In 1972, I had no concept of cool. I walked the halls of Sarah Scott Junior High in polyester bells and perilously tall shoes my Mom bought me at a yard sale in her own good-hearted attempt to help me achieve coolness.It didn’t work. May have had something to do with the alto sax, the high honor roll listing in the Terre Haute Star, and the 30 extra pounds. 

Then I had a revelation, at about 7 p.m. one Saturday night, watching the NBC Saturday Night World Premiere Movie. One of those great double-feature pilotfests the networks used to run eons before reality shows forced me to start spending my Augusts outdoors (yeesh) or reading (yoicks). Nifty detectives with sometimes nifty gimmicks plying their trade for 90 reasonably absorbing minutes. Most of these guys never got to work another case in public; a few made it to the majors. 

I’d seen this James Garner guy in a few afternoon movies, the kind of rugged, smartass guy I’d have liked to have been in a parallel universe, so I settled down one Saturday night to watch the latest 90-minute, one-night wonder, The Rockford Files (as opposed to working on my Nobel Prize thesis). The square-jawed, sports-jacketed P.I. was a penny-pinching, punch-ducking ex-con who checked your financial records before taking your case. He lived in a trailer on the beach, and he didn’t mind using a roll of quarters to even the odds with some professional hardcase. 

Now, that was cool. Joe Mannix hit the bad guys with a hard right; Jim Rockford deflected punches with dry quips. Shaft was one ba-a-a-ad muthah (shut your mouth!) in his leather duster; Jimbo’s checked sportscoat concealed an arsenal of burglar’s picks and bogus credentials for the likes of the retentive insurance bureaucrat Jim Taggart and the larger-than-Oklahoma oilman Jimmy Joe Meeker. Jim was a private eye for us soft-but-cynical guys, a hero for chubby, newspaper-carrying band members. 

Over the next several years, while others were frittering away their time playing football and basketball and partying and making out (sigh), I was glued to the family Magnavox, watching Rockford spar with Rocky, Dennis, Angel, and those twin nemeses of the working private cop – Chapman and Diehl. Jim unearthed missing husbands and daughters, untangled (and often constructed) complex scams, double-dealed career felons and pathological mobsters, and rassled license branch clerks and bartenders with exasperated aplomb. He managed to hold his own amid a crowded field of L.A. shamuses: Ex-parole agent and dapper grifter Marcus Hayes/O’Brien; the bombastically dyspeptic Vern St. Cloud; the enthusiastically bumbling amateur eye Fred Beamer; the enthusiastically adept amateur Richie Brockelman; and the furiously infallible Lance White (who later moved to Hawaii and acquired a borrowed Ferrari and half a clue). 

Ok, The Rockford Files may not have conferred coolness on me: My smart mouth never extricated me from academic trouble or social embarrassment (or in one case, a pop in the chops from a frat boy at the local pizza buffet), and I wound up with a spoiled-egg yellow Corolla rather than a sleek gold Firebird. But Jim Rockford taught me an important life lesson: Keep your cool quietly, and live to fight (or not) another day. 

At this writing, it’s uncertain whether Jim will take another small-screen case. I’d like to think he’s gone fishing, or walking the beach at dusk with Rita or Megan or Beth. But I hope to keep alive at least the spirit of the coolest eye ever through this collection of new files. Fanfic offers us the opportunity to take our heroes where they’ve never gone before or merely travel down some familiar highways. I hope you’ll enjoy these stories, and if you get it in mind to take to the keyboard and write one of your own, send it to me and help keep James Scott Rockford in beer and car repair money. 

Now, pop in the Post/Carpenter cassette, leave your phone on the trusty answering machine, and, to paraphrase us kids of the ‘70s, read on!

MORE ROCKFIC

Two Chickies
'70s Fanfiction
"Mafia Mixup" - Angel drags Jim into a fight for his life.

Remington Steele Fanfic
"Steele Bars and White Lace" - Jim Rockford and Lt. Columbo join forces with dashing '70s private eye Remington Steele to catch the White Lace Slasher.