Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 7

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Part One

Chapter 4: Danny Glick and Others

Sections 8-14

Sunrise: 6:52 AM

Sunset: 6:28 PM

The town’s latest resident, Richard Throckett Straker, goes shopping at Milt Crossen’s Agricultural Store. He makes quite the impression on the gaggle of old men who gather there daily to swap old stories and new gossip.

Meanwhile, Parkins Gillespie decides to do a bit of constable work. He visits Ben at his room at Eva’s and Straker at the Lot’s newest antiques emporium. Straker’s partner, a certain Mr. Kurt Barlow, is unfortunately on a buying trip in New York City. Later, Parkins takes what he finds in his interviews to the FBI.

As the telephone wires carry the news of the day back and forth from home to home, Danny Glick, who doctors thought was getting better, is found dead in his hospital room.

I like that one section of this chapter — number 13 — is made up entirely of a hospital report on Danny Glick. We get in the cold, rational language of the medical profession an overview of Danny condition. He seems normal. A lot of the tests given to him came back negative. He seems like he should be a healthy kid. Of course, we, the readers, really know the condition that Danny’s condition is in, don’t we?

Giving the reader this brief medical report is a nice touch because it foreshadows one of the problems the folks in the Lot are going to come up against as the events of the novel unfold. Their trust and reliance, either consciously or subconsciously, in the gifts of the rational, modern world leaves them open to the vampire infestation in their midst. Think back to the book’s prologue and the newspaper article about Jerusalem’s Lot that so disturbed the man and the boy. The people from the Lot that were interviewed are incapable of talking about their experiences, because the modern world does not allow for them. It’s like a blind spot in their understanding. And it’s in such blind spots that the vampires can hide and grow and spread.

As the novel progresses, we’ll see more of this rational/irrational dichotomy. As with any book, movie, or tv show that deals with the supernatural, we always come up against this battle between “This is really happening!” and “This can’t be happening!” Later in ‘Salem’s Lot, Ben will chide Susan about her reliance on “can’t” thinking. We know the drill. While reading novels like this one, we can’t help but be on the side of the irrational, no matter how rational we are in real life. More of us are skeptics than not, however. The vast majority of us would roll our eyes if told that a healthy boy’s illness is caused not by pernicious anemia but by bloodsuckers. That doesn’t stop us, however, from yelling at the tv while watching The X-Files, “Goddamit, Scully! Get with the program! It’s aliens!”

One of the bits of gossip that is passed around concerns Straker’s visit to Crossen’s. It isn’t Straker’s choice of ride, either. A nearly 40-year-old car on the roads isn’t out of the question. The notion of a man pulling up in a 1939 Packard (or was it a ’40?) is strange, but not so outré as to set tongues wagging. Giving Straker a Packard is a nice touch by King, though. The Packard Motor Car Company was one of the “Three P’s” of pre-Second World War America. Along with Peerless Motor Company and Pierce-Arrow, Packard was known for building high-quality luxury vehicles. Unfortunately, the post-war years were less kind and less profitable, and Packard went out of business at the end of the 1950s. In a way, the ’39 Packard (or was it a ’40?) pulling into the parking lot of Crossen’s is a little like the dead returning to life, like something rising from the grave again. As I said, it’s a nice touch.

No, the gossip that is on everyone’s lips is about the money that Straker passed in the store. After leaving with his box of dry goods and sundries tucked under his arm, Straker also leaves the men in the store agog at the $20 bill he paid with. The men all note that it is much bigger than an ordinary bill. One says that it’s a series E twenty. Later, over the telephone, someone says that money like it hadn’t been seen since the bank-runs of 1930. What are they talking about?

The twenty dollar bill as we know it today features a portrait of President Andrew Jackson on the front. Jackson’s picture, however, was not in place on the Federal Reserve Note until 1928. Before that, the $20 bill featured a picture of Grover Cleveland and was printed in a large-note format. These types of bills were 50% larger than the money we use today. They were affectionately known as “horse blankets” because of their size. The printing of bills of this size was discontinued after 1929.

Again, this is a nice touch by King. Straker is using discontinued money. He is resurrecting a  dead currency, so to speak.

Let’s call it quit for today, kiddies. Tomorrow we will pick back up with Part 1, Chapter 5: Ben (II). It’s about 20 pages of reading. Now that Danny Glick has passed away, events are going to start coming at us faster. Danny’s death is, we will see, the first domino to fall. Who will be next? We will just have to wait in see.

In the meantime, Blog-o-weeners, rest up, don’t take any wooden nickels — or large-format bank notes, for that matter — and remember…