Anything more you want to say about your elementary school?
Not the school itself, but what I did there.
Okay.
I don’t know how it started, but I developed an interest in cartooning. I think it started when my parents bought me one of those so-called magic slates. The kind that you draw on and then lift the film to erase it.
Yes, I know about them.
At first, I just got a kick out of watching the images come and go. And then later I got interested in drawing with a purpose. Like, when we sat in the living room listening to the radio — there wasn’t any TV until the late 1940s — I would sketch pictures of what I thought was going on.
Then I bought one of those black-and-white, hard-covered notebooks.
For some reason I wanted to try drawing a comic strip. So I divided each page into several panels.
One strip I drew featured a detective — Tom somebody — who got into and out of various scrapes. Another was Buzzy the Bee. Don’t ask me why. He was something like this, but not in color. I was drawing with my fountain pen.
I remember bringing the notebook to school and drawing in it during lunchtime.
And here’s the funny part. One or two kids would look over my shoulder. They said they wanted to see what would come next as I went from panel to panel. Well, I didn’t know myself what was coming next. I was making it up as I went along.
Did you do any more drawing after that?
I did in high school. We can talk about that next time.
Okay.