The 1990 Sons of the Desert Convention was held in fiery Clearwater, Florida in the dead center of the summer – Thursday, July 12 thru Sunday, July 15. When this convention rolled around, I had kind of drifted from the L&H ‘scene,’ having not attended any meetings of our local Springfield tent lately – mainly because Carl hadn’t had any. Neither had I produced any more newsletters from this tent and I hadn’t yet started my own tent. I had even begun to lose touch with my friend Bob Satterfield. Of course, considering everything that was going on in my personal life at the time, it was of little surprise. I distinctly remember informing Bob that I now had a daughter as we were taking a walk toward the nearest beach on our first night there – to which he was completely dumbfounded.
Only my Dad and Denise attended this convention along with me. During the drive down, I was buried in the book “Illusions” by Richard Bach, a recommendation by my friend Matt Bohlander. Denise was now 14 years old so was finally worthy enough to be included in some of our activities. I was also talking her into buying up some autographs from Bob, which she still owns, but she never really pursued the hobby. I, on the other hand, had not really been collecting too much over the last couple of years, but I did focus on picking up some autographs for Christi and Ashleigh. I also scraped enough together to pick up my first autographed photo of Stan Laurel for around $120 or so.
I wrote to Christi in a postcard dated Friday, July 13, “I’ve spent $170 already on some really great stuff. My best haul ever! I got a few autograms for you and A-ball. I can’t wait to show you all of my stuff. Graduation present, too!” I recall that I also bought some videos of L&H in Spanish and some other rare footage including home movies.
Denise joins in the plotting
This particular convention hosted by Ron Young and the Boobs of the Woods Tent of Clearwater, does not hold a lot of particularly jubilant memories for me. The magic of becoming ‘active’ within the group had worn away, and the excitement of starting my own tent had not yet begun. But this was most certainly the first convention where I begun to hang around my ‘core’ group of friends – most of them being from the West Coast. Prior to this I had only really socialized with Bob, but during this trip I became more acquaninted with the Wileys, the Duffs, Marcia Opal, and Rick Lindner.
The first night of the convention was a black-and-white-themed buffet-style dinner. The decorations from that evening included a mess of black and white balloons. All of the participants in the above photo enjoyed some late-night hi-jinks filling the elevators, stairwells, and washers & dryers with said balloons.
This was probably the most memorable aspect of this entire convention: Denise and I stayed up until all-hours running around with this mad group of people and playing all sorts of pranks. We even had firecrackers that would explode when pulled apart that we would attach to the elevator and room doors. We would knock, run, and listen for the report.
Rick, Bob, and Lori absorbed by balloons in the elevator
We discuss Bob’s bathing suit costume
We thought it would be very funny to slip counterfeit vouchers on hotel stationary for ‘free breakfast’ under some convention-goers’ doors. The next morning we went down to the restaurant expecting a laugh riot from people being refused the free meal. It backfired. We ended up paying for our meals, while the ‘victims’ did in fact get free meals. The restaurant actually honored them!
Brad, Bob, Kris, Jim, and Jim: Ready to pounce…
Denise and I stand idly by as our friends make asses of themselves.
Friday the 13th saw the Gay 90’s bathing suit contest, in which none of my family participated. Oddly, I can’t remember my Dad participating in much of any of our antics at the convention. I’m wondering if he didn’t just leave the hotel everyday and go do something else! Even he, ever the photographer, had no photos whatsoever from the convention. Nor did I – the bulk of the photos seen here are from Bob’s or the Wileys’ collection. Later in the day were some swimming ‘Pool OWIMPics’ and the Pee Wee Contest on the beach. Again, we didn’t participate to my recollection. My postcard noted that it rained all afternoon.
The infamous Boggy Bottom Bar-B-Que Ranch cookout amidst an incredibly hot and humid swamp was that evening – made even more unappealing following the day’s downpour. Actually, the older folk (ie. my Dad and Bob) both recall the misery, while I think I had a relatively good time. Mostly I remember Tracy Tolzmann’s little gag thumb igniter pictured below and hanging out with one of the convention celebrities (more on that in the next posting).
Voila! Fire!
Saturday, July 14 was our last full day at the convention. I remember very little about it. According to the agenda, there was a second Grand Council Meeting where we voted for the next convention site. This I DO remember. Mayor James “Shug” Lewis, who was one of Oliver Hardy’s first cousins, made the bid on behalf of his town of Harlem. At the time, the town didn’t have a hotel to house conventioneers. Nothing has changed. But they did eventually bypass that problem by holding the convention in Augusta in 2006. In 1990, however, they miserably lost the bid to Las Vegas. Later that day was the Trivia Contest (won by Kay Lhota), a look-alike contest, a newsletter seminar (I think I did go to this – as a former-editor), and an autograph session. The evening saw a masquerade ball, and as usual, we did not dress up. Bob and John had a great pair of costumes that will be shown in the next posting.
The farewell brunch was Sunday morning and we all said our goodbyes. Bob and I posed for the shot below. Dad, Denise, and I departed for our long drive home. I remarked in my postcard to Christi that I would see her on Monday “and I requested Tuesday off, too! So we’ll just have a swell time.” We drove it back in one day instead of stopping on the way home, much to the chagrin of Mom who wasn’t expecting us, and had her boyfriend Bob over for the night…
Buddies Brad and Bob
Next: the celebrities and autographs of Clearwater ’90…
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