oil, they had to sell it off to the larger companies, which, Howard points out, usually were out-of-staters. The following is a link to a 1985 documentary titled: "Wildcatter: A Story of Texas Oil"texasarchive.org/2015_01012?b=0 |
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jun 2, 2020 12:53:53 GMT -5
 “I’m sure you would like San Antonio. I hope to spend a few months there and if I do I’ll send you a lot of pictures of the place and the country thereabouts. The old Buckhorn Saloon is worth a trip to the city. Its full of heads and horns of buffalo, long horn steers, deer, elk, moose, rhinos, javelinas, walruses - every imaginable species. But the most interesting items are the snake rattles. It includes the biggest collection of rattles in the world. The counters and walls are decorated in designs made entirely of gilded snake rattles – literally thousands of them. Did you every hear a rattler sing at you in the dark or among bushes, where you couldnt see him but knew he was somewhere within striking distance? Its the most blood chilling sound on earth. But the old Buckhorn – I can remember the days when it was in a big building and they sold hard liquor over the bar.” —Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, December 1930 Over the years of traveling to San Antonio, I've paid a number of visits to the Buckhorn Saloon & Museum. If you ever make your way to San Antonio, stop on in for a cold one after touring the Alamo. Howard's description of the place hasn't changed any, but here's a little more history and what you will see: |
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