Since launching the newsletter I think my wife can see how happy I am to be writing again. I earned myself a row on the bookshelf in the front room so that my sources will be within reach.
The grail of my Pelley library is undoubtedly the complete bound set of Valor magazine. These were Adelaide’s personal copies and are inscribed to her by her father.
Valor isn’t rare in scattered copies, but as a complete run I don’t know of another set anywhere. The George Hunt Williamson ‘Saucer Symposium’ columns are there. The ‘Garden of Prophecy’ sequel to ‘Door to Revelation’ is there, at least the further chapters until he was advised by legal counsel to cease with it.
Perhaps my favorite writings by Pelley for pure amusement are the column ‘Cogitations.’ These pages are most often reminisces filled with incredible stories and good humor.
Now that I have my Valor set out of the cardboard box where they can breathe, I hope to include a few of my favorite ‘Cogitations’ as I run across them.
One of my favorites is when 9-year-old Pelley attended a lecture by Elbert Hubbard in Springfield, Mass. The boy showed up early to find Elbertus alone in the auditorium. The two sat down to chat one-on-one for nearly an hour. Afterwards, Hubbard sent WDP a dollar for a subscription to his first newsletter. My nutshell recounting is amazing enough, but to hear it in his own words more than 50 years after the fact… I eat that stuff up!
What about the time he was with the Silver Cavalcade out in Oregon and they drove a truck pulling a trailer into a dead end. In backing it to get turned around they ripped the front porch off a house! Oh, shenanigans!
The man who fell off the watermelon truck; the story of the elk and tiger trapped on a burning island in Siberia; a biography of his father; true ghost stories. The pages of Valor are full of this sort of light reading matter.
I have a feeling that once he got out of prison he was glad to get back to writing again but couldn’t fill all the space in the journal with politics, so there’s a lot of fluff… and most of it the good kind.
Most importantly, the ‘Cogitations’ make him human. He’s just an aging grandpa who has had a lot of adventures. Most of the rancor and venom is gone. He’s mellowed. His first five years after prison saw some of the best writing he ever did, in my opinion.
So, that’s what I plan to share straight from the Chief’s pen in between my own rambling editorials. And I wanted to show off my bookshelf… I know there is a strong bibliophile element among Pelley enthusiasts.