Speaking of Frank M. Robinson, as I was yesterday, his novel The Power was one of the books that Wayne Busbea’s mom gave me in her big box of science fiction treasures when I was thirteen. I really wish I remembered what her name was.

I no longer have that book. I think I donated it to the Richland Library with a bunch of other books when I finally moved away from Richland in 1977.

The only thing I really remember about it is that it was prefaced with this silly bit:

You remind me of a man.

What man?

The man with the power.

What power?

The power of hoo-doo.

Hoo-doo?

You do!

Do what?

Remind me of a man.

What man?

The man with the power… 

—from The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

Read or hear that one time and you can’t forget it. I’ve tried.

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer was a 1947 screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Shirley Temple.

The Philadelphia TV station WCAU ran a week-long festival of Shirley Temple movies one time in the early 1960s, culminating in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and I remember nothing about that movie except that Shirley Temple as a teen was no longer as cute as she had been as a five year old.