A Toast to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Adam Presswood
My father was the third oldest of either ten or eleven children. I never remember. There’s a good reason for that. My father’s family situation was so abusive and horrible that he did his best to get as far from any of his family as he could after he turned eighteen. Apart from one, very beloved maternal aunt, he simply didn’t remain in touch with his family. He married my mother when he was twenty-one and she was eighteen. In terms of family, this was a step up. Still, the instinct to put distance between himself and large segments of the family was strong in my father, and our family of six was often an island unto itself.
What, you might justifiably ask, does any of this have to do with Conan Doyle? Well, the simple truth was, at least at that time in my life, that I often felt I was without a story. I didn’t know a lot of my extended family on my mother’s side, at least not well, and my father’s relatives were a giant question mark. Whenever other kids in the neighborhood or at school would ask about my roots, my heritage, my family history, and other such things, I was usually at a loss for something to say.
It was during this same time that I discovered I hated math. My fifth-grade teacher, however, caught on to the fact that I loved to read. She would thus bribe me to finish my math by letting me read a book from the shelf in the back of the room afterward. One such afternoon, I stumbled upon a YA version of "The Final Problem," my first encounter with Sherlock Holmes. I went home and told my mother all about it. Now, I don’t know whether she really believed what she told me, or if she just sensed that I needed something to hold onto. Regardless, she proceeded to tell me that I was related to Conan Doyle through my maternal grandfather’s mother.
Well, from that day forward I had a story. And you can bet that I told that story every chance I got, whether or not people understood the significance. Whenever anyone would ask about my family, I had my blood connection to Doyle to brag about. Unfortunately, after many decades of tellings and retellings, the story finally came to a bitter end when a dying aunt on my mother’s side of the family denied the tale and said it was the dumbest thing she had ever heard. I was by then a grown man, and I took the news with a stiff upper lip.
The point is, for nearly forty years I had a story when I otherwise would not have, and I had that story because of Conan Doyle. So, ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses and join me in a toast to the man who gave us all – THE STORY!
A Toast to the Villains
Stacey Bregenzer
To All the Villains of the Sherlock Holmes Canon:
from the worthy foe to the... not so worthy adversaries,
from the masterminds of criminal organization, the bank robbers, and the counterfeiters to the man catfishing his stepdaughter, the one injecting himself with monkey extract, and the thieves who lose their loot.
To Adler, Moran, and Milverton, but also to St. Clair with his twisted lip, Gilchrist the cheater, and Wilder, whose jealousy led him to a really stupid kidnapping.
And especially to those who got their just desserts, attacked by dogs, bitten by their “pet” snake, lost at sea, or even acquitted by Holmes and Watson’s kangaroo court.
Because they all gave Sherlock and Watson a mission, Sherlock a reason not to use drugs, and us a plot to still enjoy 100 years later.
We toast them all! Cheers!
