ZOOM! ZAP!! ZOWEE!!!: The Flash Gordon Weekend

A new tradition has sprung up in the village of Swanton the past few years. Several concerned ladies of this small town have gotten together to lend financial support to the Swanton Public Library by hosting a creative fundraiser called: "The Table of Contents". This is held at Valleywood Country Club in their large ballroom during an early weekend in November.

The idea is that 19 or 20 teams, all avid bookreaders, choose a particular book title as their theme and then decorate a large round banquet table with that theme. The decorating commences on Friday and the official dinner/brunch and viewing is held that Sunday noon. Tickets are sold well in advance, of course, and all net proceeds are donated to the library.

I should also mention that this isn't just a ladies' book club function because menfolk are also volunteers (draftees?) who act as waiters for the occasion. Each table has a waiter "tip" dish to which all attendees are expected to contribute generously. These "tips" are donated to the library as well.

The Table of Contents has become a premier early autumn social event in Swanton and the benefit to our library has risen to the five-figure range thus far.

For the 2014 event I was invited by one of the founding ladies, Jeri McNeill, to help decorate her table... and was even allowed to pick the book theme I wished to portray. I quickly corrupted the definition of "book" to include comic books and siezed upon "Flash Gordon" as my theme.

Having lived my life as a classic case of arrested adolescence besotted with science fiction and comic books, I had plenty of source material to draw upon! Add to that my quirky hobby of designing and crafting my own homemade rayguns, it is easy to understand that my main obstacle was the limited space I had to work with. Indeed, my display of rayguns topped off by my Mongo Space Spire reached to the ceiling of the ballroom!

The event also provided the perfect occasion for me to don my own Flash Gordon outfit and, once again, live the geeky dream! Alas! When the tables were judged, I won no awards. But, as one of my guests observed, if there had been men or kids on the awards committee, I would've gotten first place!