Reprinted From: by strange unseen gods issue number 24

Apa L #94

LASFS Meeting Number 1511

Editor: Dwain Kaiser

Aug. 2, 1996

Slightly Corrected from the Original Publication

BE THERE A GARAGE WITH SOUL SO DEAD…

THAT A FANED CAN'T TYPE WHAT'S NEEDED SAID?

More on Apa L #92: Califan: To tell you the truth Felice, I have no idea what "valley" the Valley Science Fiction Association is in. We hold meetings in the Pomona, Upland, Valley…and when we held them at Gil's house we held them in yet another one of the many local valleys. We just named the club the "ValSFA" and left the question of which valley blank. It really isn't important. The club meets every second week, with the meeting places changing each meeting. We usually have a set change of meeting places which is now a meeting at my house in Upland, Jim Schumacher's house in Pomona, and Steve Bailey's house (a non-LASFSan) in West Covina. Along with the meetings come ValAPA (the Valley APA) which ranges from 30 to 50 pages in size, averaging around 38 or so. Twenty-five copies of ValAPAzines are required, and everyone showing up to a ValSFA meeting will receive a ValAPA disty (and have done so, with two exceptions, when we ran short, but we've now upped the requirements so we wouldn't run short in the future.) The Valley APA is the third of the workable club apas, APA F being the first, APA L the second (a whole mess of very short lived ones in between) and then ValAPA.

I'd guess that as long as the club is in existence the apa will be around. The club, and the apa, were started at the same time, and both are as filled with energy now, as they were at the start. The coming up meeting (a week from this Friday) will be the 12^th meeting of ValSFA, and will be held at Jim Schumacher's house.

Later:

DER HOLLANDER: Oh, I'm not saying why there is less in-group fighting and backstabbing in ValSFA than there is in LASFS. You may be right; we aren't that diversified, since we do share a lot of the same ideas, and that cuts down on the in-fighting. Also, really serious in-fighting would hurt the club, and few of the members would like something like this to come about, so they work to discover their differences and work them out. This doesn't happen often in LASFS.

You're in as much of the in-group as any Valley fan. After all, you do attend the meetings, etc. Of course, in-groups, inside of in-groups, etc., etc., do exist. But then, so do, outgroups, inside of outgroups, and the whole thing is just a little bordering on the silly. I'm very happy that you show up… Why don't you run for the office of Sec., of ValSFA? I don't plan on re-running again for the office, holding it twice is enough, and you'd do a good job of it I'm certain.

Illustration reprinted from:
OPUS #1
Editor:  Russ Brooker
 by Jim Keith
ValAPA #1

A Few Comments (2000):

There never was a "Valley." We certainly started off in the Pomona and San Gabriel Valley area, but quickly expanded out from there. As of the 12^th meeting (around the time of the above), we hadn't had our first L.A. or Santa Monica meeting but that wasn't that far in the future. During later parts of the club history we meet very regularly in L.A., as much as 1/3 of our meetings being there. Out of the Valley, but by those meetings we were able to "adopt" the L.A. fans we always thought of as being ValSFAns in exile. Towards the end we headed to the East with at least one meeting in Rialto.

I promised to be honest in my comments, even when personally embarrassing. The "Garage" comments came about because that was the summer I decided to move into my parent's garage. Set up my typer, my ditto, my zines there and basically stayed up all night writing and publishing. A true fannish life (or at least as I saw it.) Of course getting me out of the house cut down on the noise something my hardworking (and early rising) father appreciated. It's only upon looking back over all these years that I fully see how tolerant my parents were. I always thought my Mother and Jim Schumacher's Mom would have been excellent fans. Other ValSFAns had no such luck and once in awhile a member would be nudged to FAFIATE. (Later: Some interesting letters from parents to the "powers that be" in the club.)

My comments on ValSFA feuding? Well, to be generous that was the way I saw it at the time. A few months later I wouldn't have said anything at all like that. But the club was just founded and we were in the middle of our first, "sociable" period. Little did I realize that feuding would become one of our major hobbies from that point onward.

I was the worst possible choice for secretary Never again would I take on that job for any club or organization. Fandom could be a learning experience.

"Der Hollander" was Fred Hollander.

(below) Scanned 1^st Page:
Diary of A Madman No. 1
ValAPA #1, Friday, Feb 26, 1966

Editor: Jim Schumacher

A Few Comments (2000): The Valhalla list server has proven invaluable in filling in the "missing" sections of our history.

A  Few Comments on the early chapters of The Days of Old.

(JIM SCHUMACHER: January 31, 2000 - Valhalla List Server): Just to keep the record straight, there was actually no such person as "The Corflu Kid".

The Corflu Kid was an element in one of Keith's elaborate and on-going in-group jokes. Keith and I published our first zines on a cheap, cranky Sears-brand mimeo. Of course, we had to use correction fluid (corflu) to clean up typos. Naturally, corflu became connected to "making goofs" and later just being goofy. There may also have been similar effects to glue-sniffing involved in leaving a bottle of corflu open too long…

Anyway, "The Corflu Kid" was created somewhere in there as a kind of hoax figure that we would reference in our writings. We would blame stuff on him. Or attribute off-hand comments to him. We would claim he had done this or that -- and some of those things actually happened (but were done by Keith, or Russ, or me) while others attributed to "The Corflu Kid" never happened at all.

We let it drop shortly after ValSFA was formed and The Corflu Kid faded away. Come to think of it, I'm not sure we actually invented the name "Corflu Kid" -- I think Keith picked it up out of a fanzine that Seth sent us.

There's an interesting postscript to this legend, however:

About a thousand years after the death of the Corflu Kid, he saved my ass several times while I was serving my three years in the army. Only he was called "Private Carl" by then.

You see, I realized early on in my dealing with various army fuggheads (irritated officers, angry sergeants and such) that you could always deflect their attention away from you by blaming whatever they were on about on someone else. Of course, it wasn't cool to actually turn their wrath on a fellow G.I. -- that would be bad form. So, at my instigation, the guys in the 1^st Armored Division invented "Private Carl".

No one seemed to know Carl's full name -- in fact, it was unsure if "Carl" was his first name or last name -- but "that damn Carl" was always getting into trouble. It seemed whenever an officer or a sergeant wanted to know how this bad thing happened, or who failed to do whatever, that "Private Carl" was identified by one of us as the true culprit in the case.

"OK" so where's this Private Carl now?" They would fume. We tried to help, but no one seemed to know exactly what company or barracks he was in -- but usually someone thought they had "just seen Carl" over at the mess hall…or going around the corner by the motor pool…

The officer or sergeant would stomp off in search of their prey, and we would all breath a sign of relief and go on about our business. Some of the smarter officers (mostly the junior ones) eventually caught on to the bit, but they never gave it away. They seemed to get a kick out of watching one of their own fall for the hoax.

Good old Carl… I wonder if he's still hanging around the 1^st Armored Division, getting into some trouble? He would have really hated Operation Desert Storm…

-- Sparrow

A Few Comments (2000):

Instead of feuding what were we doing? Having fun of course. The feuds would show up quickly enough. Even today I wonder if we really had so many feuds because we wanted to. ValSFA held elections every six meetings, that's once every 3 months! That made our elections very, very interesting at times. Very interesting, and very weird. ValAPA was a little more settled, elections were set later at every eleventh disty!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A Matter of Perspective: I've learned one lesson from greater fanhistorians; it's dangerous to analyze too close to the present. Historical analysis demands perspective, and perspective requires time.

Reprinted From: From Sunday to Saturday

ValApa #78

ValSFA Meeting Number 78 (3^rd Annish)

Editor: Don Fitch

Feb. 21, 1969

The Third Annish -- can it indeed be four years since we held that first meeting? It can be, and is. Fairly soon, before memories fade too much (or grow too much), some of the members should get together over a complete file of ValAPA Distributions, and write a history of the organization.

(Later):

Larry Parr: Why, of course; people who come to ValSFA Meetings do so because they have nothing better to do (or nothing they'd rather do) -- that's the reason people do almost everything, including visiting a girlfriend, or Writing…

Dwain Kaiser: Oh, no, Dwain, no. Well…ok…go ahead and write a history of ValSFA; you probably know more about the subject than anyone else. But your version would be b/i/a/s/e/d perforce limited in viewpoint; my Ideal would be a sort of round-robin style, with at least half-a-dozen people contributing substantial segments, and perhaps with annotations by others. Not, as you say, yet, perhaps; much of the significant material would have to be Not For Now, and more perspective than we now have might be helpful.

A Few Comments (2000):

Enough time has passed (I hope).

Reprint Of: Back Cover
Editor & Artist: Terry Romine

ValAPA #18
November 4, 1966

Reprinted From:

By Strange Unseen Gods #6

Editor: Dwain Kaiser

Apa L #72

Well, the second meeting of the ValSFA took place last Friday. But, unlike the first meeting, we didn't start everything right at the time we had planned to. This meeting went on, and on, I guess mainly because of myself and the members of ValAPA. If there had been a few less fen who had to run their zines off at the meeting there wouldn't have been any trouble. But most of us either used the mimeo, or ditto, at Jim S.'s house to run our stuff off. . I ran off four mimeo pages, Terry Romine four ditto pages, Gil Lamont, wrote, and ran off a page of mimeo material, and I had to run off the cover of ValAPA at the meeting. Because of this we couldn't call the meeting to order until around 8:30, an hour later than the "official" starting time.

*Sigh* it looks like we are copying the LASFS in a few different things.

The auction ended the meeting, not as much material as last time was auctioned off, but still a fairly good amount did go. Most of the material went for a fair, i.e. cheap, price.

The ValAPA disty was 34 pages, all but one of which had never been seen before by human eyes… The material was quite good, and it is safe to say that ValAPA is now off the ground for good. It will more than likely last about the same amount of time as the club. Hopefully that will be a long time.

(Later): Typo: You have never really gotten around to hearing me talk about The Best of Fandom. At least I was able to give a little bit of info on it at the last meeting."

A Few Comments (June, 2000):

The Best of Fandom 1965 never did get finished. Someone on the Memoryhole e-list mentioned that it's never too late to put out an issue (or a "Best of"). Somehow after 35 years I don't think so, but I'll leave it at: Real Soon Now!

There was now a "basic" ValSFA in place (at least by D-11). Many of the players would be around, off and on, until the very end; myself, Schumacher, Keith, Romine, Fitch, Whitledge, Gil and Brandon Lamont, Steve Bailey. We'd add Fred Hollander as of our 3^rd meeting, Neal Clark Reynolds by meeting #5. Al Smith (who could not, or did not) write joined ValApa in D-6 with his "modern art" zines. Lonnie Whitledge (Fred's son), started his ValApa zine in D-8 as did Bruce Pelz and Steve Salo (with a APA L overrun). Certainly "L.A. fandom" was now fully aware of the ValSFA. Dian Pelz became our first fem member with her Jublication #1 in D-9. Fred Meyerriecks joined us in D-9 too. This was Fred Meyerriecks first fanzine and he became our furthest member (Mimeola, N.Y.) We started running excellent artwork by Dana Brown as our covers and backcovers. He had a very Paulish style. If my memory is right those were franked by Fred Whitledge (I don't even remember having met Dana).

It requires a very anal fan personality to manage it but I made every ValSFA meeting but one. (And that one meeting I missed on purpose. I was out to show that I was not completely compulsive. Somehow it didn't work.)

I don't know who said this on the Table of Contents page (it's uncredited in the middle of the page). I might have, but I might have overheard it too:

"…it ain't no use to talk to me. It's just the same as talking to you…you're right from your side, I'm right from mine…"

A concept, which when followed, allowed us to deal with the fact that we all had strong opinions and often the "voice" to match. We often agreed to disagree, other times we just feuded.

Jim Keith joined ValAPA with #2. For some reason he had missed both the first meeting and the first disty (being there in spirit only). Both of his one page contribs in #2 were Batman cartoons. Jim dropped in and out during our entire history, some of his most interesting zines were run years (towards the very end of the apa, long after the death of the club) in Larry Neilson's mailed ValApas.

The 2^nd ValAPA featured another Lynn Pederson "John Kaiser of Mars" cover. As my own zine was mimeo this time I didn't run any of his other artwork (ValAPA #1 saw the first "James Bond, Oh-Oh-Oh" cartoon by Lynn.)

A number of extra ValAPAs were "passed" around our circle of fandom to see if we could pick up a few more members. Amazingly enough it worked, we gained (as you can tell from the above), additional members each meeting.

Reprint of Page 1
OPUS #1
Editor:  Russ Brooker
ValAPA #1, Friday, Feb 26, 1966

Reprinted From:

By Strange Unseen Gods #7

Apa l #74

March 16, 1966

(Slightly Corrected From the Original Publication)

The next meeting of the ValSFA will be at Gil Lamont's house, which had been decided at ValSFA as the closest meeting place to L.A. We really don't want to have meetings in L.A., since this is the Valley SFA.

As usual everybody is welcome. And as usual, we're having a little music (I'm sure it'll be Bob Dylan, too…. I'm glad I like him, otherwise I'd go nuts hearing his singing each meeting), a little business, more likely we'll collect dues, 25 cents at this meeting, if we finally get around to putting in dues, a lot of chitter-chatter, and of course ValAPA. Lynn Pederson cover, ValSFAfen material inside. Twenty copies required.

A Few Comments (June, 2000): The "L.A." rule didn't last long. The Lab ended up being one of our regular meeting locations later on. Towards the end of the ValSFA the club once again would keep its meeting places more limited to just the "Valley."Yet some of our most interesting and exciting meetings took place in L.A. slanshacks.

-- DK