BUILT TO LAST

By the end of November, The Erection Set arrived back on Jacksonville public library shelves. Only one member of the Board of Library Trustees voted against reinstating Spillane’s novel. Roy Lord, vice president of the Murray Hill branch of Barnett Bank, said reading the book “brought a different feeling in my mind. It was most repulsive. I have never had such an experience in all my life.”

Folks asked Justice of the Peace Morton Kesler to issue a warrant for librarian Harry Brinton’s arrest for peddling obscenity, meaning Spillane’s book, to minors. Folks called the public library system “smut hawkers.” Kesler refused.

When Mickey Spillane came back to Jacksonville in September 1973 as the featured speaker at the Gator Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association at Strickland’s Town House Restaurant on Philips Highway, he led with the question, “Getting ‘Banned in Boston’ means prestige, but whoever heard of getting banned in Jacksonville, Florida before it happened to me?”

Spillane called Folks “my ole adversary” and said he wanted to thank him for helping out with book sales. “I’d be happy to do it again when my new book, The Last Cop Out, comes out,” Spillane said. “I’m investigating to see if I can get Warren to do a repeat performance.” u