E. L. Moore in Good Old Days

Over the summer I was pleased to find that E. L. Moore had published two stories of his childhood memories in Good Old Days magazine. 

While going through his files I found a letter dated 5 October 1977 from Tower Press, the publishers of Good Old Days and Looking Back magazine, offering him $8 for a story he submitted called A Tale of Fox and Pop. The magazines are still in business, so I contacted them to see if they had published the story since it wasn’t in E. L. Moore’s files.

Let me say that the editor was very helpful and friendly, and she went all out and found two other E. L. Moore authored stories they had published even though she couldn’t find anything about A Tale of Fox and Pop. 

It turns out that Good Old Days magazine published two E. L. Moore stories in 1979: Ants in my pants in the April issue, and Early Century Field Day in May. Although the editor sent me scans so I could confirm their authorship, I don’t have reprint permissions so I can’t post the stories here, but old copies of the magazines themselves may be for sale somewhere on the internet. However, I did update the E. L. Moore master article index to include those publications. If you do have the chance to read these two stories, you’ll see that he was a better writer than was conveyed in his is model railroad publications.

A Tale of Fox and Pop might have been published as the editor couldn’t confirm anything about the article. She also informed me that there wasn’t a digital index that goes back that far, so there could be other E. L. Moore stories published in those magazines still to be discovered.

And while we’re on the subject of E. L. Moore’s non-model railroad publications, 

Hi Sport . . . 

The letterhead is by way of introducing our new craft magazine (quarterly) that comes out Sept. 14th. Maybe you can dream up an opus on woodworking: How to woodburn an authentic damn Yankee eagle, or something.

That was an excerpt from a letter Hal Carstens sent to E. L. Moore on 28 June 1967 typed on Creative Crafts letterhead. I got all curious to see if E. L. Moore ever did publish in Creative Crafts, and after some investigation, I think the answer is, probably not.

Some internet searching turned up a partial Creative Crafts index at Leigh’s Needlework  & Craft Bibliography. I contacted Leigh with my question about possible E. L. Moore articles, and she went all out to investigate. Unfortunately her tremendous efforts didn’t find anything, and I’m more-or-less convinced that E. L. Moore didn’t have anything published in Creative Crafts.

Mr. Moore might have published in other non-model railroad magazines, so there might still be some surprises still to come. If you find any, please let me know.