Curtis F. Myers is an incredibly tough Lovecraft correspondent to crack. This is the best I can come up with. What we have to work with is…
“Curtis F. Myers, 70 Clifton Ave, Clifton NJ”
There is a 70 Clifton Ave but no online record for it except some OCR false-positives for the small startup firm Electronic Mechanics, Inc. which was actually a mile away at “70 Clifton Blvd.”, located there from 1935 until around 1945/6. One interesting possibility is that Barlow may have mistranscribed “Ave” from Lovecraft’s “Blv”. That’s a faint line of enquiry, but one worth pursuing.
A small startup electronics company was at that address, developing new types of radio components using the mineral mica: “Electronic Mechanics, Inc., 70 Clifton Blvd, Clifton, N.J.” Delbert E. Replogle was founder and president of Electronic Mechanics Inc. Communications (Vol.25, p.98) reported in 1945…
“ELECTRONIC MECHANICS CELEBRATES 10th. ANNIVERSARY. Electronic Mechanics, Inc., Clifton Blvd., Clifton, New Jersey, is now celebrating its tenth anniversary.”
This would mean the firm was established 1935. Official documents do indeed say it was formed 20th September 1935. So it was a small startup, and it was…
“engaged in manufacturing and machining insulating materials composed of mica and glass.” […] “Early in 1938 it became apparent that the New York company required expanded working quarters”
The firm then moved its operation to a factory in Paterson, although seems to have kept its offices at 70 Clifton Blvd. until the mid/late 1940s. The firm made a bundle of money on war contracts, but didn’t pay enough tax and so was pursued by the government for back taxes in 1950. It had made some key buyout purchases in the late 1940s, and became Molecular Dielectrics in a merger in the early 1960s. We also get Replogle’s name from a Quaker journal: “Delbert E. Replogle, Ridgewood, N. J., President of Electronic Mechanics, Inc.” is listed in the Friends Journal, 15th Feb 1961.
The firm was working with bonding mica to glass (to make glass-bonded mica ceramic insulation for radio and radar units, branded until 1942 as Mycalite then renamed Mykroy). So one wonders if they drew on the expertise of Morton, Lovecraft’s friend and mineralogist expert. Morton was only a few miles away at the Paterson Museum.
The American Institute of Electrical Engineers Yearbook of 1944 has one “Shima, Rindgh” giving the “70 Clifton Blvd” address as his address “for mail”, while he lived at an address elsewhere. So Replogle was obviously happy for his workers to get mail there.
So do we have any likely candidates who could have been working there? Kenneth W. Faig Jr. suggests in the Lovecraft Annual 2012 a Curtis F. Myers (b. 1897) as the likely candidate Lovecraft correspondent. He is recorded on the 1930 census at 31 Harrison Place, Clifton N.J. (one block from Clifton Av., one mile from 70 Clifton Blvd.), working as a machinist in a woolen mill. It’s perhaps not too much of a long shot to suggest that this Myers may have made a move to being a machinist in a hot new local startup in 1935, working with mineral/glass fibres. Working with animal fibres and working with mineral/glass fibres apparently requires similar skills.
If that was him, then quite how he came to know Lovecraft is still a mystery. Electronic Mechanics, Inc. were manufacturers not retailers, so it’s unlikely Lovecraft was writing to them to get radio spares (even he could have afforded them in 1936/7, when he could barely afford food). My hunch would be that Myers was simply a fan of weird fiction who had written to Lovecraft, and that Lovecraft had kindly written back. There is no online trace of this Myers as any kind of author or fan writer.
Excellent suggestion on Myers. I hope you will consider submitting “Additions and Corrections for Lovecraft’s 1937 Diary” for consideration for Lovecraft Annual. You have found some wonderful RISD connections for Frederick Allen Wesley & I wonder if you will find some additional connections for Thomas Stuart Evans (1885-1940) as well. Wesley & Evans were the two Providence address owners in the 1937 diary whom I did not recognize.
I had a good look for Thomas S. Evans, but can’t dig up anything. He was an actor, sometime in New York, from 1910-c.1930? Actors leave less traces than artists and writers. If he was an actor for that long in the New York theatre world, I’d suspect he might have had given himself a more distinctive and less Welsh stage name?
My guess would be that there was a link between one of Lovecraft’s aunts, and the flower-growing elderly female relative of Thomas S. Evans (Anna L. Evans, who does show up in the record, was a member of national iris and rose growing societies of the 1930s and 40s). If Lovecraft accompanied his aunt on a trip to visit with Anna L. Evans, he would have been thrown into company with her actor son Thomas. Or Thomas may have brought Anna L. Evans to visit with one of Lovecraft’s aunts, and then Lovecraft entertained him while the ladies chatted. In the letters you quote Lovecraft sounds a bit tepid about him.