Wallowing in Nostalgia

Today I found myself with a couple of hours to kill in Denton, Texas, where I lived for two years in the Seventies while attending North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas). So I decided to visit all my old haunts -- the ones that still exist, anyway. First, though, I went to Recycled Books, for which I feel no nostalgia at all since it wasn't there when I lived in Denton. From there, though, I walked down the block to an antique mall that now occupies the space where Fultz News Agency used to be. Fultz was a huge newsstand/bookstore right on the downtown square where I bought most of my comics, paperbacks, and SF and mystery digests when I lived in Denton. I walked along the right-hand wall of the building and could tell exactly where the comic books used to be.

I ate lunch in the same Jack-in-the-Box where I stopped nearly every day when I walked from class back to my apartment. The menu has changed, of course; the building hasn't, or at least not much. Just down the block is Voertman's Bookstore, which, being right across the street from the NTSU campus, did a booming business in textbooks. But in the Seventies it was also a regular bookstore with a good selection of new paperbacks. That part is gone now. School supplies and textbooks are all that remain. Just beyond it used to be Reader's World, a small bookstore where I bought several of the Zebra editions of Robert E. Howard books, as well as some of those Phantom novels based on the comic strip character. Reader's World opened a store in Fort Worth which I patronized heavily during the early days of my marriage. I bought a ton of comics and paperbacks there, as well as issues of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE when I was publishing regularly in MSMM. The original Reader's World space in Denton is now some sort of counter-culture shop. (I didn't know such things still existed.) Just around the corner was the barber shop I patronized occasionally -- very occasionally, since in those days I had long hair and a Fu Manchu mustache.

All right, now that you've all stopped laughing from visualizing that . . . I drove past the apartment house where I lived. It's a little more seedy and rundown now but still looks remarkably the same. Nearby is the convenience store where I bought junk food, comics, and WRITER'S DIGEST. Why a little hole-in-the-wall convenience store stocked WRITER'S DIGEST on their magazine rack, I have no idea, but I'm glad they did, because it was from market listings in those issues that I finally started submitting stories.

By now I'm sure you've gotten the idea that I spent a lot of my college years reading comics, paperbacks, and magazines. What better preparation could there be for sitting in a room and typing for the next thirty-plus years? Actually, though, I did do a few things that normal college kids do . . . although we won't go into that here. I enjoyed my time in Denton today, and if you've read this far, I appreciate your indulgence.