A Life in Four Colors Part Fifty

My childhood and teenage years were marked by friends who were also kindred spirits. I've mentioned David Lynch, John Ball, and Gary Steele, all of whom were my best friends at various periods in my life. In early 1970, I met someone who was destined to be a dear friend to both me and Susan over the next few years.

Sven Ahlstrom was a Rome transplant, having come to West Rome from Menomenee, Michigan, with his mother, Dorothea, who was involved in the nursing program at Berry College (the school that had offered me an academic scholarship). I didn't know any of that, though, when I first met Sven. What I did know, however, was that he was the only person in Mrs. Higgins' room reading a science fiction book the morning that our paths crossed. (I sometimes think that science fiction and comics readers have a sort of "fan radar" that alerts when someone shares our interests, but in reality it's probably an example of affinity awareness--just as we are more apt to notice cars that are the same make and model as ours, so we are more apt to notice people who read books or buy music that matches our tastes.)

We began talking and found that we shared other interests--comics, music, television shows, movies. Because we had so much in common, we began talking more regularly. I was also immediately impressed with Sven's quick wit and his enthusiasm tempered with a dash of cynicism. Before too long, we were hanging out together at school and dropping by one another's house after school. Sven made me aware of musicians, albums, authors, and books that I hadn't read (I remember that he had a copy of the Beatles'  White Album, which I heard in its entirety for the first time at his house, and he also had a copy of Jesus Christ Superstar, which I had foolishly dismissed until he convinced me to really listen to it). Meanwhile, Sven was curious about the fanzines that Gary Steele and I were involved with, and was particularly interested in the amateur press alliances Myriad and Galaxy. 

Within a couple of months, Sven was good friends with Gary Steele and me, and soon after he met Susan. By the time the summer of 1970 rolled around, Sven and I had become great friends--and a lot of that was due to the Atlanta Journal.

What did a newspaper have to do with our friendship? Actually, it was  newspaper route that had a lot to do with our friendship. Sven had a part-time job delivering papers for the Atlanta Journal--but it wasn't a neighborhood bicycle route like I had years earlier. Instead, Sven had a far-reaching car route, which took a couple of hours every day. Sven drove a blue 1968 Chevy Malibu that he used for his route, he took the responsibility seriously. Since I didn't have an afternoon job and had some spare time, I began riding Sven's route with him, helping to fold and rubber-band the papers. And we talked... a lot.  We talked about fannish stuff, of course, but we also talked about school and family and life in general. 

Sven was also the first person I knew who had an eight track tape player in his car, so we listened to a lot of music while we were running his route. The first tape he bought was Let It Be, the final Beatles album; I already had a copy on vinyl, but I had become so enamored with Beatles music since I rediscovered the group in late 1969 that I could listen to that album over and over again (and unlike some critics, I thought Let It Be was a great album, almost as good as Abbey Road). Soon we added a few more tapes to the automotive library: we played Simon & Garfunkel's Sound of Silence and Badfinger's Magic Christian Music so frequently that it took me a while to get used to the vinyl sequencing of the songs on those albums, since I had heard them first on 8 track. (In my mind, the album always ended with "Richard Cory," since that was the last song on the 8 track before it circled back around to "The Sound of Silence," while it seemed natural that "Come and Get It"—the best song on Magic Christian Music—should be followed by "Carry On 'Til Tomorrow"—the second-best song on Magic Christian Music—even though the vinyl version has the latter song kicking off side two.) As the summer went along, we added The Rolling Stones' Through the Past Darkly, Crosby Stills & Nash's eponymous first album, Steppenwolf Live, and Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-da-Vida to the playlist, along with more from Simon & Garfunkel. Every one of those albums has become so inexorably linked to the summer of '70 that I can't listen to them without remembering that time, which I still think of as the most wonderful period of my pre-married life.

Soon we noticed another person at school who shared some of our interests in music and science fiction: Ida Hutchings, who was a year ahead of us in school. Ida was a brash free spirit, and her personality brought both contrasted with and complemented ours quite well. It made no difference to any of us that Ida was a senior about to graduate, while we were juniors with another whole year of school ahead of us. I first heard Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" at Ida's house, and I initially thought that the pre-bleed that was a part of the song's sound was a defect in either her record or her stereo system. Ida had been accepted at Georgia Tech for the fall of 1970, but she never seemed enthusiastic about it; her attention seemed entirely focused on the spring and summer of 1970, and not the fall and college. Ida loved talking music and science fiction and comics almost as much as Sven and I did, so she became a member of our group almost instantly.

In my mind, I had thought that Sven and Ida would become a couple in the same way that Susan and I had become a couple. They hit it off well, shared many interests, and at times seemed attracted to one another. Ultimately, though, Ida was another friend in our small but growing group. What had been just Gary Steele and me as "comic book buddies" in early 1968 had gradually expanded to include Susan, then Sven, then Ida. For years, most of my fan friends were people I only knew through correspondence and fanzines but by the summer of 1970 I had a dynamic, intelligent, articulate group of friends I saw on a regular basis, and I was relishing the change.