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| I tried to make this picture of Bill Wood look Christmasy. Did I succeed? |
The second installment of this series is going to be a lot shorter and less elaborate than the first. That's the way these pop culture advent calendars usually work. Some days, you'll get something substantial. Other days, not so much. If you're working your way through a Lego advent calendar, for instance, you shouldn't expect to find a minifig behind every door. That wouldn't be cost-effective. So instead, you get a few minifigs scattered throughout the month, and in between, you get little accessories. Like maybe one day, you'll get a nice hat for your minifig.
Well, today's article is a Lego hat.
Remember Howard William "Bill" Wood (1926-1986), Ed Wood's little brother? The one who made a career out of the military but didn't live to see age 60? I wrote a whole article about him back in January 2021. At the time, I said I didn't even have a photograph of the man, but when I was looking through my archives for material for this project, I found that wasn't true. In fact, I do have a news clipping from the November 17, 1955 edition of The Poughkeepsie Journal that includes a picture of Bill. When I stumbled upon it, I hastily added it to my original article. But I thought I'd post it here, too, so more people could see it.
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| Ed Wood's brother, Bill, at age 29 in 1955. |
He looks an awful lot like Eddie, doesn't he? Actually, he looks like Ed Wood crossed with Howard McNear, the actor who played Floyd the barber on The Andy Griffith Show. Bill would have been 29 years old at the time this picture was taken, but he somehow looks substantially older. Maybe everyone looked older back then. He was already a husband and father by then, but the army, in its infinite wisdom, had him futzing around with airplanes in Canada.