Part one can be found here; part two can be found here. Part three IS here.
This is a cool one. It's a review of the then-new film Easy Rider. The notion that at some point in time, Easy Rider was a new film kind of blows my mind. But of course it was, and King was there to document it. "It's an amazing movie from almost every angle," he enthuses, "and a truly American movie in that individualistic and mythic sense that also characterizes Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant, and Point Blank. It states a purely American situation in purely American terms."
It'll help one's appreciation of the review if one has seen the movie, of course; the final paragraph of King's opinion is very strong, but only if one understands what is actually being said.
This issue also includes -- on the same page -- a strongly-worded letter to the editor from a freshman girl who takes offense to King's recent column about All-Maine Women and other such campus groups. "Just because Steve King is jealous because he never actively belonged to one of these organizations," she writes, "it is no reason for them to be torn apart every week. It is a terrible shame that this guy must show his ignorance in such a widely read paper." I bet that showed him what was what!
Want young Steve King to weigh in on the California grape-picking crisis?
You got it. Here, King is exhorting the readers of the Maine Campus to consider helping out with picketing outside a local grocery store which is still proudly selling grapes.
"Well," opens King, "a part of me went into hibernation last week. It happens to me every October at about this time, when the last game of the World Series has ended."
This installment is more or less a love letter from King to the sport of baseball. As I write this, the 2020 MLB season is delayed thanks to COVID-19, and I'm sure that King is distressed as fuck by that. I sure would be if I were a fan; I'm not a fan, but I empathize with those who are.
That wasn't a problem for King in 1969, though. "I love baseball," he states plainly. "I know that in this hip age of satellites, campus riots and Joe Namath that's like saying you're square as a bear, but I can't help it. And this year's World Series was positively the greatest."
This issue also contained a movie review by King. It wasn't part of the Garbage Truck column, though, it appeared on a different page -- and you'll need a separate link to get to it. The movie is titled No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger. It's a documentary which seemingly examines the experience of black men as it relates to the war. King is more impressed by the movie in theory than in actuality, summing up that "the truth it exposits is real. The fact that the truth seems a little dull makes it even more frightening."
This one, sadly, does not seem to live in the UM archives. [UPDATE: Thanks to the eagle-eyed Rich Krauss, the issue has been located. It's in this file; scroll down to page 12. Thanks, Rich!] But I've read it and am here to tell you what it's about, so yay.
"We're worried about our campus," King says on behalf of N.G.U.T.S.C.M.C. Specifically, they're "worried" that peace is creeping insidiously over their school grounds; nobody has been pelted with eggs lately, even at an anti-war rally, for example. Heck, things are so weird that the football team has won a few games.
So as to prevent such horror from taking permanent root, they "have formulated the following plans, which you must promise not to breath" [sic] "to a soul."
These plans involve:
The column is a bit on the lame side, but it's also weirdly sweet.
Here, King picks the best and worst albums and singles of the year. We won't go into it all, but we'll briefly consider his two picks for best album:
Of Dylan, King says, "In previous albums, he has created a whole new kind of doom; a time-capsule, if you will, full of parking-meters, girls by whirlpools, freak-show horror, silver binoculars. In SKYLINE he is creating a range of feelings that range with compassionate accuracy from despair ('I Threw It All Away') to sexual euphoria ('Peggy Day')." Inelegantly expressed, but this blogger takes no issue with the verdict.
As for Abbey Road, King feels that it is "musically flawless," swinging from the "overpowering, really terrifying progression of 'She's So Heavy' to the sweet and nostalgic opening acoustic phrase of 'Here Comes the Sun.' "
Wild to think that at one point in time, those were new albums which had not been fully processed by the culture into which they were born. I don't know about you, but I love being around for that sort of thing. Not that I was with either of these albums; but others later on, for sure. It's a cool feeling to be able to look back on that, and so I also find it cool to be able to read on-the-spot opinions by people who were there for the birth of things I myself accept as classics from before my time.
For this week's installment, King wants to talk about cops. He begins by listing the various societal groups who don't like them, such as the New Left and the Supreme Court and jaywalkers. "Who likes the cops?" he asks rhetorically.
"Well, I do," he answers. And from here, he launches into a vigorous defense of policemen, who are underpaid and overworked and routinely "faced with the garbage of humanity."
If he published this in 2020, he'd piss off just about everyone.
King begins: "It's a little bit frightening to wake up in the middle of the night and realize that you may be the only one on earth that realizes why the world is in so much trouble. That's what happened to me the other night, and I can no longer bear the burden alone."
That's a decent hooker of an opening, and it's interesting to note that as King's tenure on this column lengthened, he began to develop more of the prose style he would eventually use writing fiction. His clear aim with this column's opening sentences is to draw readers in; to make them feel as if they HAVE to continue reading to find out what's going to come next.
In this particular instance, what comes next is an exploration of how "all the world's problems stem from a serious foul-up in interior irrigation." More specifically, King says that people aren't drinking enough water and it's damaging their urinary tracts.
Well, sometimes you get lured in by a hooker only for nothing much to end up happening. So it goes!
This is one in which King poses a series of trivia questions to his audience. If you want to check it out, clink on the link above to the issue for December 4th. That file contains the December 11 issue, so just scroll down until you find it.
The December 11 issue also contains a letter to the editor from King, which states that his column on police (the November 13 installment of King's Garbage Truck) had apparently been submitted to the Rockland Courier-Gazette by a UM student and had been reprinted there. It was printed under King's byline, so he's not contending plagiarism; and since his columns are not covered by copyright, he's not objecting to the reprinting on any legal grounds. Instead, he just wants people to know that he does not want to be associated with the student who submitted his column, because that student holds views which "are most definitely not my own."
"There are strange things in the world," says King as a opener for this installment; it might as well have been the opening sentence of his career, eh?
You won't change your mind about that as the column progresses. After mentioning various real-world supernatural mysteries, King posits that "it just may be that there is a hole in our world, perhaps in the very fabric of our Universe, and Things cross back and forth."
Huh.
For any King fan, this one is can't-miss stuff. This is especially true for fans of 'Salem's Lot; here is proof positive that King was already thinking about at least two of the key elements which would later go into that novel.
I don't have a link to this one, but the issue can be found in the file for the December 18, 1969, edition; keep scrolling, and you'll get there.
This inaugural column of the seventies finds King looking back upon the sixties; "it was some kind of decade, while it lasted," he concludes, somewhat lamely. But good lord, how would one even begin to process the sixties from the vantage point of the second week in January of 1970? That's a tall fucking order. King seems to know this, too, admitting that "It seems like more than a decade—it seems closer to a century. There was too much for anybody to take in, and yet we all took it in somehow."
His final lines: "The next ten years may be even more interesting. If we're lucky, maybe there will even be somebody left hanging around to write about them." Within those ten years, King would publish seven novels and (depending on what you count) some thirty short stories. So yeah, in that regard if in no other, we were pretty damn lucky.
We'll talk about King's column for this issue momentarily, but first:
This Frank Kadi photo of King engaging in an act of encouraging scholastic preparation was the front page of the January 15 issue. If there is a crazier photo of King, I don't know of it; the only ones which come to mind would be screencaps from Creepshow, and I dunno, man, I think this one is crazier.
Kadi tells the story of this photo in Hearts In Suspension, by the way. Excellent book; highly recommended.
As for King's Garbage Truck, this installment is another tongue-in-cheek one which finds the author detailing his last Will and Testament.
It goes like this:
"To the English Department of the University of Maine, which has nurtured me in its corporate bosom and given me suck, I extend my good will and my assurance that I will give them my personal recommendation, should It decide to move to another school at any future time. This Department did not teach me to write creatively, it did not teach me to read creatively, it answered very few if any of the questions that I asked (except in the most crassly beautiful generalizations); and I am profoundly grateful that It managed to stay out of my way so successfully." Then, later: "To Norman Mailer, Phillip Roth, and John Updike, I bequeath the hope that they will eventually learn to write like me."
Mostly amusing stuff; about what you'd expect from the guy in the photo above.
Before we discuss this week's column, there's a complaining letter to the editor about the cover photo from the January 15 issue that's worth taking a look at:
Love it.
The column itself this week is all about television, which, King says, "is a marvellous invention—its potential is endless, the possibilities fascinating. But it is wet and sick and fat," he contends, and cites numerous reasons why, including Bewitched, The Doris Day Show and Hee-Haw. He also predicts that "if another entertainment invention comes along (and one will), TV will fold like a wet handful of Kleenex."
Slightly more than fifty years later, the latter has not happened, even though the former has several times.
The February 12 issue can be found in the same scan as the February 5 issue, so if you want to see that, click the link above and scroll on down until you find it.
King's Garbage Truck for that issue finds the author in a fiery mood, addressing conservatives and/or readers of the Bangor Daily News on the subject of the generation gap. "I'm getting awful damn sick of hearing stupid comments about the young," he says. He's sick of a whole bunch of things, in fact, and isn't shy about listing them.
He definitely goes into at least one area of thinking that wouldn't fly in the year 2020, and probably not in the year 1990, either. But hey, societies change, and so do people; at least sometimes.
That's it for part three of this series. We'll be back with a fourth and final installment in a few days!
#25 -- October 9, 1969
This is a cool one. It's a review of the then-new film Easy Rider. The notion that at some point in time, Easy Rider was a new film kind of blows my mind. But of course it was, and King was there to document it. "It's an amazing movie from almost every angle," he enthuses, "and a truly American movie in that individualistic and mythic sense that also characterizes Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant, and Point Blank. It states a purely American situation in purely American terms."
It'll help one's appreciation of the review if one has seen the movie, of course; the final paragraph of King's opinion is very strong, but only if one understands what is actually being said.
This issue also includes -- on the same page -- a strongly-worded letter to the editor from a freshman girl who takes offense to King's recent column about All-Maine Women and other such campus groups. "Just because Steve King is jealous because he never actively belonged to one of these organizations," she writes, "it is no reason for them to be torn apart every week. It is a terrible shame that this guy must show his ignorance in such a widely read paper." I bet that showed him what was what!
#26 -- October 16, 1969
Want young Steve King to weigh in on the California grape-picking crisis?
You got it. Here, King is exhorting the readers of the Maine Campus to consider helping out with picketing outside a local grocery store which is still proudly selling grapes.
#27 -- October 23, 1969
"Well," opens King, "a part of me went into hibernation last week. It happens to me every October at about this time, when the last game of the World Series has ended."
This installment is more or less a love letter from King to the sport of baseball. As I write this, the 2020 MLB season is delayed thanks to COVID-19, and I'm sure that King is distressed as fuck by that. I sure would be if I were a fan; I'm not a fan, but I empathize with those who are.
That wasn't a problem for King in 1969, though. "I love baseball," he states plainly. "I know that in this hip age of satellites, campus riots and Joe Namath that's like saying you're square as a bear, but I can't help it. And this year's World Series was positively the greatest."
This issue also contained a movie review by King. It wasn't part of the Garbage Truck column, though, it appeared on a different page -- and you'll need a separate link to get to it. The movie is titled No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger. It's a documentary which seemingly examines the experience of black men as it relates to the war. King is more impressed by the movie in theory than in actuality, summing up that "the truth it exposits is real. The fact that the truth seems a little dull makes it even more frightening."
#28 -- October 30, 1969
This one, sadly, does not seem to live in the UM archives. [UPDATE: Thanks to the eagle-eyed Rich Krauss, the issue has been located. It's in this file; scroll down to page 12. Thanks, Rich!] But I've read it and am here to tell you what it's about, so yay.
"We're worried about our campus," King says on behalf of N.G.U.T.S.C.M.C. Specifically, they're "worried" that peace is creeping insidiously over their school grounds; nobody has been pelted with eggs lately, even at an anti-war rally, for example. Heck, things are so weird that the football team has won a few games.
So as to prevent such horror from taking permanent root, they "have formulated the following plans, which you must promise not to breath" [sic] "to a soul."
These plans involve:
- getting rid of the new Dean of Students, who is consistently good to those he serves and therefore must be up to something;
- getting rid of David Bright, editor of the Maine Campus, whose "nasty" beliefs in Mom and apple pie are clearly his true agenda;
- getting rid of the English Department faculty, who are allegedly planning a poetry festival, of all things;
- and, finally, getting rid of President Libby, who are the head of UM is obviously plotting against students by virtue of how pleasant, intelligent, and competent he is.
The column is a bit on the lame side, but it's also weirdly sweet.
#29 -- November 7, 1969
Here, King picks the best and worst albums and singles of the year. We won't go into it all, but we'll briefly consider his two picks for best album:
 |
| Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline |
 |
| The Beatles, Abbey Road |
Of Dylan, King says, "In previous albums, he has created a whole new kind of doom; a time-capsule, if you will, full of parking-meters, girls by whirlpools, freak-show horror, silver binoculars. In SKYLINE he is creating a range of feelings that range with compassionate accuracy from despair ('I Threw It All Away') to sexual euphoria ('Peggy Day')." Inelegantly expressed, but this blogger takes no issue with the verdict.
As for Abbey Road, King feels that it is "musically flawless," swinging from the "overpowering, really terrifying progression of 'She's So Heavy' to the sweet and nostalgic opening acoustic phrase of 'Here Comes the Sun.' "
Wild to think that at one point in time, those were new albums which had not been fully processed by the culture into which they were born. I don't know about you, but I love being around for that sort of thing. Not that I was with either of these albums; but others later on, for sure. It's a cool feeling to be able to look back on that, and so I also find it cool to be able to read on-the-spot opinions by people who were there for the birth of things I myself accept as classics from before my time.
#30 -- November 13, 1969
For this week's installment, King wants to talk about cops. He begins by listing the various societal groups who don't like them, such as the New Left and the Supreme Court and jaywalkers. "Who likes the cops?" he asks rhetorically.
"Well, I do," he answers. And from here, he launches into a vigorous defense of policemen, who are underpaid and overworked and routinely "faced with the garbage of humanity."
If he published this in 2020, he'd piss off just about everyone.
#31 -- December 4, 1969
King begins: "It's a little bit frightening to wake up in the middle of the night and realize that you may be the only one on earth that realizes why the world is in so much trouble. That's what happened to me the other night, and I can no longer bear the burden alone."
That's a decent hooker of an opening, and it's interesting to note that as King's tenure on this column lengthened, he began to develop more of the prose style he would eventually use writing fiction. His clear aim with this column's opening sentences is to draw readers in; to make them feel as if they HAVE to continue reading to find out what's going to come next.
In this particular instance, what comes next is an exploration of how "all the world's problems stem from a serious foul-up in interior irrigation." More specifically, King says that people aren't drinking enough water and it's damaging their urinary tracts.
Well, sometimes you get lured in by a hooker only for nothing much to end up happening. So it goes!
#32 -- December 11, 1969
This is one in which King poses a series of trivia questions to his audience. If you want to check it out, clink on the link above to the issue for December 4th. That file contains the December 11 issue, so just scroll down until you find it.
The December 11 issue also contains a letter to the editor from King, which states that his column on police (the November 13 installment of King's Garbage Truck) had apparently been submitted to the Rockland Courier-Gazette by a UM student and had been reprinted there. It was printed under King's byline, so he's not contending plagiarism; and since his columns are not covered by copyright, he's not objecting to the reprinting on any legal grounds. Instead, he just wants people to know that he does not want to be associated with the student who submitted his column, because that student holds views which "are most definitely not my own."
#33 -- December 18, 1969
"There are strange things in the world," says King as a opener for this installment; it might as well have been the opening sentence of his career, eh?
You won't change your mind about that as the column progresses. After mentioning various real-world supernatural mysteries, King posits that "it just may be that there is a hole in our world, perhaps in the very fabric of our Universe, and Things cross back and forth."
Huh.
For any King fan, this one is can't-miss stuff. This is especially true for fans of 'Salem's Lot; here is proof positive that King was already thinking about at least two of the key elements which would later go into that novel.
#34 -- January 8, 1970
I don't have a link to this one, but the issue can be found in the file for the December 18, 1969, edition; keep scrolling, and you'll get there.
This inaugural column of the seventies finds King looking back upon the sixties; "it was some kind of decade, while it lasted," he concludes, somewhat lamely. But good lord, how would one even begin to process the sixties from the vantage point of the second week in January of 1970? That's a tall fucking order. King seems to know this, too, admitting that "It seems like more than a decade—it seems closer to a century. There was too much for anybody to take in, and yet we all took it in somehow."
His final lines: "The next ten years may be even more interesting. If we're lucky, maybe there will even be somebody left hanging around to write about them." Within those ten years, King would publish seven novels and (depending on what you count) some thirty short stories. So yeah, in that regard if in no other, we were pretty damn lucky.
#35 -- January 15, 1970
We'll talk about King's column for this issue momentarily, but first:
This Frank Kadi photo of King engaging in an act of encouraging scholastic preparation was the front page of the January 15 issue. If there is a crazier photo of King, I don't know of it; the only ones which come to mind would be screencaps from Creepshow, and I dunno, man, I think this one is crazier.
Kadi tells the story of this photo in Hearts In Suspension, by the way. Excellent book; highly recommended.
As for King's Garbage Truck, this installment is another tongue-in-cheek one which finds the author detailing his last Will and Testament.
It goes like this:
"To the English Department of the University of Maine, which has nurtured me in its corporate bosom and given me suck, I extend my good will and my assurance that I will give them my personal recommendation, should It decide to move to another school at any future time. This Department did not teach me to write creatively, it did not teach me to read creatively, it answered very few if any of the questions that I asked (except in the most crassly beautiful generalizations); and I am profoundly grateful that It managed to stay out of my way so successfully." Then, later: "To Norman Mailer, Phillip Roth, and John Updike, I bequeath the hope that they will eventually learn to write like me."
Mostly amusing stuff; about what you'd expect from the guy in the photo above.
#36 -- February 5, 1970
Before we discuss this week's column, there's a complaining letter to the editor about the cover photo from the January 15 issue that's worth taking a look at:
Love it.
The column itself this week is all about television, which, King says, "is a marvellous invention—its potential is endless, the possibilities fascinating. But it is wet and sick and fat," he contends, and cites numerous reasons why, including Bewitched, The Doris Day Show and Hee-Haw. He also predicts that "if another entertainment invention comes along (and one will), TV will fold like a wet handful of Kleenex."
Slightly more than fifty years later, the latter has not happened, even though the former has several times.
#37 -- February 12, 1970
The February 12 issue can be found in the same scan as the February 5 issue, so if you want to see that, click the link above and scroll on down until you find it.
King's Garbage Truck for that issue finds the author in a fiery mood, addressing conservatives and/or readers of the Bangor Daily News on the subject of the generation gap. "I'm getting awful damn sick of hearing stupid comments about the young," he says. He's sick of a whole bunch of things, in fact, and isn't shy about listing them.
He definitely goes into at least one area of thinking that wouldn't fly in the year 2020, and probably not in the year 1990, either. But hey, societies change, and so do people; at least sometimes.
*****
That's it for part three of this series. We'll be back with a fourth and final installment in a few days!
