BURIED TREASURE GUIDE by Eric Norman

One more time! Warren Smith scrapes the last bit of ore from this vein with a final treasure hunting guide, coming after his Finders Keepers and buddy Brad Steiger's Treasure Hunting. Award Books packages this one up nice, even if they do typo "Bermuda" as "Burmuda" on page 74 while discussing diver Teddy Tucker's jackpot salvage of a 1597 wreck which netted him "a cool $100,000 tax free." There also aren't any maps, rare or otherwise, in this book, and the advertised guide to equipment sourcing was in Finders Keepers. Swings and roundabouts.

The emerald cross salvaged by Tucker from the San Pedro.
Photo credit to the wonderful Teddy Tucker dot com.

Treasure diver James Stillson is back from Steiger's Treasure Hunting, as is Padre Island, the Little Fleta, and all sundry lost mines and stolen payrolls! This time around Smith opts for a straightforward chapter format, listing entries one after the other: sunken pirate ships, lost mines, Spanish galleons, forgotten caches of cash, gold, or gems, etc., etc. Smith also throws in a state-by-state guide like the last two volumes, and a chapter on TWENTY whole lost mines - Steiger only managed ten in his book!

Chapter four sees young Peter Johnson discovering "Treasure in the Lost Pharoah's Cave," and gives us another typo from Award, right in the chapter title! Johnson and two Indian friends take shelter in a cave during a storm and find mysterious wall art and piles and piles of gold coins. Johnson takes one home, and while his father scolds him for fraternizing with Indians, years later Peter's grandson has the coin examined by a professor ... would you believe, the coin has an extinct mastodon carved into it? Was this incredible proof of an ancient lost civilization?

Smith doesn't tell us where he originally got this story (reused from his 1968 title Into the Strange) but it sounds like classic frontier bunkum, placing ancient pre-Amerindian civilizations in situ for settlers to discover. Mastodons were a favorite choice of OOP animal representation for the 1800s (as dinosaurs became in the 20th century), beloved by Thomas Jefferson and cropping up in mysterious Mound Builder accounts all across the eastern half of the country. Smith does name a Richard Gurnee, president of the National Speleological Society, as having an interest in finding the mysterious cave.

This story as related by Smith crops up on two modern websites: a thread on Treasure Net and an entry on Uncharted History. The OP of the thread on Treasure Net says they don't even know the name of the book the chapter came out of, because their copy was so beat! After a little discussion, user "Bsktkaz" gives some local context:

I grew up in Ticonderoga and I never heard this story growing up. That seems unusual in itself. I am greatly intrigued by this story but have many doubts of my own. The first doubt is the actual pages in the post. If these pages were as old as presented the outer edges should be greatly frayed not straight as razors. These pages are all pretty well the same color, if they were this old they would have stains and discoloration. The inside edges appear such that the pages were torn out of a book, but the pages 45-46 (should be back to back) do not match up like pages 47 and 48. The outer side rips on 47-48 look as if they were done on purpose not accidentally which would have to be the case on outer edge. Second, I have searched local censes and find no residences for Johnson's near Pharaoh Mountain in the 1840's, I may have overlooked though. They may have rented but his father made a living as a farmer, so I doubt it, most farmers especially in those times owned their farms. The Johnsons (Johnson's Farm and Johnsons Orchard) I found lived more towards Crown Point (near 7 miles from Ti). One last question I have is the time frame for the hike. Ti (Ticonderoga) is several miles (6-7 estimate) from Pharaoh Mountain. Like I said I grew up in Ti, well Chilson just outside Ti and even closer to Pharaoh Mountain and I grew up hiking those mountains, That kind of hike would take hours one way let alone to, playing around, waiting out a thunder storm the returning. A good estimate of time would be close to if not more than 12 hours. That father seems awfully calm for having his son disappear for 12 hours. Even if the boy was coming from Eagle lake area the closest to Pharaoh Mountain you looking at 4 miles or more one way.

There's something apropos about a quickie bullshit chapter from Smith becoming its own lost legend ...

A page of the chapter as it appears online ...

The eighth chapter, Lost Viking Mines and Mystery Ships, also utilizes Smith's pseudohistory background. Viking miners outside of Red Rock, AZ are also reused from Into the Strange, and are joined by Eric the Red's lost longship buried in the California dunes and the old saw about a white and bearded Quetzalcoatl. These are all comfortable old pseudohistorical legends that fit right into the treasure hunting theme. Smith also cites settler/surveyor Herman Ehrenberg and his research into a possible lost white tribe in the Southwest, and a story by one Mrs. Myrtle Botts and her husband, who met a prospector while camping and were shown his faded photographs of what appear to be viking longships half-buried in the desert.

This chapter also features two separate old Indians who begin their stories by saying, "Many moons ago ..." C'mon, Warren!

Meanwhile it's more of the same treasure teasing in other chapters, with cheeseball accounts of jackpot finds, quotes from professional treasure hunters, and quick listings of random locations, some more specific than others. A chapter on confirmed finds whets the appetite some more: like I said before, these treasure hunting volumes seem like they were made for armchair dreaming by daddy-o: "Man oh man, if we rent a metal detector next time we go to the Keys!"

The backpage ads offer money saving and self help titles ... plus a Sergio Leone novelization, bringing the dust, gold, and blood of the Wild West vividly to life for readers who'd just finished this treasure guide!

The final title for sale is a guide to suing the pants off everyone!

Award Books, 1970

THE MENACE OF PEP PILLS by Warren Smith and Eugene Olson

"Kids are different today," I hear every mother say

Mother needs something today to calm her down

And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill 

She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper

And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day

And not just mother, but father and daughter and junior (and nowadays, Spot and Kitty too!) and that nice boy who used to cut the grass ... Yessir, it seems like yesterday's scourges of heroin and grass and LSD have given way to THE MENACE OF PEP PILLS!

Pep pills, goofballs, yellow jackets, fuzzie wuzzies, Strangeloves (!) and Texas Turnarounds ... the nicknames are endless, but Warren Smith and Brad Steiger are on hand to guide us through the dangerous world of amphetamines, barbiturates, tranquilizers, and antihistamines - the classes that make up the "pep pills" as our authors summarize.

And yes, that's Steiger writing alongside Smith; this is such an early collab between our boys that Brad is still writing under his birth name of Eugene Olson.

One part sober appraisal, one part drug scare spook show, you could say that this work will leave you cross faded, as dry recitations of arrests, pill counts, and legislative gristle slide into Smith and Steiger's patented style of goofy dramatic reenactment - "Then this Puerto Rican cat came around and tried to push us some Tuinals. They're blue and red and really light you up. The fellows call 'em Christmas trees ... We told him to flake off!"

Smith even goes undercover at one point, posing as a pep pill addict to discover just how easy it is to get your fix, and to trace the big drug pushers' networks. You won't be surprised that it is just that easy, and to their credit Smith and Steiger do a decent job illustrating how drug use can be normalized, even encouraged, in everyday "straight" life. A housewife getting through her day, her husband at the office, kids looking to quell an uncertainty inside them (stereotyped as "looking for kicks"), truckers and other professionals who should really know better but need to make it through one more night, one more haul ...

And just who is a pusher, anyways? Not just the tough in the leather jacket or the sleazy voyeur at the bar, but a helpful trucker offering some "co-pilots" to his fellow long hauler, or a housewife offering a pick me up to her neighbor! Even your family doctor writing a perfectly legal prescription to deal with burnout or anxiety can be part of the problem. Yes, it seems we're all complicit in this societal sickness, which puts Smith and Steiger's little volume one up on so many drug scares and fear campaigns even to this day.

Chapter nine deals with the government response to this mess, with quotes from the FDA and various congress critters including Senator Thomas Dodd.

Senator Thomas Dodd (1907-1971)

Smith and Steiger gives us a bibliography too, something they'd both ditch in later years as they moved away from sociology and on to flying saucers and super creeps.

That MKUltra mind bender Dr. Louis Jolyon West lends some anodyne quotes about post-war neurosis and the creeping fear of atomic armageddon ... a fear often cultivated by West and his comrades, but that's neither here nor there! Drs. Peter A. Martin of Detroit and Thomas F. Green of Syracuse University are also on hand to explicate the relationship between existential dread and drug seeking.

Maybe it was this dread that led to Smith and Steiger becoming paranormal pushers, shoveling out endless candy colored volumes to the thrill seekers in need of a fix, looking for something juicier than congressional minutes and legislative proposals, something more enlightening that grubby drug killings and juvenile delinquency?

Who can say? Why do any of us do anything, if not for a momentary taste of being? Please pass it on though, and trade your books back to Spratt's:

The Menace of Pep Pills is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Merit Books, 1965

WHO, ME FLY? by Robert Scharff

It's fun, it's fast, it's economical ... it just makes sense! Do-it-yourself master Robert Scharff wants us to know: you can fly!

Pianist wunderkid Skitch Henderson pens the foreward, cementing the midcentury Americana flavor of this somewhat odd text. According to author Scharff, flying your own private plane for business and pleasure is as easy as 1, 2, 3, and his occasional asides on safety and maintenance come off as rather glib.

So too does his math on how economical it is being a private pilot - though to be fair, he's helpfully included some coupons for a flying session with a licensed Cessna trainer, for an additional cost of only $5! The miracle acrylic bubble makes it possible ...

Alongside the training and registration/certification guidance, Scharff also gives an overview of trip ideas by region for the continental USA. Whether you're a dentist or a CPA, a swingin' bachelor or dedicated family man, you'll find somewhere to fly anywhere you are, for any reason. Just do it!

Six whole coupons are included, by the way. Give some to your friends and then plan a trip together!

The few pictures included are very nice, and the glossary of flight terms does what it says on the tin. Like Steiger and Smith's treasure hunting guides, this text may have been meant more for easy chair dreaming than actual action. In either case, fly on, through realms of sleep and waking life ...

Tower Books, 1966

THE NIGHT OF THE TOY DRAGONS by Barney Cohen

Albino mutant pygmy alligators! They're massing beneath NYC, their appetite rising to a fever pitch ... will we be prepared when they rise, and we face THE NIGHT OF THE TOY DRAGONS? And after slogging through Cohen's turgid technothriller drivel, will we care? Probably not!

Cohen's first victim is a sewer worker named Boggs, in a strange bit of synchronicity with David Hagberg's far superior Croc. Was there something in the water? The killer alligators act like cartoon piranhas, stripping bodies to the bone in minutes. At one point, they decapitate a police dog and somehow throw the head back at their human pursuers ... why? These cartoonish antics don't mesh with Cohen's wannabe verisimilitude of computer tooth analysis and bureaucratic infighting, and both aspects are crowded out by too much filler of midcentury character drama: home life, hookups, and the battle of the sexes. Cohen doesn't excel at any of these threads and the final effect is supreme dissatisfaction.

Eventually we get a final battle of flamethrowers vs alligators, but it's too little too late, and the story ends on a promise of more to come as the surviving characters gear up for yet another wave of invincible super-gators which simply elicits an eye roll. David Lippincott's comparable disaster dud Tremor Violet ended the same way, with more violence to come, but that was the one successful play in Lippincott's book. Here it's just another disappointment.

Author Cohen also wrote a couple science fiction thrillers, and ... a puff piece on Sting?

Pure terror ...

How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail fail? Cohen's crocodilian cockup earns a 1/4 rating ... boo, hiss!

A Berkeley Medallion Book, 1977