The Mystery of Dirk's Castle

I just finished reading Mystery at Skull Castle by Dirk Gringhuis. I suspect a few of my loyal readers may be rolling their eyes and mumbling to themselves, "Boy, that David sure has eclectic taste in choosing his Ozzy reading matter."

Perhaps I do, but this book, written and illustrated by the illustrator of Hidden Valley of Oz (1951), has more than a few bits that I think you'll find interesting.

To begin with, the book was published by Oz publisher Reilly & Lee in 1964. I had not realized that Dirk had done more work for Reilly & Lee after illustrating Hidden Valley. But what makes the book even more interesting is that the "castle" in the story is based on the castle at Castle Park in Holland, Michigan, where the Oz Club held its Ozmopolitan Convention each year from 1967 to 1984. I attended the Castle Park Oz conventions from 1980 through 1983.

Photo of Castle Park in 1984 by Eric Shanower.

To be honest, I am surprised that so few Oz fans seem to know about Dirk's Mystery at Skull Castle. He himself seems to have told Fred Meyer about it and it is mentioned in the Dirk interview in the Autumn 1971 Baum Bugle. A year or two ago I was reading that issue of the Bugle, saw the reference, and immediately went online and bought a copy.

The book is not actually set in Holland, Michigan, but in a fictional Michigan town called New Vollendam which is just a stand-in for the town of Holland. The castle of the book's title was built in 1870 by "non-Dutch outsiders or 'Yankees,' a suspicious lot not to be trusted and given to dancing, fiddling and putting on airs. No honest Dutchman would have thought of building such a place. Designed to be used only in summer, it was a shameful waste of money."

The real castle at Castle Park was built as a residence for Michael Schwartz and his family. It was completed in 1894. But the Schwartz family moved away within a year and the real castle lay abandoned for a year or so before being purchased in 1896 as a summer camp for kids. You can read a much more detailed history of the real Castle Park here.

In the story the castle was a social hot-spot for one glorious summer, until one evening in September it was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground, only the ominous tower remaining. The action of the book supposedly takes place in 1880, ten years after the fire. I'll come back to that in a bit.

A fine photo of Dirk Gringhuis from the jacket of the book.

The book is set up as a late-nineteenth century, Hardy Boys-style mystery with lots of Dutch immigrant detail: Dutch slang, Dutch foods, etc. The story begins rather well, but soon the story of Dutch Hardy Boys devolves into a sort of Dutch Scooby Doo. The two teenage protagonists, Bram and Piet, are characterized by totally ineffectual and nonsensical behavior.

I don't really feel like going into the plot, but I guess I must. If you find it as tedious to read as I find it to write, skip ahead a paragraph: The boys are secretly saving money to purchase a new buggy for Piet's uncle. They move their savings to the old burnt-out castle for safekeeping. While at the castle they find a stash of jewels and seconds later meet Major Willoughby, supposedly the long lost heir to the man who built the castle, and his East Indian servant, Singh. The Major cons the boys into leaving their money in the same niche that the jewels were in and tells them to keep quiet about the discovery. In the end Major Willoughy is a phony and the jewels in the castle are fakes that the major leaves as substitutes when he steals the real Dutch Crown Jewels that just happen to be on display in New Vollendam, Michigan! Bram's ten-year-old cousin Bertram witnesses the theft and yells the news to anyone within ear-shot. But Bram and Piet vouch for the Major, so no one listens to Bertram. Since Bram and Piet can identify the fake jewels, the Major and Singh take the boys prisoner, tie them up in the old Castle, and plan to kill them.

Piet and Bram

This is problem number one: Bram and Piet are stupid and oblivious. They are gullible to every idiotic suggestion and notion the Major tells them. They ignore the truth even when little Bertram is telling them flat out he just watched the Major steal the jewels. Even after they manage to escape their bonds in the castle they don't run for help in town but allow themselves to be cornered on the shore of Lake Michigan where they cower until Piet's uncle solves the mystery (he recognized the red mud of the castle grounds on the major's wagon wheels) and comes down to the shore where he hears the commotion and shoots the Major. In a children's mystery, shouldn't the main characters be the ones to find the solution? Not only do Bram and Piet not solve the mystery, their primary goal at the beginning comes to nothing, since the uncle has no interest in a new buggy.

Now if the plot is a problem, it is nothing when compared to the novel's horrendous editing issues. In the book's first eighteen pages it is explicitly stated that the time period of the story is 1880.

Now in 1880 it still stood. A blind tower staring sightlessly across the timeless water of Lake Michigan. A mute monument to folly, the villagers said. . . . This suited young Abram Van Dam perfectly.

But on page 18 the book is suddenly set in 1897. Bram has been defending Piet's uncle but Bram's mother won't hear of it:

"Well, it's time he realized it's 1897 not 1847 when he came over on the boat." Mrs. Van Dam turned her back and headed for the kitchen.

The action of the novel lasts only two or three days, not seventeen years! I suspect Dirk means for the action to take place in 1897. In addition to the quote above, he explains the New Vollendam town fair is celebrating fifty years since its founding in 1847.

Also, a number of elements in the story demand the 1897 date: the boys listen to a cylinder-playing juke box via listening tubes. The New Vollendam marching Band plays "Stars and Stripes Forever," which premiered May 14, 1897. Apparently, New Vollendam was on the cutting edge of 1890s pop-culture! None of these date specific inventions or compositions is integral to the plot. Did Dirk add them and decide to change the date of the book from 1880 to 1897 to make historical sense? Possibly. But Dirk had a solid knowledge of the Dutch immigrants in Michigan. Indeed, it is the focus of several of his other books. It's a mystery to me why he ever introduced the date of 1880 into this story.

And this brings us to another Dirk Gringhuis/Castle Park connection. Many Oz fans that attended the conventions at Castle Park will recall that there was a bar in the basement. The walls were adorned with drawings by Dirk Gringhuis showing the history of Holland, Michigan. In 2012 the Oz Club held a convention in Macatawa, just down the road from Holland. A few of us spent an afternoon over at the old Castle and I took some mediocre cell-phone photos of Dirk's drawings in the bar.

Dirk Gringhuis artwork from the bar at Castle Park, Michigan.

In the one above, "Building Holland's First Home - 1847," we can see further evidence that the book's New Vollendam closely mirrored the real Holland's history. Both were founded in 1847. The half-century celebration in the story almost certainly indicates that Dirk meant it to take place in 1897.

Below is another of Dirk's Castle Park drawings, "Welcoming New Settlers - 1847."

Dirk Gringhuis artwork from the bar at Castle Park, Michigan.

But this still leaves the question as to how the book can be so explicitly set in 1880 for the first eighteen pages. The date references are not typos as they're all story specific details that establish two contradictory dates. Frankly, it seems like Reilly & Lee may have typeset an early draft or a combination of two different drafts of the manuscript. This is further evidenced by a few other glitches that made it into the published book. On page 179 Bertram has the line:

"Never mind about that," shrilled Bertram. "How about the buggy?"

Which is immediately followed by the line:

"What about the buggy?" shrilled Bertram.

Clearly one of the lines of text shouldn't be there. Someone on the Reilly & Lee editorial staff was slacking off. At the end of the book the two boys are still rather fond of the fraudulent Major. Bram says: "I sort of hope he gets off. He did save our lives when Singh wanted to use his knife. Even though he isn't a major, maybe not even English."

Huh? I totally missed this "saving of lives" part and can't find it in the book still. So who can say what happened? My guess is that Reilly & Lee used some wonky draft of Dirk's manuscript.

However, I can pin one odd bit directly on Dirk. At the festival parade Bertram decides to play a little joke and sucks on a lemon, which causes chaos in the marching band when the members' mouths begin to pucker up, thus ruining the music. I found this event preposterous. Aren't the musicians looking at their charts? Aren't they looking at who is marching up ahead? At the band leader? At anything other than a ten-year-old boy sucking a lemon? And the entire brass band sees Bertram and becomes incapacitated?

I stopped reading the book and told Eric about it. Surprisingly, Eric said, "I think Dirk stole that from a Robert McCloskey book called Lentil." When I looked at a copy of Lentil (1940) a few days later, there was the scene much as Dirk had written it. Coincidence? If only poor Dirk had been able to write and draw as well as Robert McCloskey.

I wish the book had been better. There was such an interesting series of connections between this Oz book illustrator and "the Castle" where we used to hold Oz conventions. And it's sort of sad that no one tried to get Dirk to attend the Ozmopolitan Convention. He lived all his later years in East Lansing, Michigan, where he died in March 1974. He could have attended any of the Castle Park cons from 1967 to 1973. But the Oz Club has a long history of missed opportunities. But that is another blog for another time.

The Un-Curious Cottabus

Well, boys and girls, this round of Oz Connection proved either incredibly boring or so stymied you that you didn't even hazard a guess. I will thank Scott O. for his entry connecting Groucho to Mervyn LeRoy through the film At the Circus (1939), the only answer or guess that was posted. Shall we abandon the silly game in the future or shall the next list of names include the likes of Mickey Carroll, Pink Floyd, and Kristin Chenoweth?

OK, enough grumping from me . . . So what are the Baum or Oz connections for Groucho Marx, John Keats, and Farrah Fawcett-Majors?

Let's begin with Groucho Marx. I am sure there are many ways one could make Oz connections for Groucho via his many films and TV shows, but there is one very strong Oz Connection. In 1960 Groucho was to have starred in an NBC television special of L. Frank Baum's The Magical Monarch of Mo. The teleplay was written specifically for Groucho by novelist and historian Gore Vidal (a long time lover of Oz and Baum himself).

Vidal subtitled the Mo teleplay as "A Fairy Tale for Adults." Alas, the show was never produced, though publicity art and Vidal's script both survive. I assumed Groucho would be pretty easy.

I knew romantic poet John Keats would be a lot harder. The clue is in the name Keats. The poet's great great grandniece was named Emma Keats Speed. In 1896 Miss Speed married a man named Henry Aylett Sampson. He was sports editor for The New York Times, and himself a great great grandson of Patrick Henry. Anyway, Emma Speed Sampson became a writer of children's books, including the continuation of L. Frank Baum's Mary Louise series after Baum's death. The Mary Louise books were all published under Baum's pseudonym, Edith Van Dyne.

I threw in Farrah Fawcett-Majors as a random name. I had no special plan for how to connect her to Oz. Here are a few that come to mind:  The red swimsuit she wore in her best-selling poster from 1976 is now at the Smithsonian near a pair of famous red shoes; she also did a voice in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998), which was written by Oz collector Willard Carroll; but I'm going to play connect the Oz connections and mention that Farrah also played Mary Ann Pringle in the film version of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970). As you may have heard, Gore Vidal is a Baum enthusiast who published several important essays on Oz in addition to his many novels and histories. He also wrote the teleplay of Baum's Magical Monarch of Mo back in 1960.

More Oz Connection

How about we play Oz Connection again!  Perhaps you recall our little game: It's kind of a three-way combination of Ozian lore, Trivial Pursuit, and a pop-culture quiz all rolled into a game approximating the party game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." It's an amusing thing to do while driving to an Oz Con. It goes something like this:

One person says, "E. B. White," and then another player must try and link E. B. White to Oz as closely and quickly as possible. While there are probably MANY different routes, the first to pop into my head was: E. B White wrote Charlotte's Web. In the 1973 film version, the voice of the Goose was contributed by Agnes Moorehead, and she played Mombi in the Shirley Temple television production of The Land of Oz. You can check out our previous couple rounds by typing "Oz Connection" into our SEARCH window.

Post your answers in the blog's COMMENTS section - not on Facebook. Just click the "comments" link at the bottom of this post.

I will not publish or post any of the proposed Oz Connection answers until Friday morning. This will give everyone a chance to answer. Remember there is no single answer - there are many different ways you might connect these three to Oz. There is also no prize beyond the fact that it's a great way to show your own obsessive geekiness and superb cultural knowledge! Have fun!

Give me your best Oz Connection for the following three people:

Farrah Fawcett-Majors

Groucho Marx

John Keats

The answers to this round of Oz Connection can be found by clicking here.

Oz Connection Strikes Again!

How about we play another round of Oz Connection! The mind-bending challenge where I give you three names, and you, the readers, tell me what each person's Oz Connection is! Eric Shanower and I developed this little amusement to entertain ourselves on long car trips. Here's how it goes:

You look at the three names below and suggest the closest possible Oz connection to each name you can think of. Sometimes you can do it easily! If I say "Sean Connery" you might reply, "Sean Connery starred in the film Zardoz which is a sci-fi movie about a world ruled by an Earth man hiding behind a gigantic head named Zardoz, a contraction of wiZARD of OZ." This is two degrees of Ozzy separation.

If I said "Roddy McDowall" you could say, "Roddy McDowall starred in Planet of the Apes with Maurice Evans who played Dr. Zaius. Evans also played Samantha's father on the TV series Bewitched! where he was married to Samantha's mother, who was played by Agnes Moorehead. And Moorehead played Mombi in the 1960 Shirley Temple television movie The Land of Oz."  This is four degrees of Ozzy separation.

Post your answers in the blog's COMMENTS section - not on Facebook. Just click the "comments" link at the bottom of this post.

I will not publish or post any of the proposed Oz Connection answers until Thursday morning. This will give everyone a chance to answer. Remember there is no single answer - there are many different ways you might connect these three to Oz. There is also no prize beyond the fact that it's a great way to show your own obsessive geekiness and superb cultural knowledge! Have fun!

Give me your best Oz Connection for the following three people:

Christopher Plummer

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ludwig van Beethoven

Oz Connection

Well, lots of you posted comments that got us part of the way there! But Bill Campbell found a completely different way of connecting Jane Pellew to the Oz series than the one I had been looking for! Hooray! That's what makes it all so fun! Here's a bit more on how Jane Pellew in Kentucky connects to Oz.

As several of you have pointed out, Jane Pellew in Kentucky by Margaret Love Sanderson was published in 1936 by the Reilly and Lee Co. of Chicago. And Reilly and Lee was the publisher of the original Oz series.

But the book's connection to Oz is stronger than just that. Jane Pellew is actually a reprint of The Campfire Girls in Old Kentucky (1919) which was also published by Reilly and Lee and also credited to Sanderson. But the actual author of the book is Emma Speed Sampson who took over the writing of L. Frank Baum's Mary Louise series after his death. Sampson wrote three Mary Louise titles and two Josie O'Gorman titles, all using Baum's pseudonym Edith Van Dyne. And the final link in the chain connecting Jane Pellew in Kentucky to Oz is that L. Frank Baum was also the author of the Oz series.

Sampson also wrote books under her own name, but for the two series discussed here, she wrote under a pre-exisiting pseudonym: Edith Van Dyne for the Mary Louise books and Margaret Love Sanderson for the Campfire Girls series.

But how did we get from The Campfire Girls in Old Kentucky to Jane Pellew in Kentucky? Well in 1936, at the height of the depression, Reilly and Lee decided to repackage a handful of their series books in very cheap editions. They dubbed the new imprint "The Rei-Lee Adventure and Mystery Stories" and they printed the books on crappy paper and sold them for 25 cents a copy. The title change occurred because Reilly and Lee had lost or did not want to renew their license to call the series "Campfire Girls," so they simply retitled the book to omit the "Campfire Girls" trademark.

I think our little game of Oz Connection was a great success! Let's do it again sometime!

Kevin Bacon in Oz

We're gonna try something a little different today!

Occasionally my Ozzier friends and I play a little game called Oz Connection. It's kind of a three-way combination of Ozian lore, Trivial Pursuit, and a pop-Culture quiz all rolled into a game approximating the party game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." It's an amusing thing to do while driving to an Oz Con. It goes something like this:

One person says, "E. B. White," and then another player must try and link E. B. White to Oz as closely and quickly as possible. While there are probably MANY different routes, the first to pop into my head was: E. B White wrote Charlotte's Web. In the 1973 film version, the voice of the Goose was contributed by Agnes Moorehead; and she played Mombi in the Shirley Temple television production of The Land of Oz. 

Ok - we're slightly nuts!

Anyway, I thought I'd try a little Oz Connection contest here on the blog. Up above, you have no doubt noticed the book cover for Jane Pellew in Kentucky. In the blog's "comments" tell me the Oz Connection. I'll post MY connection string in a day or two.

Possible Spoiler Alert!

In future Oz Connection posts (assuming I try this again) I should probably hold all comments for 24 hours so that as readers post responses they don't spoil the fun for others. So please add YOUR comments before looking at everyone else's comments. And just because someone has proposed a connection string doesn't mean there aren't other or better strings to be found.