In order to smoke at Bob Shade's Hallmark Worldwide Headquarters, one has to walk through the spooky backroom of the facility to go out the back doors. This backroom is where Bob keeps weird things from days gone by, or where he stores projects that need to hang about while glues or finishes dry.
Anyway, today Bob allowed me to take some iPhone pics of the haunted backroom of HWWH. Here we go, folks; please bear in mind that there are technical bits that I may not identify correctly. That's the price you pay.
The first picture shows a couple of unusual guitars. Top one is the acoustic guitar I used to watch Lorrie Collins playing on TV back in the 1950s; Bob is restoring it. It looks a lot better now than when I first saw it a few month ago.
The lower guitar is one that Joe Hall was building and Bob will one day complete. Nifty design. Both haunted, I would say, with cool vibes.
Next, as we wander through the haunted backroom, are bins full of little parts and dot markers and screws and pins and teeny saddle wheels. Bob has tons of these little items and lots of them are from Semie's or Joe Hall's old stock. There are stacks of magnets that Semie used to make pickups, but if you think Bob would let me play with the magnets and teeny metal parts, then you are mistaken. Bob said that these parts are from the mid-1960s. Surely haunted, right?
Last, as we approach the farthest reaches of the backroom near the doors, we see Semie Moseley's ancient belt sander, autographed on the stand by Bill Gruggett. Evidently Semie used this on his earliest builds, and, when the motor burned out and he was starting a new facility with bread from the Ventures, he gave this thing to Mr. Gruggett.
It, too, is, of course, haunted.
So that is a small tour of Bob Shade's haunted backroom. Is it any coincidence that the boy who was the basis for the Exorcist book and movies grew up just a couple of miles south of HWWH?
I think not.
--Jim
