The Celebs of Clearwater ’90
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
As I mentioned before, with all that was going on in my personal life, I sort-of mindlessy drifted through the 1990 Sons of the Desert convention. I was not very hot and heavy into collecting autographs at the time – although I certainly did gather a few from the celebs in attendence. As it turned out, this convention included very few: only three. I remember convention host Ron Young’s big dreams of actually getting Robert Blake and Robert Mitchum to show up, but that never panned out. Read the rest of this entry »
The 2000 Seattle Sons of the Desert Convention was not the first occasion I had to meet Peggy Cartwright, but it turns out that it was the last. I was previously THRILLED to meet her for the first time during my 1992 trip to California. At that time, she was somewhat of a ‘missing’ Our Gang member – and quite an important one at that. Although she only appeared in five of the early silent Our Gang comedies, she was credited for being in the very first one one simply entitled Our Gang in 1922. 
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. 
One of the five Our Gang members who were in attendence at the 2000 Sea-Tac Sons of the Desert convention was Patsy Britten – now Pat Bell. Patsy was a recent discovery of convention host Jack Taylor and she actually lived right in the Seattle area. This was her first and only convention appearance. Patsy only appeared briefly in three Our Gang comedies but she did have a speaking role in Readin’ and Writin’ (1930). When asked by Miss Crabtree to answer the question “What is an escalator?,” Patsy responds, “It’s a great big thing that lives in the swamps. They make suitcases out of them.” 
Bob and I had an afternoon of fun and frolics on Sunday, February 11, 2007 during our stay in the beautiful town of Las Vegas, Nevada. Early in the day we had visited Our Gang member Jack Hanlon, (which you may read about