Historicon 2002

Back Out in the Hallway

by Russ Lockwood


Back in the Foyer, actually on the far side of the Foyer if you came down the stairs, sits the temporary snack bar.

Past the snack bar and around the corner sits the 55 Days extravaganza, hosted by Mike Cosentino, who also runs the HMGS Little Wars convention in Lincolnshire, IL (20 minutes north of Chicago). However, that's not Mike at the end of the table...care to guess who (no "Peking" below)? It was a pleasure to meet the man behind the name I've always seen and chat a moment or two.

As usual in all conventions, food carries a slight premium due to convenience. I bought a hamburger special consisting of a hamburger, bag of chips and soda (forget super-sizing, there's only one size and it's small) for $5, and for a change of pace, a hot dog special as above for $4.50. The snack bar also offered a 10-foot party sub/hoagie/grinder sandwich (the name depends on the part of the country you're in) that was initialy listed at $7 for 3", but later changed to $1.75 for 3", coffee, cookies, pizza, etc for relatively fast food.

As a digression, there was a snack bar in the dealer area (Tennis Barn) that offered more restricted fare. I recall hotdogs, hamburgers (though they ran out of these), and breaded chicken breast sandwiches. Also cookies, muffins, and such. The chicken was $3.75 because I got one of these. Coffee in the morning was $1.50 a cup. The aforementioned small fountain soda was $1.50 as well. All the food was OK. I missed lunch on Friday and ended up light-headed at the end of the day. Friends chide me that I am often light headed. Good friends contend I've been that way since birth.

Anyway, as you passed said Foyer snack bar, off on the right up a few stairs is the Hopewell room where lectures are presented. As usual, I missed them all. As usual, an excellent set of experts give them. I was especially displeased to forget to go to the Meteorology and Military History lecture given by Christopher Duffy concerning the Jacobite Rebellion of '45. I spoke briefly with Professor Duffy and two of his friends upstairs, one whom I forget the name and his wife/girlfriend/significant other whose name is Courtney, which also happens to be my sister's middle name. At which point, Prof. Duffy notes that the name roughly translates to "snub nosed." I am deeply grateful to him for this delectable bit of naming trivia, for this tidbit of information shall be played up at the next Lockwood family gathering!

Later, Prof. Duffy stopped by the booth and put the MagWeb.com search engine to the test to find mentions of "Jacobite." I would not even flatter myself to believe we swept him off his feet, as I believe the cliche that he's probably forgotten more about the 18th century than we'll ever be able to post in the archive, but he did point to a few links for us to pull up and nodded from time to time as he read an article here and there. Alas, I was not quick enough to hand the digital camera to Tibor to take a photo of the two of us. Hey. I am a little in awe of such a fellow who has contributed so much to our understanding of history. But he is warm, gracious, and quite quick of wit.

In any case, before you turn the corner to head towards the other rooms and the dealer area beyond, there's a single room tucked to the left. At Cold Wars 2002, this was the Lord of the Rings room. At Historicon, it was the something else room. What I could not say, for each time I stepped in to take a look (gawking is one fo my favorite activities at Historicon), nothing was going on. I saw terrain and boxes that presumably held figures, but I must have just managed to hit the seams or breaks.

As you head for the dealer area, there are a number of rooms at the end of the hall, as well as a small open area. The open area contained a number of games from time to time. I recall stopping in my tracks at a Great Wall of China/55 Days Peking/Siege of Legations game put on my Mike Cosentino and built by Curt Murff, known to me as Murph Turf.

That's Curt getting a miniatures-eye view of the impresive set-up.

It was great to see Mike again, and a pleasure to finally meet Curt Murff. I've read his work through the years, but this is the first time I actually met the fellow.

Speaking of someone I met for the first time at the show, Sam Mustafa stopped by to say hello. OK, so I grabbed his hand and pumped it up and down. I've been reading his work for years and I find his insightful and incisive work a bit of an inspiration. Sadly, we were unable to hookup Saturday night, but it was great to meet him.

Likewise, I also had the pleasure to meet for the first time Paul Koch, whose articles and rules I've read for years. He stopped by the booth and we chatted a bit.

There was also a Renaissance (?) ship game farther back towards the Hopewell room that I stopped to see for a bit. It looked good.

On the right in one of the rooms, which I've come to think of as the Mein Panzer room because I always see lots of Mein Panzer games, the armor was in full swing.

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