For most Americans, summer means time for beaches, Fourth of July fireworks, and barbecues. For most New York City residents, summer is also time for humidity, smelly garbage, and getting splattered with air conditioning sap. But for fans of the book and film The OzWizard of Oz, summer is time for the annual round of OzWizard of Oz conventions.

Most people are familiar with the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland. Some of us might vaguely recall having read the 1900 book by L. Frank Baum. What is less well known, however, was that L. Frank Baum wrote thirteen very popular sequels to The OzWizard of Oz. After his death, at least three different authors picked up where he'd left off for a total of forty books as well as many other unofficial sequels.

Growing up, I didn't know anyone else who loved the Oz books as much as I did, and when I found out there was an International OzWizard of Oz Fan Club, I signed up immediately. Every few months I looked forward to getting the group's newsletter, the Baum Bugle, in the mail, and reading about the annual conventions with their costume contests, Oz-themed presentations, and book-trading. And though I never attended a convention myself, I did enter an original Oz short story for a writing contest at one of them and was elated to learn (via the Baum Bugle) that I had won Honorable Mention. Inspired by this honor, I decided that my goal was to become a writer when I grew up and pick up where the Oz series had last left off.

As high school and college rolled around, my mind turned to other things and I forgot about the Oz books, and even let my OzWizard of Oz club membership lapse. That was until a couple of years ago, while visiting San Francisco during a book tour for my story collection The View from Stalin's Head. I'd stopped into the gay bookstore A Different Light, and happened to come across a Dover edition of The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum on sale. I picked it up and lost myself in it on the plane ride home to New York. Though the book isn't one of Baum's stronger efforts, it still had all of his dry wit and whimsical, almost anarchic plotting.

It was no coincidence that I'd found the book in a gay bookstore. As I learned from scholar Dee Michel, who's writing a book on the connection of gay men to Oz and has curated an exhibit called "Oz Books, the Movie, Gay Men, Oh My!", gay men have always identified with the Oz books and not just because of Judy Garland. It also has to do with the books' emphasis on tolerance and friendship, the moral that it's alright to be whoever you want to be as long as you're good-natured and don't hurt anyone.

I went on the web and found that not only did the club still exist, but also that it held three Oz conventions: "Winkies" out west in California, "Munchkins" in New Jersey, near Princeton, and the "Ozmopolitan", in Illinois, just outside of Chicago. After hearing that the Ozmopolitan was considered the main event, I decided to go to that one.

I was a little nervous to attend the convention by myself, but I quickly found that people were very friendly. The roughly seventy-five attendees tended to break down into a few different demographics: people who loved the movie or people who love the books, for example. There were kids, housewives, and gay men. There were fans of the books who were obsessed with the series down to its every detail, and serious collectors who were on the hunt for dolls, toys, and all manner of Oz memorabilia. Almost everyone knew each other from previous conventions and were eager to catch up on old news as well as to indulge in Oz-themed conversation, spiked with common slang like "the first 40" and "the first 14." (Some Oz fans, like myself, are purists who consider the first fourteen books in the series written by Baum himself far superior to his successors' efforts.)

After dinner on the first night, we adjourned to a convention room which was next door to a wedding reception. The wedding guests looked particularly nonplussed to watch us trooping past carrying life-sized models of such Oz characters as Tik-tok and the Woozy. The first order of business was "Memories of a Munchkin," a presentation by Meinhardt Raabe, better known as the Munchkin Coroner in the film who'd "thoroughly examined" the Wicked Witch of the East and found that she was "not only really dead, she's truly most sincerely dead." Raabe, who appeared in a recreation of his original costume, was getting up there in years and consequently a bit deaf, but he had a peppery spirit and vigorously dispelled rumors of Munchkin misbehavior on the set of the legendary film. We then heard lectures by a self-appointed successor to L. Frank Baum who'd written and self-published his own Oz book as well as from an Oz scholar who gave a history of one of L. Frank Baum's non-Oz books, a fairy tale called Queen Zixi of Ix. Following the presentations was a raffle-auction, with Oz dolls, painted porcelain plates, paint-it-yourself T-shirts and other like goodies as prizes.

The next morning began with a buffet breakfast and adult and children trivia contests. (One member of the convention had won the contest so many times that he was banned from entering.) I did my best to remember the answers to such questions as "Who tried to eat the nine tiny piglets?" (Dorothy's cat Eureka) and "What does 'Pyrzqxgl' do?" (It transforms people into various shapes.) But I have to admit I was (and am still) stumped on "What does 'Zizzy, zuzzy, zik!' do?"

Following the contest, we all boarded shuttle buses to a local movie theater to see "Return to Oz", the film sequel to "The OzWizard of Oz" that was celebrating its twentieth anniversary. I remembered the film as not being very good and after seeing it again, my initial impression was confirmed.

When we returned to the hotel, I discovered ours was not the only convention taking place there. Several wholesome-looking families, all decked out in camouflage outfits, military berets, and army boots, had descended on the hotel as part of a group called "Army of God". I'm not sure how keen these Christian evangelicals were to be sharing a hotel with a bunch of gay guys and fans of a book that features wizards and witches among its protagonists. The holy troopers certainly had their hands full trying to constrain the youngsters in their midst, who kept straying from the fold to peek in at the Oz toys and books for sale as well as the adults dressed up as Munchkins, Christmas trees, and of course, Dorothy.

My least favorite part of the convention was an event that was probably the highlight for almost everyone else, the Ozmopolitan auction. During this affair, rare editions of Oz books, publicity photos from the film, and other Oz memorabilia went to the highest bidder, and the bidding was particularly fierce. I could understand competing to acquire a rare book, but when a Judy Garland dime-store make-up kit from Woolworths still bearing the original price tag of $1.40 went for over seventy dollars, I found myself more than a bit perplexed. I was also struck by the fact that an item's provenance could drive up its price. In other words, if your desired collectable had been collected by a well-known collector, it became all the more valuable. The absurdity reached its height when a rock painted with the map of Oz by one such Oz collector was auctioned for over one hundred dollars.

That evening, things calmed down somewhat with the festive final dinner, at which the L. Frank Baum Award for distinguished service to the Oz Club was given out. We also watched a slide show tribute to recently deceased Oz Club founder Fred Meyer (to whom I remembered writing out my membership checks as a child), and we each received a token Tin Man necklace to take home with us. The evening concluded with a presentation by a group of comic artists who'd reincarnated Dorothy as a punk tattooed pierced teenager who runs away with her robot dog Toto to Oz, and a concert of Oz-inspired folk songs by a local singer-songwriter.

The next morning as I waved goodbye to this friendly bunch, I felt genuinely sad to leave, as if I'd entered a magic circle in which the wonder of childhood still held sway. On the plane home, I fingered my Tin Man charm, and wondered what would it have been like to go to an event like this as a kid. I'd come not knowing what to expect and found it so warm, so open-hearted, so positively Ozzy.

Aaron Hamburger was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome for his short story collection, The View From Stalin's Head, published by Random House in March of 2004. His next book, a novel titled Faith for Beginners, was published (also by Random House) in October 2005. His writing has appeared in The Village Voice, Poets and Writers, Details, Nerve, Out, The Forward, and Time Out New York. He has won a fellowship from the Edward F. Albee Foundation, as well as first place in the David J. Dornstein Contest for Young Jewish Writers, and has taught creative writing at Columbia University. Currently, while in residence at the American Academy in Rome, he is working on a novel set in contemporary Berlin.