It's hard to believe 40 years have gone by. It's sort of a Biblical-sounding length of time. Does that make me a Methuselah?
In March of that year I bought a copy of Midway, and my friend Andy R. and I played it at least 6 or 7 times that spring time. I got into wargaming in the first place due to my interest in naval gaming, but naval gamers are definitely the smaller part of the wargaming crowd and my friend was no exception. It wasn't until I got my second wargame -- Stalingrad -- that I can say that my hobby really took off, because we played that game constantly all summer long. I still have the turn record chart from that era and it reflects dozens of games, nearly all of which were from that summer and fall.
Shortly after that the wargame collection began to grow with titles such as Guadalcanal, Waterloo, Afrika Korps, Jutland and 1914 and the number of plays for any one title dropped off a bit. I started subscribing to Strategy & Tactics in 1970 and the collection really took off.
But the real foundation for the hobby was laid in those summer days and nights in 1969 as my friend and I (and eventually his older brother) self-taught ourselves about wargames. It was a grand summer. 
