I followed his spidering hand and sure enough, there they were. Stacks
upon stacks of air-war pulp magazines.
"Fifteen cents for ones in good condition," the old man pronounced the
ritual, "a dime for ones with incomplete covers, three for a quarter,
check 'em at the desk when you go."
I ran my hand down a stack. _Wings_, _Daredevil Aces_, _G-8 and his
Battle Aces_, _The Lone Eagle_, all of them.
The old man was watching me. He skittered back across the floor and
snatched up a magazine. It was a copy of _Sky Fighters_ with a girl in
a painted-on flying suit hanging from the struts of a Tiger Moth.
"This one, this one," he said. "This must be a good one. I bet she
gets shoved right into that propeller there. I bet she gets chopped to
pieces. Pieces."
"I'll take it."
Reluctantly he handed over the magazine, waited a moment, then left me.
I stared at the stacks of flying story magazines and I felt the slow
run of the drop of sweat down my nose.
My sickness was terrible. It is as bad to be nostalgic for things
you have never known as for an orphan who has never had a home to be
homesick.
* * * * *
Living in the past, that was always me. I never watched anything on TV
made later than 1935. I was in love with Garbo, Ginger Rogers, Dolores
del Rio. My favorite stars were Richard Dix, Chester Morris and Richard
Arlen.
The music I listened to was Gershwin and Arlen and Chicago jazz.
And my reading was the pulp literature harking back to the First World
War. This was the biggest part of it all, I think.
You identify with the hero of any story if it's well enough written.
But the identification I felt with the pilots in air-war stories was
plainly ridiculous.