May 1 was a red letter day for me. I turned thirty, finished writing Stationfall, and began the vacation that my wife and I had been planning for months and dreaming of for years: a multi-week cross-country drive. Boston to San Francisco. Eleven National Parks. The awesome beauty of the American West.
Betty, my wife, was able to get away from work for only two weeks, so I left a week earlier. She would be flying to Rapid City, SD, to meet me. In Pittsburgh, I picked up Jerry Wolper, former Infocommie and co-author of Cutthroats, who would be accompanying me through Minneapolis.
As we departed the Smoky City, the vast farmlands of Ohio beckoning, we decided to take a mild detour in order to visit that small town where Leather Goddesses of Phobos begins: Upper Sandusky, Ohio.
Although I had chosen Upper Sandusky as the starting point for Leather Goddesses, I'd never been there and knew virtually nothing about it. After I finished writing Leather Goddesses, I wondered if I would get letters from Infocom fans in Upper Sandusky, delighted to see their town immortalized in the annals of interactive fiction. After six months, no such letters had appeared.
We approached Upper Sandusky from the south. About five miles outside town, in the middle of the flat Ohio farmland, a large billboard assaulted our view. "Upper Sandusky," it read, "The place to be!" Below, the billboard listed the features of the town, adding, "No, it's not on Lake Erie!" This last line was presumably a reference to the larger and more well-known city, Sandusky. (Sandusky lies on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Sandusky River. Upper Sandusky is in central Ohio, fifty or a hundred miles upriver.)
Upper Sandusky, occupying a few square blocks around the intersection of routes 199 and 30, is a sleepy little town, reminiscent of Andy Griffith's Mayberry. We had two goals for the visit: seeing if there was a Joe's Bar in town (since that's where the opening scene of Leather Goddesses takes place), and finding a computer store.
While buying postcards at the old-fashioned drugstore/newsstand in the center of town, we borrowed a telephone directory (about the size of an InvisiClues booklet). First the bad news: of the four taverns in Upper Sandusky, none were named Joe's Bar. The good news: There WAS a computer store, on the outskirts of town -- a block away, that is.
It was now a few minutes past 5pm, and Computers Plus of Ohio had a sign on the door saying CLOSED. The door was unlocked, however, so (being good adventurers) we entered. It was a tiny place, with several computers, a magazine rack, and a small pegboard of software. Most of it was business software; there were only two entertainment products, and everything seemed sort of, well, sort of faded. A young woman appeared from the back room.
YW: I'm sorry, we're closed. I'm only here because I'm still backing up the computers.
SM: I'm not really a customer. We're from Infocom, and we were driving through town, and I was wondering what the Upper Sandusky computer store was like.
YW: Info...what?
SM: Infocom. I wrote a game that was set in Upper Sandusky...
YW: (trying to look interested) Oh, really...?
SM: Infocom. It's owned by Activision...
YW: Acti...what?
SM: Well, we'll be going now...
So, that was Upper Sandusky. No brass bands, no key from the Mayor, no banners proclaiming "Welcome, Author of Leather Goddesses of Phobos." Why does reality have to intrude on life so often?
[Editor's epilogue: Steve Meretzky wasn't the only one interested in Upper Sandusky, and don't expect this to be the last you've heard of Upper Sandusky. The story continues on a steamy afternoon when Mike Dornbrook was being interviewed for an article in The Wall Street Journal (6/11/87 pg. 27). Reporter Dave Sullivan, of the WSJ Pittsburgh office saw the article, and, like Steve, wanted to find out Upper Sandusky's response to Leather Goddesses. After doing heavy research into his story, he found, as did Steve, that Upper Sandusky had no response to Leather Goddesses.
Mayor Don Hall of Upper Sandusky found out about Infocom's hit game at this point, and was perplexed by the apathy. He contacted Debbie Baumann, of the Upper Sandusky Daily Chief-Union, and asked her to find out more about Infocom, Steve, and Leather Goddesses, and to write a story on it. Keep your eyes peeled.]
The Status Line; Fall 1987; page 8
Copyright (c) 1987 Infocom, Inc.