THE PULP CALENDAR: September 18

There's nothing special I can say about the contents of this 1929 issue of West, but its red cover certainly would have caught any eye on the racks. And now I'll take back the "nothing special" disclaimer after looking up this issue's short-story collaborators, Elliott W. Michener and Jack Laird. These guys were a fairly prolific writing team, working mostly for West, during the years when they were inmates at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Once free again, they found crime more lucrative, or less difficult, than pulp writing. Both eventually went to Alcatraz, where Michener rehabilitated himself for good through gardening and Laird actually managed to escape, albeit for an hour, using a homemade army uniform. Freed for good in the 1950s, they became inventors and lived to ripe old ages. I suspect their true story is stranger than any fiction they came up with in stir.