You said you went on with the cartooning you talked about last time?
Well, not exactly. My comic strips ended with Buzzy the Bee. But I did some other cartooning in high school.
How did that happen?
You’ll remember that we had no junior-high building, and my 8th-grade class was in the high-school building. So I was there from 8th through the 12th grade.
I didn’t do any drawing until 11th grade.. Then I had the same English teacher for both my junior and senior years..
And Mr. White was the faculty adviser for the school newspaper.
The town of Baldwin, you may recall, is on the water, so our symbol was nautical, and our paper was called The Golden Wave. Although he knew I could write — he had given me good grades on my essays — somehow he learned of my cartooning and he asked me to draw a cartoon for each issue of the paper.
So you did?
Right. And, before you ask, the answer is No, I don’t have any of the copies today. Guess they were thrown out with my baseball cards and all. Anyway, they’d probably be all yellow and crumbling by now.
But Mr. White was also faculty adviser for our school yearbook.
It was the job of the senior class to put out its yearbook. So when I moved on to 12th grade he asked me to also draw for our yearbook. Its name was the Nexus, in the sense of a connection between the students. And I agreed to join the staff.
There’s a photo in it of several of us working on it. It’s not a very clear photo, but that’s me in the back working on a drawing board.
The artists on the staff usually collaborated on a drawing. So I’ll show you one that George T. and I did together. I sketched the original concept, he made some suggestions, I drew a more exact version in pencil, and George inked it.
All my cartoons for the book were in keeping with our nautical theme.
Here’s another one. I drew it in pencil and Alan M. inked it.
Of course, the yearbook had photos and writeups for each of the graduating seniors. Want to see mine?
Sure.
Here you go.
Spencer?
Yeah, that’s my given name. But I won’t tell anybody is you won’t.