This weekend was the twenty-seventh annual Dayton symposium on Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle,  which I’ve now missed for the third straight year. While I miss a lot of Sherlockian events that are even closer,  and rarely hit anything every single year as many a true blue Sherlockian does, missing Dayton always causes a special pang of Sherlockian sadness.

I really don’t suppose the Dayton symposium is really that different from Chicago’s Watsonian weekend,  “Autumn in Baker Street” out east,  or any other Sherlock Holmes weekend.  Regular attendees will sing the praises to those who haven’t been and occasionally complain amongst themselves that some aspect isn’t as good as it used to be. But I’ve been to Dayton more than the others, and like any Sherlockian function that one attends enough times, there is a special guilt that comes with missing it without a doctor’s excuse or a death in the family.

I mean, if one is a Sherlockian, one goes to Sherlockian functions, right? It’s very easy. You get in the car and drive there. At Dayton they even let you sign up that morning if you’d like – there’s not usually a cut-off. Of course, it is a six hour drive . . . .

Living across the back fence from the hermitage of a certain non-travelling  Baker Street Irregular,  there is occasionally a suspicion that I’ve become infected with the Rascally Lascar’s “one fixed point” syndrome.  He never was much of a traveller, but the lure of workshops organized around the likes of John Bennett Shaw or Michael Harrison, or an appearance of Jeremy Brett in St. Louis, used to draw him out of his cave on occasion.  But after a non-travelling streak of a few years, he even gave that up.

But if I were going to get infected with “one fixed point syndrome,” I think it would be soon counteracted by “It’s Don Hobbs!” inoculations.  My fellow columnist on this little site seems to show up on Sherlockians doorsteps across the country with a wild randomness. He says it’s his job, but I have to wonder if he’s not independently wealthy and using this mythical “job” as an excuse to zip all over the place and visit Sherlockian friends. Don always gets me into a car headed for some remote Sherlockian (or just book-shopping) destination, and I know that if I ever have a wacky adventure worthy of basing a movie on, it will start with Don showing up.

Even Hobbs, however, cannot fight the restrictions of limited days off work. This year I’m missing Dayton for a  very simple reason – no time left to take Friday off to drive over. Sure, I could have left at five on Friday and driven into the night, but with winter extending its run this year and the good Carter otherwise engaged, it seemed prudent not to.  And in that, I find some bit of guilt – I mean, if I was a really good Sherlockian I could have made it right?  I could have somehow squeezed out a Friday off work, instead of blowing those days on a non-Sherlockian whim to be mentioned in these pages sometime later. A truly dedicated Sherlockian could have pulled it off, couldn’t he? Ah, the guilt and shame!

So instead of writing about friends and fun in Dayton this week, I’m writing about staying at home and working on a script for another Sherlockian weekend that I’m hoping to have better luck with.  Ah, to be one of those lucky retired Sherlockians!

But to end this week’s column on an up-note, below you'll find the winning entry in this week’s impromptu Sherlock Peoria coloring contest, submitted by a young man known only as “the Cowboy.” It seems espcially fitting for us as it seems to be a Sherlockian putting another Sherlockian under the lens.

Your humble correspondent,

Brad Keefauver