 Listen, baby, I steal, extort, and sell drugs. You had to expect me to have unconventional views on relationships. 
This photo cover for David Williams' juvie delinquent novel Basement Gang is one we've admired for years. Enticed by its colors and out-of-focus foreground figure, and finally finding it at a good price, we snagged a copy. Originally published in 1953 by Complete Novel Magazine, with the above edition coming the same year from Intimate Novels, it's a cautionary tale told in detailed if clinical style following Bronx born Kathie Melton, who out of boredom dumps her solid boyfriend Hank, is lured through the forbidden doorway of the local underground club Comets, and is soon drunk, drugged, and de-virginized to the limits of her ripe young body. Kathie is willing to repeatedly indulge in all these activities, but she hates that the hepcats with whom she's hooked up are criminals. Hey, sitting around being disaffected all day requires some sort of funding. Kathie rolls with the life of petty crime, however when a romantic rival sets her up to be beaten and (almost) raped by a dangerous thug, the square life starts to look good again. But leaving Comets and co. isn't simple. As juvenile delinquent fiction goes, Williams did a good job with this one, even if his prose doesn't invite deep emotional involvement. We think it was his only novel, but just in case we'll keep our eyes open for more.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1953—Hemingway Wins Pulitzer
American author Ernest Hemingway, who had already written such literary classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 1970—Mass Shooting at Kent State
In the U.S., Ohio National Guard troops, who had been sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Some of the students had been protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia, but others had been walking nearby or observing from a distance. The incident triggered a mass protest of four million college students nationwide, and eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury, but charges against all of them were eventually dismissed. 2003—Suzy Parker Dies
American model and actress Suzy Parker, who appeared the films Funny Face and Kiss Them for Me, was the first model to earn more than $100,000 a year, and who was a favorite target of the mid-century tabloids, dies at home in Montecito, California, surrounded by family friends, after electing to discontinue dialysis treatments. 1920—Negro National Baseball League Debuts
The first game of Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana. The league, one of several that would be formed, was composed of The Chicago American Giants, The Detroit Stars, The Kansas City Monarchs, The Indianapolis ABCs, The St. Louis Giants, The Cuban Stars, The Dayton Marcos, and The Chicago Giants. 1955—Williams Wins Pulitzer
American playwright Tennessee Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his controversial play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which tells the story of a southern family in crisis, explicitly deals with alcoholism, and contains a veiled subtext concerning homosexuality in southern society. In 1958 the play becomes a motion picture starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.
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