This issue contains some thoughts on COLD WARS, the HMGS convention at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I should note that yet another HMGS convention is to be held this November in Gettysburg. That will make three HMGS affairs for the year.
Bob Giglio is the Program Manager for the November affair, termed FALL IN! He asked me and Tony Figlia if we'd run the flea market for him. My immediate question to him was: "Can we set the flea market table costs?"
My thought was to set the cost at zero dollars... let 'em all get in for free! Same for the dealers. Do you think that HMGS, with its purported $60,000 bank account, will miss the income?
There has been, apparently, some friction at HMGS conventions between the "dealers" (distorted, hideously featured, and alien creatures) and the "flea marketeers" (normal, loving and benign human beings). Evidently, it was noted that some dealers were setting up in the flea marker area, where table costs were much less than in the dealers' area.
I've always looked at the battle between dealers and flea-marketeers from the point of view of the attendee-gamers. He who wants to sell at the flea market... why, God bless him! He's making available lots of goodies for the attendees. And, as for the dealers, God bless them, too, since they, too, are providing goodies for the attendees... give them an area, too... have no distinction in price for the two parties. Mix those dealers right in with the flea marketeers. Shackle their legs together, set 'em all side-by-side, let 'em all hold hands, let 'em all sing "We Shall Overcome". Only thus shall peace reign o'er the land.
Alas! My druthers go ignored. Bob Giglio's answer to my question about setting table prices was a brief "No, no, no!" Tony and I can assign tables, and face the 1001 silly requests of the flea marketeers ("Can I move my table so it's aligned with the earth's magnetic field?" "Can I perform acupuncture at my table? ), but we won't be allowed to set the costs.
I'm off for my April vacation this year. Off to England. I've been going there once a year since around 1981. Tom Elsworth, with whom I stay some of the time, had planned for us to visit Hadrian's Wall, but I persuaded him that now was not the proper time... for one, April was too cold a month to go on a jaunt across northern England, and for two, I still suffer from "weak knees", the result of my illness in the latter part of last year. Perhaps next year in June, we'll attack Mr. Hadrian's Wall.
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© Copyright 1997 Wally Simon
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