Robert E. Howard fan and scholar Bill Cavalier to be honored at Cross Plains celebration

Brian Bethel | Abilene

It was in 1966 when Bill Cavalier, guest of honor at this year’s Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains on June 8 and 9, first encountered the works of the West Texas pulp fiction writer.

It began with a war of sorts, a challenge against a man who fought like a beast and a man who was master over them.

Long a fan of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan, Cavalier, who currently lives in Michigan City, Indiana, had enjoyed what was a Burroughs “boom” in the early 1960s.

But such fortune had begun to cost him dearly.

“His (Burroughs') stories appeared everywhere,” Cavalier recalled, noting that he had to “judiciously spend my 12-cent comic book money on the more expensive 40-cent paperbacks.”

But it was worth it to get his fill of the adventures of John Clayton II, Earl of Greystoke, turned through the twists of destiny into the Lord of the Apes.

One day, while perusing the paperback shelves at the Wilco Food Store in Gary, Indiana, Cavalier spied a character with some resemblance to Tarzan on the cover of a new book.

“It was almost as if this book leaped off that shelf into my hands,” he said.

The title was “Conan The Adventurer,” and on the front, it portrayed a tanned, muscular, “mean-looking feller” dressed in shorts and holding the pommel of a sword stuck into a pile of corpses, Cavalier said.

“Holy smokes, what was this all about?” was his remembered reaction.

“And to top it off, there was a naked babe glommed on to his leg!" he said. "Sensory overload for a 16-year-old!”

The cover in question proclaimed Conan as “The World’s Greatest Fantasy Hero.”

Bold words indeed.

“I took a chance and bought it," Cavalier recalled, the final push coming when he read inside that Howard feller was being compared to his beloved Burroughs.

And thus began a tale that spiraled out on its own, one that turned Cavalier into a Howard scholar, as well as a deep lover of the man’s fiction.

Beyond any teenaged prurient interests, Cavalier found the Conan character to be a wondrous, wandering lone hero with his own moral code – rough but just.

It didn’t hurt, of course that within those tales were swords and magic spells and beautiful women and fantastic adventures.

“I was hooked and bought all the Lancer editions, the early Marvel Conan comics and then in the 1970’s the Howard Boom began,” Cavalier said.

Humble Beginnings

Born in Peaster, and living much of his life in Cross Plains, Howard died June 11, 1936, at age 30, leaving behind a tremendous corpus of short stories, poems and fragments.

His stories and poems were published in iconic magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, such as “Weird Tales” and “Argosy.”

Today, his literary, cultural, and even to some extent spiritual legacy lives on in books, games, comics, and scholarly examinations of his creations.

More: Diggin' on Howard: Experts mine mysteries in Conan the Barbarian author's back yard

More: 'Stygian darkness' protected Cross Plains author's cellar artifacts

The first story reprinted in “Conan the Adventurer” is “The People of the Black Circle,” Cavalier recalled.

“For me, there was no better way to be introduced to REH,” Cavalier said. “There was something gripping about Howard’s writing style – how he could use an economy of words put together in a way that would lead the reader to conjure the imagery in their mind.”

Howard's style is actually fairly complex, and he knew how to string words together "just right to give you just what you need to see the story in your head," Cavalier said.

“He got more mileage out of ‘red’ and ‘black’ than any other author I’ve encountered," he said.

As Howard began being rediscovered in earnest, books of his stories were published, more comics and fanzines appeared and Howard entered into pop culture.

Howard’s Conan stories, for example, were a huge influence on the 1974 creation of Dungeons & Dragons, as admitted by the game’s designers.

Around the time the film "Conan the Barbarian," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was announced, Cavalier formally entered Howard fandom with an article in the Sword & Sorcery fanzine AMRA in 1981.

After the movie was released and Howard went even more mainstream, Cavalier picked up Don Herron’s “The Dark Barbarian,” a critical anthology about Howard’s writing.

From that book, he learned of REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, an amateur press association where fans write their own personal fanzines collected and shared with fellow contributors under the REHupa banner.

“After joining REHupa, I got to know Rusty Burke and in 1986 joined him and nine others for a trip to Cross Plains, where Howard lived and worked,” Cavalier said.

After the residents of Cross Plains realized that their town was an important part of the Howard canon, it took a few years to get the former home of Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard and Hester Howard, Robert E. Howard's parents, turned into a museum.

Now, all who enjoy the writings of Howard can come and see where he lived and worked, Cavalier said, and what was meant to be a one-time visit has turned into an annual event for himself and many others.

“I thought that the generosity that was shown to me by Cross Plains was a damn good thing to share, given the fact that my involvement with REH helped me through some tough times,” he said, “Sharing those thoughts and feelings about an artists’ work is the core of what we do at Howard Days.”

The Whole Wide World

These days, Howard fans worldwide come to listen to forums, trade swap meet items, attend awards ceremonies, take bus tours, and see landmarks vital to Howard’s life and writing process.

But the early days of both Howard Fandom and Howard Days in Cross Plains were pretty tough, Cavalier said.

“It was all about phone calls, bi-monthly fanzines, and letters — and physically making a journey,” he said.

The powderkeg that blew up Howard fandom sky-high was the Internet.

“In the early 90’s, interest and involvement with REH literally exploded around the world!” Cavalier recalled. “Howard fans were everywhere and Conan became an iconic fictional character alongside Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Dracula, ad infinitum!”

By the late 1990’s, the interest in Howard was such that core fans knew it was time to get all the original Howard text available to everyone.

Wandering Star Books began publishing pure text Howard, work carried on by Del Rey Books.

“And now the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press is finishing the task of getting everything that Howard wrote into print,” Cavalier said.

While often credited as being the creator of the modern-day Sword & Sorcery fiction genre, Howard wrote heroic fantasy, westerns, boxing, oriental, detective, pirate, historical fiction and much more from his Underwood No.5 typewriter.

“That Howard’s work today is seen as the benchmark for those who followed in the fantasy and adventure genres could indeed be his legacy,” he said. “That he created a world-known character and stories of ages undreamed of out of the dry Texas dust is what I (personally) most admire about Robert E. Howard.”

If you go

What: Robert E. Howard Days

Where: Cross Plains

When: June 8-9

Activities: Panel discussions, most relating to fans who discovered Howard’s writings as teenagers and went on to become deeply involved in his wide range of stories, will be at the First United Methodist Church, 1000 N. Main.

A June 8 silent auction and dinner will be at the Family Life Center of the Baptist Church and other events are scheduled at the Robert E. Howard Museum grounds.

Tickets for the June 9 chicken fried steak dinner can be purchased by mailing $15 to Project Pride via PayPal at projpride@yahoo.com, or PO Box 534, Cross Plains, 76443. Deadline for dinner reservations is Saturday.

More information: For a full list of panels and times for other activities, visit howarddays.com. For more information, call 254-725-4993 or 254-725-6562.