John Bernardy
SPORTS
Page 90-96: Football
Pages 90 and 91 present a picture spread across the middle of both pages. It is a high school yearbook photo of a football team with a list of names of those pictured. In regards to the writers adding personal touches, this photo is actually a genuine yearbook photo of Ken Scherer’s brother’s high school team.
Lines lead from 12 specific players in the team photo to their names and nicknames. The names include including Hank Jennings (the Lonesome End), Harry S. Truman (Quarterback, best completion record in the Tri-County area for two straight seasons), Thadiloniois “Toad” Barker (the roving defensive back), Ed “Big Ed” Hurley (stopped ‘em cold almost every time), and Tommy “the Hawk” Hill (Hero of the undefeated season). On the bottom, we get a list of all names pictured, and the margins have silly anecdotes about coach Bobo Hobson.
On pages 92 to 96, we get a breakdown of every game in the perfect season of ‘68, which would’ve been 23 years earlier. Five pages is a lot of real estate for any topic in this book. That’s quite the torch for a town to hold, especially when there’s no mention of today’s team. Thematically, this is another instance of being ruled by the past.
The season ended in victory when Hawk scores the final points on a ridiculously long fluke play. Ed Hurley said “the best thing in our lives, and we did it together.”
This would’ve been a fluff piece except for how Secret History of Twin Peaks changed all that. Much like how the Packards and Martells arrived in town in reverse order, we have some changes:
- The SHoTP team is the Lumberjacks. Here—and in Season 2—we have Steeplejacks.
- Here, the final play is a positive one performed by Hawk, culminating in a perfect season the town can’t stop celebrating.
- In SHoTP, the final play is a negative one as Hank Jennings intentionally throws the game, turning an otherwise glorious season into a trauma veiled in conspiracy the town can’t come to grips with. The one that got away.
FASHION
Pages 97-99: What to Wear
Page 97 seems to be included so the book could include “Mr. Richard Tremayne.” Though there’s no bio for him, the margin does contain something: The “Horne’s” logo in art deco font, which is quite classy.
Pages 98 and 99 include alternatives to Horne’s Department store: the utilitarian Ed Strimble’s Worker’s Warehouse, and a place that focuses on art and jewelry called Carlson’s Odd Shop.
I love the use of promo shots by Paula Shimatsu-u being credited as “locals”:
- Lynch and Frost, outside the sheriff station, conversing while working on the pilot.
- Dana Ashbrook (arms crossed and head held pompously high) and James Marshall (hands tucked in leather jacket and cheeks sucked in Zoolander style) flanking a totem pole looking serious.
Page 99: Furniture
The bottom half of page 99 is about the eccentric selection of local furniture. I’m curious if the two selections pictured were some props that Lynch built himself. At a minimum, they had to have caught his eye.
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP
Pages 100-101: Where To Worship
Pages 100 and 101 list places of worship. We learn:
- The Palmers, Briggs, and Jennings are Lutheran.
- The Hurleys, Pulaskis, and Packards are Catholic.
- The Haywards and Hornes are Episcopalian.
- The Theosophist Society notes appearances from Pete Martell, the Log Lady, and Agent Cooper.
There’s finally more listed about the Circulars (unmentioned since the Owl Cave entry) in the page 101 margin. It’s a tribe of “perhaps 50 to 62 members” who believe in the circular nature of existence, and also eating the flesh of fellow humans “to assume nobler aspects of their victims.” So strange.
I like page 100’s margin feature better: an illustration of a stag head with a cross of light between its antlers. It’s associated with St. Hubert, surprisingly a real thing.
TRANSPORTATION
Page 102: Transportation in Twin Peaks
Page 102 proves there’s little public transportation in the area—a bus that only stops in front of the Double R, or Tim & Tom’s Taxi-dermy (as long as you give them a day or two’s advance notice, they’ll be there).
Besides that, if you have a small private jet like John Justice Wheeler, you can use Unguin’s Air Force Base. The base is named after James Packard’s Lodge-adjacent wife from the town’s early days, a nice thematically-appropriate callback.
We get a picture of the sparse bus schedule, as well as a list in the margin of local radio stations. You can get country/western with a dash of All Things Considered, timber news and weather, old comedy programs, classic rock, bluegrass, CBC Radio Canada, and classical music. Yet again shut out is Angelo Badalamenti music we actually hear on the show.
TOWN LIFE
Page 103: Twin Peaks Gazette
Page 103 is a smaller version of the actual front page of Twin Peaks Gazette Volume 1, Number 1. There’s an actual order form at the bottom. I wish I’d paid the $29.95 back in the day to subscribe; I’d have a sweet Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department mug.
Pages 104-105: Switchboard Operator
Page 104 has a story about how rogue original phone operator McFarley O’Halloran arranged the town phone book alphabetically by first name. Wurman, in his Twin Peaks Unwrapped interview, said Reykjavik did their phone books that way and he thought that was quirky enough to use in Twin Peaks too.
Page 105 has a selection of those names as seen in the phone book, probably chosen for the repetitions of Roberts (10, plus one Roberta).
Page 106: Twin Peaks Timber Players
Page 106 is all about the local theater troupe, which was founded in the ‘70s by Sarah and Leland Palmer. The troupe puts on three plays a summer in the school gym.
Doc Hayward’s bio is in the margin, due to the fact that his actor Warren Frost did this kind of job in Minnesota when his son Mark was growing up. Where else was Warren Frost’s character going to feel more at home in the Access Guide?
Hayward’s bests include the Passion Play. His bio also lists that Will is an expert in euthanasia. I assume that detail isn’t there to say he’s some kind of killer, rather it’s probably a nuanced way to say the Doc knows many ways to show compassion.
Page 107: Black Lake Cemetery
This page is all about the place where Leland and Laura Palmer are laid to rest. It’s the only time Laura’s name is used in the Access Guide but I’m glad they found a way to do it.
Leland’s bio is in the margin. We find out he’s an expert on international corporate law, which is probably what Ben Horne loves him for.
Page 108: Twin Peaks Chamber of Commerce
Page 108 gives us a list of items and their dollar amounts the Twin Peaks government spends its money on. There’s a category for Membership (corporate, individual, and delinquent) and the quantity of each. Then a category for Income (Miss Twin Peaks brings in almost half the annual revenue), followed by a category on Expenses.
The town’s at a balance of -$422,318.00, but only due to a pending lawsuit from sack race injuries at the 4th of July picnic. A joke about the perils of litigiousness?
The other joke is how Night Time Security is otherwise known as Sparky the watchdog.
GOVERNMENT
Page 109: Proposed Prison Facility
There’s a blueprint on Page 109 for a proposed high-security prison. Even back in 1991, the for-profit prison system has been on the mind of at least Mark Frost. I used to be so confused why this page was included, especially on the page with Harry Truman’s margin bio, but then it returns in a fully-realized way within The Final Dossier.
Who made this prison’s plans? DLMF Creations (read that as David Lynch Mark Frost). The page says a majority of council members shoot it down every year. “Sheriff Truman remains on the fence about the whole thing, but Ben Horne recognizes a business opportunity when he sees one.”
At the time, I bet the fight for this prison was floated as a possible replacement for the Ghostwood Development Project storyline back when the original Season 3 was being pre-planned. But today we know for sure that this now operates as foreshadowing for Ben Horne’s Final Dossier predicament.
As far as Harry’s margin bio goes, he’s fond of oriental dishes (another terrible pun, that hasn’t aged well), Wagon Wheel Doughnuts, and the Passion Play.
Page 110: Unguin Field Observatory
Page 110 is a reproduction of letterhead from the Twin Peaks Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It contained a draft of what they wanted to include in the Access Guide and was sent to Garland Briggs for approval. Instead of a standard reply, he sent it back to them with all the classified information blacked out. What was left? Six words, at random places on the page. They are “nobody,” “knows,” “the,” trouble,” “we’ve,” “caused.”
This is not only the last official story-related page of the book, but it’s also a nice way to tie back to the book’s beginning. The observatory’s abbreviation is UFO, and it is also named after the first Lodge-adjacent settler. It’s a nice symmetry to tie Unguin to Briggs’ current Blue Book-adjacent work.
It’s a shame the Observatory was repurposed into Listening Post Alpha for The Secret History of Twin Peaks, but with the books’ adversarial relationship being what it is, it’s par for the course.
Page 111: Credits
The top half of Page 111 is the list of people who worked on the Access Guide. Lynch, Frost, and Wurman are listed at the top. We get Scherer listed as the COO of Lynch/Frost Productions. We also get a list of Writers: Gregg Almquist and Lise Friedman (who appear to work for Access Press), and Twin Peaks writers Tricia Brock, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels.
Then there’s a category for Project Coordination, Art Direction, Research & Production, Special Thanks To, and a note of thanks to Snoqualmie and North Bend.
The bottom half of the page is an ad for the Star Pics Twin Peaks Collectible Card Art that begs us to “RELIVE THE MYSTERY!” The 76-card set must’ve also been released around this time.
Page 112: Welcome to the World of Twin Peaks
The final page of the book consists of a mail order form for Simon & Schuster, where you can “check here” in a green box for The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper My Life My Tapes and/or The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. Both are priced at $8.95.
The ad presumes you’re going to tear the page out of this guide, fold it up, put your address on the form, add a stamp, and send it out with the mail. Can you even imagine doing that?
The Inside Back Cover
The top third of the page is a map of highways. Twin Peaks is located just above and to the right of center, squarely between British Colombia, Washington and Montana. Missoula (home town of Lynch) appears, as does Yakima (home town of Kyle MacLachlan).
Below the map is a two-column chart of “Mileage, from Twin Peaks to…” A number of towns within Canada and the US are on the list, as well as odd ducks “Stockholm, Sweden” and “Hong Kong.”
Beneath that, the illustration of the town flower—the pine cone— returns next to the publisher info for “Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.”
The Back Cover
The map on the back is a painted, farther-away illustration of the map from the inside front cover. We can now see that Lynch Road goes beyond Low Town and dead-ends at Unguin’s Field Observatory.
We also learn that Glastonberry Grove and Owl Cave are near each other off of Blue Pine Mountain, a fair way away from the town proper, and that the train graveyard is due south of them.
The Great Northern is south of White Tail Mountain on this map, rather than in between the two mountains, so it doesn’t match with modern continuity. But as Peaks moves from one side of the state to the other, I’ll give this a pass.
Beyond this, the ISBN and bar code occupy the bottom of this otherwise green cover.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I didn’t have a copy of this book until 2011, and I had no idea what to expect from it when I bought it. What I got was a welcome, immersive Twin Peaks experience. I can’t help but adore this book.
Based on how this book was created while the team was simultaneously making Season 2 at the breakneck speed of network television production, I forgive its inconsistencies and applaud it for being way better than it had any right to be. A silly book of gags didn’t need to have the deep Twin Peaks core this book has at its center.
I thank everyone involved in its production for this unique way to feel what it’s like to live in Twin Peaks.
- Wrapped In Plastic Magazine, Volume 1, Number 9, Page 4
