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The holidays sometimes give us the opportunity to dig a bit into the past by looking into some old photo albums. In doing so I got reminded of my good old Maerklin trains that I had when I was a little kid.On my trip down memory lane and dug out those old pictures and came even up with some pre-Maerklin documents.

Doesn’t seem that long ago and now I have my successor already older than I was in these pictures. I guess I will have to equip him with some trains of his own. What would be even better - Hello Universe, this is a request! - if I would manage to get my old trains back over here from a friend - Hello Hermann - who has kept them faithfully for so many years but whom I don’t seem to be able to reach any more. But maybe this year he will answer our Christmas mail - just maybe.

First the pre-Maerklin era…

And then the Maerklin era…

And then the final state, or nearly so - the year after that a station was added, but I don’t have any pictures of that…

I ran into a collection of imagery of space from the 50s and 60s of the 20th century. Isn’t that amazing how that sound, speaking of the 20th century as so long ago?

One of the images I seemed to remember was of an outpost on the moon created by Frank Tinsley.

But then there was an image of a very early Perry Rhodan novella - and THAT was fascinating. I had not quite started to read science fiction when this novella had come out, but some six years later, but I certainly had read this novella when it came out in the second or third edition - so I knew…

… “Venus in Danger” - novella #20!

For many years after coming to the wild west I had my family in Germany collect Perry Rhodans for me and then send them to me in batch, but this had stopped now about 20 years ago.

So I have to admit, I am not quite up-to-date any more.

A few month ago I had realized that and found out that I could actually subscribe to an electronic version of the newest issued and get them in my email in-box. I had not subscribed at that time as I did not think I would have enough time to read them, but at least I got myself a little fix in form of a free issue that was offered - novella #2300!

Can you believe this - 2300 - at 52 weekly booklets that is about 46 years.

Harbingers of Chaos

So - what has changed in the last forty to fifty years?

Certainly the cover design feels more modern, but I am sure that the next half century will eradicate that difference. Then there is the price - the old one about 20 cents (at the exchange rate at that time) and the new one weighting in at about $2.50 - with the inflation rate I guess the price has remained stable.

Then there is one noticeable difference. The subtitle of the series in 1962 was “The Great Space Series” but today it’s simply “The Greatest Science Fiction Series.”

OK, now to work - gotta finally read my free novella “Vorboten des Chaos” - and maybe, just maybe, it’s so good that I will indeed subscribe.

While driving down the 101 here in Los Angeles I noticed the following sign…

 

 … and it made me think.

NO - Come on! There is no such sign in Los Angeles - - - yet!

But you can find bad surprises in places where they are really surprising - - huh?

Anyways, I want to tell about an old friend of mine. A friend I had hung out with during the last year of high school and most of the college days, and I thought we really knew each other well.

Me moving to the US of A interrupted that friendship somewhat, but meeting each other after both our divorces and a few year of hardly hearing from each other, the spark was there again immediately and we could talk as if no time had passed when we met on one of my visits to Germany.

But I went back to California, we both got married again and had kids - OK, our wifes had. Then it was his time to visit us here with the whole family.

During on of our long talks he told me that his daughter had become so difficult in school that she was now on ritalin. That blew my mind! I mean I hear all those bad stories about our school kids being drugged into obedience but I had never met any such kid. I guess because my reality is so that this stuff does not enter it. But then the only first degree of separation person to introduce me to ritalin is my old best buddy from the college days.

I guess our realities did develop into different directions.  Even though I don’t really think in his case it was a replacement for parenting because he was and is a loving father. He must have gotten some really bad information, and that’s the danger of it, that if you are not actively looking for the correct information and trust ‘experts’ you might be traveling down the wrong path.

I know how that is!

A friend just told me about his trip to San Francisco. He mentioned that he went over the Golden Gate bridge twice and this reminded me of my first trip to SF.

Many many years ago I had been somewhere at the beach north of Santa Monica to enjoy the sunset. The night before I had had a conversation with my then room mate regarding spontaneous and unplanned actions, and so, when it was time to head back from the beach I remembered that conversation and just went the other way…

… and was in SF at one am. Had some food at a Dennis - Always Open, you know - talked to a Texan, was very proud that I understood what he said and then drove over the golden gate bridge before dawn, looked over the bay from Sausalito, drove once more over the bridge during sunrise and headed back to LA.

Was an interesting trip back because my good old ‘79 Ford LTD Station Wagon (white) started to make trouble, used a lot of gas and I finally found some little leak of fuel at the gas pump. looked like I had lost a little screw there and so I just put a little plug in there and got home OK.

Found out the day after that I had been very lucky - there was no screw missing, but instead it was a safety hole to drain the gas in case the membrane of the gas pump was broken. By plugging that whole I had flooded the crank case with gas - oops! Could have easily blown up the whole engine - but then again, guess I had decided not to do that, didn’t I?

Funny how these little, insignificant events can come alive again.