Hey, Jeff!
As a fellow zine publisher, I have to comment on how much Out Your Backdoor has improved. It’s amazing. I’ve watched you closely and the progress is obvious.
Your idea of publishing a book of basic, traditional O&O eateries is a good one. In my extensive travels I have enjoyed numerous local restaurants and cafes. Most of them are so far off the main roads that average nomads will never find them. There was the basic all-day place in Butte, Mont., where the cash register is operated by the customers. There was the Comer Cafe in remote Kansas where the Sunday dinner special was (in 1992) $3.50, and that included coffee and quasi-homemade apple pie. I fell in love with whole wheat cranberry pancakes in a diner in Bennington, Vermont. My list goes on. You should develop a restaurant format so your readers will be certain to list the right items.
Gretchen and I are heading for Michigan this summer. After a family reunion in Missouri, we will head directly for Michigan. We plan to cover the west coast in particular, and will do a stretch across the Upper Peninsula.We should get to lower Michigan about Aug. 28. We are not going as far east as your headquarters. Would like to meet you.
I almost missed the mention of SLJ in your review of zines. Thanks.
Playboy called last week. An editor indicated they will do something on Slow Lane Journal next October. Is that my audience? Well, as P. T. Barnum used to say: “All publicity is good publicity”
I enjoyed the review and your insight on the Monks. I bought the book while waiting for a plane in Nashville The idea of their packing up and hitting the road got my attention Their lifestyle became a more dominant theme as I read the book so high in the sky I didn’t realize what an impact this duo had on zines.
For the road,
Tom McClelland
Dear Jeff,
Thanks for the copy of OYB. Read it from cover to cover. Most entertaining!
Enclosed is my study plan book along with my ideas and designs. Perhaps some of your readers might be interested in learning about a crystal boat…
Regards, Platt Monfort
Hiya OYB!
I recently finished Issue 7, purchased from the local health food-o-rama, and was inclined to write, thanks to the bit of synergy produced by Ross Signal’s article on cheese, cha-chas and Chacksfield.
I have been a fan of quasi-exotic and faux Hawaiian music for years, much to the wonderment of friends, family and loved ones. At work, I usually play my homemade comps of Martin Denny, Jackie Gleason, Xavier Cugat on the boom box in lieu of the so-called “classic” rock or top-40 radio stations. Customers usually ask what’s playing, and nobody has requested that the tapes be shut off. As weird as this music can get, it seems to have the power to make people smile more than just about any other genre.
So thank you for further vindicating my taste in music (as folks like Utne Reader, Newsweek and NPR have been doing in recent months) and spreading the good news about cheap but wholly enjoyable music.
P.S. though: Mr. Signal mentions that there were no “stereo records before 1958.” RCA was introducing its “Living Stereo” series in, I believe, 1957, the same year that Audio Fidelity Records (purveyors of kitsch like marimba music and risque American folk music), according to the liner notes on all their subsequent recordings “produced the first Stereophonic High Fidelity record…in November, 1957.”
And thank you for a continuously amazing and informative zine. But please don’t deprive the public of such greatness by putting so much space between issues.
I remain, James Scharnott
JP:
-Sorry payment so late
~Opted for the special sub
*Going for the miracles
#Enjoying the mag
All the best, Paula Nersesian
Dear OYB,
Hello! I just came across your address and thought I would write and ask for your latest Info Sheet or Newsletter for New Friends. I would also like to know how your program works and what OYB is all about.
My name is Richard J. Frank, age 31, WM, 6′-1″, 198 lbs, brown hair, blue eyes and am looking for all kinds of New Friends. I like country music, writing, running and the outdoors.
Thank you! RJF
PS: I am incarcerated but please don’t let that stop you!
Dear Jeff,
Thanks for the interview and agreeing to a story. I really enjoyed meeting you and Martha. I want to be just like you when I grow up. Sean and I are always dreaming up schemes to be at-home freelancers and escape the 9-5 routine. I want to canoe the Huron on my lunch hour, plant vegetable gardens and write a story. Sean wants to repair an old steamer trunk and make cartoons.
Everyone loved the picture and the lede! Not good enough though, I feel.
Well I’m blowing off too much work here so I better close this. Again, thanks, and take care. Pet Skeeter for me. Call me if he ever produces offspring.
Sinc., Stephanie McKinnon
Dear Jeff:
No offense for the first-name salutation, the tone and words of the guidelines brought me sitting next to you and the rest of the crew in the break room, very personable and inviting; first name greeting seems appropriate here.
Thank you for the prompt response to my request. My interest is flaming (no pun intended if you were here in this intrusive Texas heat) and hope to be reading it soon. I am leaving 08/15 to sell Sonic Youth and Salvador Dali prints to college students on Midwest campuses, and I’d like to take OYB along. I work seasonally for a graphics company for a 6 to 8 week period, traveling in a Ryder truck stuffed with art prints and various posters students are itching to buy. Each “run” has taken me to both the tiniest and the most monstrous of what the U.S. calls civilization. We’ve (me and my partner) passed through the icy streets of “Riverdale” in the winter (aka the Bronx), the dusk-colored skies of Athens in the late summer, and the saintly hills of Who-Knows, Minnesota in the fall. Stories fly in those campus bathrooms, between bites of greasy dinner fries, and on late night drives to nearby and out of the way but too-close-to-pass weekend trips.
Recently I was “saved” twice by two unrelated people in Southcentral Alaska during a summer trip to work in a cannery in Cold Bay. My partner worked sporadically down the street in Anchorage, while I went for free food, free hikes, and free flicks about the wild and woolly of Alaska. After selling posters, I am travelling to central Mexico for a few months to descend into some of the deepest caves in the world by week, and learn family recipes from my husband’s grandmother by weekend. Just some of the stories around here.
Thanks for your time and personal note. I’d like to learn more of the history behind OYB. I look forward to submitting a piece!
Happy venturing, Lucille Pinkerton de Berrones
Dear Jeff,
I truly enjoy your magazine. I only subscribe to 3 magazines and yours is one of them. The last issue I saw was #7 and I picked it up at the Michigan HPV Rally. Hope to see you there again next year.
Sean Costin
[Ed. note: Sean is pilot of the notoriously fast Wissil Missile racing HPV. Zoom! He’s a hard core interplanetary wingnut and nice guy, too!]
Dear Jeff,
Thank you for the amazing and impressive letter. I’m happy to trade zines with you as long as you wish, since my intent is not equity but simply to get people to read my writing. I figure eventually my superior mind will overcome all resistence and opposition. Just keep on reading…seductive writing… Your eyes are growing tired…. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha….
I can’t comment on your letter in specifics because it would involve line-by-line and word by word analysis and rebutal. No time for it. But I glean that you are an idealist, believe in God, the perfectability of mankind, and Doing Good. Ah, youth.
Do you also believe mind can exist apart from body/brain?
Gotta go. I’m very glad you were inspired to write; TGL really touched a lot of response buttons.
All best, Richard E. Geis
Dear Jeff,
I was reading through my new copy of The Rivendell Reader when I ran across a mention of you and your magazine. I thought to myself, “Hey, it’s been a long time since I subscribed. I wonder what happened?” I know that several things might have happened, so I made a list.
1) Jeff either didn’t get or didn’t cash my $8.00 check for a subscription. I immediately eliminated this possibility because I didn’t feel like going through my box full of bank statements to confirm or refute this suspicion. Consider it refuted.
2) Jeff has published again, but either willfully or negligently left me out of the mailing. I simply can’t imagine what I could have done to cause the former, and I have too high an opinion of you to believe the latter. Theory two shot down.
3) Jeff, under the weight, burden, and duress of the roles of publisher and editor, has simply been unable to manage the feat of publishing another issue. I would like not to think so. It’s easier to believe that those issues are out there and I simply have not been afforded the pleasure of reading them due to some other circumstance. Theory trois is a possibility.
4) Jeff is holding out for something from me to include in the next issue, and he simply cannot bring himself to publish without including some of my matchless story telling. Ooh, I like this one! It appeals to me on a couple of levels. First and foremost, it flatters me, and Lord knows I love that. Second, it makes me feel guilty for my sloth in starting to write something for you but not finishing. I’m not a Roman Catholic, but I can still do the guilt thing pretty well. Theory four is my favorite, so far.
5) Jeff is suffering from Kokopell~ Notes syndrome. See, when I subscribed to them I let about eight months go by before I called and asked about my subscription, and found that they had ceased to publish. They gave me back issues, which I was happy to get, but I was very sad that they didn’t continue to publish. I don’t like theory five at all.
So, which is it’? With a list as exhaustive as this, could it be anything else? I don’t think so. So, tell me Jeff, when can I have a new issue of OYB?
Yours in anticipation,
Kurt Sunderbruch
OK, OK, stop the dunning notices.
Send a deluxe sub to my daughter. [etc.]
I’ll take the tract: “Nosepicking with one’s arms tied behind one’s back-a stylistic approach.”
And give me a couple of: “The Word Processor as Corpus Collosum to the third hemisphere” -by Dingle Berry
Drudged in nutrients and powdered sugar, I remain,
Bobb Ricketts
PS: “Don’t read that retro rag” inveighs my pro-development friend. “If everybody read it, progress would grind to a halt.” Well, I’m about progressed out. Gimme that old golden era, with Mr. Reagan’s soothing tones bathing the earways. Count me in as one of the flock. Flock? Me? Well, yes. Again, in perpetuity,
R. Bobb Ricketts
(from Haslett, where we say: “Thinking is the best way to travel.”)
Wahlll, I got two new Rubes for ya. [Etc.]
Oh yes, don’t forget to ask me about All-Terrain Bowling and Chihuahua Fanciers Publications.
Thanks one last time,
Bob Ricketts
After a day of discovery in R own Backyard, we stop in a great Independent Restaurant in Willow-near Boston Best Pizza and still the place is within a minute of 3 metro parks. (Martha you might dish.) The parks are wonderfulÂp;however the bike trail along I-275 is no longer in order. We had a great salad -perhaps the best we’ve enjoyed at the price and pizza bones.
Your zine was on the counter-the waiter said it belonged to the owner. Maybe after next month’s bills we can sub. We did take the info on 3 ads. We didn’t steal the zine. We gave it back.
Thanks, K. Parris
[Inscrutably nifty postcard. There’s an infamous bike trail along a Detroit area freeway-from the ‘healty’ 70’s. What a nutty thing!]
Dear Jeff,
Many thanks for the copy of your magazine.
First let me say how much I enjoyed the publicaton, layout shows lots of imagination, the articles are tight and humorous…simply great! I would be very ahppy to supply any Frank Patterson or any other cycling illustrations you may need.
Let me give you some personal details so you can judge what kind of person you are dealing with!
I was born in 1932 and have been cycling since the age of 2. My passion for bikes has not diminiished with the years, I am still an active rider and get excited about any new development and design. I have an interesete in old bicycles and have a collection of 20. I have raced, toured and done most things that are possible on a bike!
My working life has been mainly in the design field and I publish and market a range of cycling related books, prints, etc.
Your sincerely,
Gerry Moore
Jeff-
Congrats on your first hate mail. I’m sure it’s an important milestone. And I admire your optimism about changing the person’s mind. I hope you can, too. I haven’t come across the ‘pseudohip redneck’ stories yet-if they’re in there, I’ll get to them. If not, perhaps you could direct me to the correct back issue. I am an antihunter I’ve been told, but I think that’s just because I don’t eat animals and I got upset once when Kurt across the street gutted a deer out on his driveway in the afternnon while neighborhood kids (mine included) were playing in the street. (“No, son, that’s not Bambi. Bambi would have gored Mr. Larson on his antlers.”) I don’t think I’m ‘rabid,’ though about anything; that’s probably not all good!
Thanks and here’s a sub!
Steven Archer Nelson
Mr. Potter,
Finally, I have seen a copy of OYB and I have to admit, it was worth the wait. It is fun and idfferent and while I haven’t finished it, every flavor sampled was a delight. I wanted to share with you a story about travel and affordable culture.
Ride on, JP Partland
[See “Iditabike Blues”]
