The Vultures - Endpaper
- THE VULTURES: Endpaper -A black ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size poster board. It appears on the endpapers of the book, "The Vultures," by Robert E. Howard, published by Fictioneer Books, 2nd edition, 1974. The 1st edition in 1973 did not feature this endpaper drawing.
In 1949 I was in the United States Army Air Force, taking my basic training at an Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. I didn't see any of those rocky formations that you see in this endpaper drawing.
One week-end a bunch of us recruits got enough guys together to play a soft-ball game out near the air field. The Air Base was in the middle of nowhere, at any point outside the base proper you could look in any direction and see nothing; no mountains, no trees, nothing but flat earth. An amazing sight for me to see, coming from New Jersey.
One of the guys came up to me and said, "Hey, Fabian, bet you Ten Dollars I can knock you down right where you stand without touching you." Knowing it's got to be some kind of trick I said, "Forget the bet, what's the trick?"
"Just stand there and concentrate looking at the horizon line," he said. So I did.
Within a minute I fell down on my back, grabbing at grass, trying to keep from falling off the earth. That was my first and only experience with, "Vertigo," a truly frightening feeling.
It took me about ten minutes to recover from it. Everybody laughed, and then we chose sides and played the game.
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