Autograph Hound Saturday once more, and we’ll allow Brian Leno to wax nostalgic (Ubi Sunt! Ubi Sunt!) for a moment. Here’s Brian on the thrilling days of yesteryear, or childhood — that sort of thing:
“I believe I’ve told you a couple of times that when I was young and first starting to collect books I remember sitting on the floor and looking at my bookcase which contained probably 150 or so paperbacks with a couple of hardcovers.
“I was about 12 and I wondered if anybody in the world had as big a collection of books as I did.
“My father would give me 5 bucks every couple of weeks, if he had it, and I would walk a couple of miles to the local bookstore and pick out 6 or 7 books and then trudge home again, excited to start reading the new arrivals.
“How many books can you get for 5 bucks today?
“It was a great time.
“Anyway. . . .
“The Walt Coburn check I think is very neat.
“Signed twice by the man, and on the front it’s signed by two pulp publishing legends, Harry Steeger and Harold S. Goldsmith.
“Of course we all know Coburn was a favorite at Adventure and many other magazines. One of the great western writers for the pulps, his output was prodigious and his fans were many. Quite a few movies were made out of his stories and it’s estimated, according to a Wikipedia article, that Coburn had about 600,000 words published each year during his heyday.
“Coburn died by suicide in 1971.”
