NUT SHACK

The way out of nowheresville is long and hard.

Above, a truly excellent Rudolph Belarski cover for Shack Road by Hallam Whitney, aka Harry Whittington, for NYC-based digest publisher Star Novels. What you get here is a hayseed sharecropper named Juba who is surrounded by highly sexual hayseed women, including a soon-to-be runaway daughter, a wife that draws men like flies, and a mother-in-law only fifteen years older than Juba’s wife and who was once the fastest girl around. Juba owned a car once, but sold it twenty-six years ago to pay maternity ward bills. He finds another one by the side of the road and decides to hitch his mule to it, pull it home, and get it running. If he can manage it life will be sweet again, but complications, of course, arise. Simple people and countrified prose, in a book that was part of a popular sub-genre of mid-century hick novels.

Star Novels, Harry Whittington, Hallam Whitney, Rudolph Belarski, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 15

1945—Laval Executed

Pierre Laval, who was the premier of Vichy, France, which had collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, is shot by a firing squad for treason. In subsequent years it emerges that Laval may have considered himself a patriot whose goal was to publicly submit to the Germans while doing everything possible behind the scenes to thwart them. In at least one respect he may have succeeded: fifty percent of French Jews survived the war, whereas in other territories about ninety percent perished.

October 15

1966—Black Panthers Form

In the U.S., in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale form the Black Panther political party. The Panthers are active in American politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but eventually legal troubles combined with a schism over the direction of the party lead to its dissolution.

October 14

1962—Cuban Missile Crisis Begins

A U-2 spy plane flight over the island of Cuba produces photographs of Soviet nuclear missiles being installed. Though American missiles have been installed near Russia, the U.S. decides that no such weapons will be tolerated in Cuba. The resultant standoff brings the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of war. The crisis finally ends with a secret deal in which the U.S. removes its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets removing the Cuban weapons.

October 13

1970—Angela Davis Arrested

After two months of evading police and federal authorities, Angela Davis is arrested in New York City by the FBI. She had been sought in connection with a kidnapping and murder because one of the guns used in the crime had been bought under her name. But after a trial a jury agreed that owning the weapon did not automatically make her complicit in the crimes.

October 12

1978—Sid Vicious Arrested for Murder

Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious is arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen is found in their room at New York City’s Chelsea Hotel. Vicious and Spungen had a famously stormy relationship, but Vicious proclaims he is innocent. He is released on bail and dies of a heroin overdose before a trial takes place.

October 12

1979—Adams Publishes First Hitchhiker's Book

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the first of five books in a series, is published by Douglas Adams. The novels follow on the heels of the tremendously successful British television series of the same name.