Midwestcon 6

Midwestcon 6 was a relaxacon held June 11–12, 1955, at the Hotel Ingalls and the Fountain Lodge Motel in Bellefontaine, OH. It was run by C. L. Barrett, Don Ford, Lou Tabakow, Roy Lavender and Stan Skirvin. More than 100 fans attended.

It was held in the same hotel as Midwestcon 5, where the famous door incident took place, and advertised "Same hotel...It's old & has flimsy doors, In fact one room doesn't even have a door."

Pete Royle wrote, in a loc to Triode 4:

Bellefontaine, as I believe you all know by now, is a railroad town, population 10,000 odd (some very odd) located near a resort area. Two decrepit hotels (( I see, it's a kind of Last Resort area)) and two motels are used as fannish headquarters, plus Doc Barrett’s house in town and (at times) his home at the lake, 10 miles away. The result is that the conven­tion depends on auto cavalcades to move from one spot to another, and arran­ging a dinner gathering takes several hours and the services of a police escort. This year the motel on the outskirts of town was occupied completely by Disorganized Fandom, and it was here that the late hour party activ­ity occured. An oversize bash also took place at Doc Barrett’s one evening. But everything was impromptu, including the two programme sessions and the after-banquet speeches. It was more on the nature of an endless gabfest.

Among the attendees were Fern Tucker, Margeret Ford, Evelyn Barrett, Jeanie Smith, Leigh Brackett, Harriet Fellas, Roberta Collins, Phyllis Scott, Evelyn Paige Gold, Bea Mahaffey, Jean Bogert, Deirce Archer, Jean Carroll, Noreen Falasca, Pat Pattersen Lyons, Reta Grossman, Fran Lipton, Marion Mallinger, DeeDee Lavender, Honey Wood, Nancy Shapiro, plus Mrs. Skirvin, Mrs. Tabakow, and the Bat.

There were also a few men present but I never did get around to seeing them....

Additional attendees included Robert Bloch, Buck Coulson, Howard DeVore, Harlan Ellison, Joe Gibson, Edmond Hamilton, Bill Grant, Marty Greenberg, Lynn Hickman, Dave Kyle, Sam Moskowitz, Rog Phillips, Larry Shaw, E. E. Smith and Bob Tucker.

In other events, Buck Coulson recalled in Mimosa 13:

Eventually, Midwestcon had to leave Bellefontaine as well. This came the year after a group of fans went down to the center of town for some reason, and Harlan Ellison was inspired to auction off Lynn Hickman's pregnant wife on a street corner, with spirited bidding from the rest of us. Doc Barrett, who had been making most of the arrangements for the convention and who was a resident of Bellefontaine, reportedly announced, "I've got to live in this town!" The convention moved to the North Park Plaza hotel in Reading, a northern suburb of Cincinnati.

Conreport by Don Ford in Fantasy Times 228 (August 1955, p. 4).

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Midwestcon 5	Midwestcon	Midwestcon 7
	1955

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