When I was twelve years old, books could talk. The year was 1968 and I was standing in front of either the Paramount or the adjacent State theater on Congress Avenue. I had just seen a movie, the title of which is long forgotten. I had time to kill before catching the bus home so I ventured across the street to a book store, the name of which, sadly, also ecapes me. But I remember what I found within that store with crystal clarity because the book said to me “take me home young man, you will love me”. And the book was right.
The book was CONAN THE AVENGER. It was published by Lancer books and had a breathtaking cover painting by the legendary Frank Frazetta. I knew Frazetta’s work from issues of CREEPY and EERIE, the long running black and white horror comics magazines published by James Warren. What I didn’t know were the names on the cover: L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Bjorn Nyberg and, most improtantly, Robert E. Howard.
There was a short biographical introduction to Howard inside which I read with great interest. Seems this Howard fellow was a native Texan who lived and died in Cross Plains. I had no idea where Cross Plains was. I’d never heard of it. But if this guy Howard came from there, maybe one day I’d pay the place a visit.
Flash forward many years in which I became a huge fan of both Conan the Barbarian in books and comics and the works of Robert E. Howard in general. Sometime in the late ’90s, I went to Brownwood, Texas to spend a few days with my good friend Bob Parker. He knew where the Howard family plot was in Greenleaf cemetery so we headed over there to check it out and pay our respects. The family plot contains Robert, his mother, Hester and his father, Dr. Isaac Howard.
We decided to drive on up to Cross Plains and see if we could find the legendary Robert E. Howard house. It was about a thirty-minute drive from Brownwood to Cross Plains and there was not much to see in the tiny Texas town. But we did find the Howard house easily enough.
We parked, got out of the car and started walking around the property. Technically, we were trespassers of a sort but there were no signs posted and the house was vacant. We were just a couple of middle-aged fan boys who were over the moon at finally seeing the house where young Robert E. Howard worked his magic.
I was standing on a bare spot in the side yard that might have once been where the family garage had stood. A pickup truck pulled up and we both thought we were going to be told to leave the property.
Instead, the gentleman in the truck rolled down the window and asked “are y’all Robert Howard fans?”
We said we most certainly were and then he said something to me that I will remember to my dying day. “You’re standing on the spot where he kilt hisself.”
For you see, Robert E. Howard lived a very short life, from 1906 to 1936, taking his own life at the age of thirty. Having learned that his mother was in a coma from which she would not come out of, Bob composed a “suicide poem” on his typewriter and left it there for all to see. He then went out to the garage, took his revolver out of the glove compartment and shot himself.
And now, many, many years later, I was standing on that very spot.
“Y’all want to go inside the house,” asked the man in the truck, who was rapidly becoming my new best friend.
We said yes again and he told us to go the Cross Plains library and ask the librarian a lady by the mane of Billie Loving for the key. The key! To the Robert E. Howard house! By Crom this was treasure indeed.
We easily found the library and Ms. Loving was as gracious and generous as she could possibly be. For it was clear that we were far from the only people to ever come to this town to see this house. She gave us the key and we went back to the house and went in.
At some point over the years, the interior of the house had been extensivley remodeled so what we saw that day was nowhere near the original floorplan. We could only guess where Howard’s bedroom/writing room might have been. However altered, it was still sacred space to us.
We geeked around for a few minutes, locked up the house and returned the key to Ms. Loving and drove back to Brownwood. And that was that. But not for long.
The stream of Howard fans coming to Cross Plains was steadily increasing in volume every year. And these fans were not just from Texas or the United States. There were visitors from various foreign countries whose love for Howard’s work transcended any language barriers that existed.
Realizing that something needed to be done to preserve the Howard house, Project Pride was started in the late ’90s. The house was purchased by the organization and the interior was returned to the original layout. This includes a tiny space (not much larger than a closet) where Bob Howard wrote and slept.
And that’s not all. Project Pride initiated Robert E. Howard Days in June of each year. It’s a weekend long celebration of all things REH including tours of the house and the surrounding countryside, panel discussions, memorablia for sale and more. I’ve attended Howard Days once and would love to do so again this year if possible.
But the saga is not finished. The Howard house is over one hundred years old and the original pier and beam foundation is slowly disintegrating and badly in need of repair. The Robert E. Howard Foundation is conducting a fund-raising campaign, and I’ve already made my contribution.
If you love Conan the Barbarian and other heroes, if you love the works of REH, if you want to preserve an important piece of twentieth century Texas literary history then please consider making a donation. And tell them I sent you if you do so.
Now go read something by Robert E. Howard.
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