Are you ready? Today, I will bare my soul and reveal all my deep, dark secrets. My wife told me to put my clothes back on and get back to writing. She said I’m scaring the cat…and maybe I should return to the gym.
All children are asked what they want to be when they grow up. My first answer was always a baseball player. I lived to play baseball and even at my advanced age, I am still playing in the form of softball. I saw the Chicago White Sox play this past season and still feel I have a shot. After watching that pathetic team, I know I’m better than about half of the players. I’m ready to go. Just have to make sure the trainer has a lot of Advil on hand.
Eventually, I had to face reality and choose a more realistic future profession. I thought long and hard and came up with a list. Movie star, race car driver, President of the United States, male model, international spy, and garbage man. Being a garbage man is totally awesome. When I was young, I watched as they got to ride on the back of the truck so they could jump off, grab a garbage can, empty it, and then toss the beat-up, dented can back to the curb. Wait, you don’t find that cool?
My dad had a fear that if we didn’t do well in school or follow the rules, we would one day be digging a ditch. Apparently, digging a ditch is the lowest of the low as far as employment goes. His job was challenging. He was a telephone lineman. He was stringing wire and hooking lines year-round in some of the worst weather imaginable. I saw him lift telephone poles with the help of only one other worker. With that kind of work, my dad was built like an NFL Linebacker. He eventually worked his way into management and wore a suit every day. Improving oneself was important for him. Imagine what he thought when I told him I wanted to be a political cartoonist. I think he asked me if I ever considered ditch-digging.
I became enthralled with cartooning at a very young age. Yes, I never missed the “funny pages” in the daily papers, but I may have been the only child who also checked out the daily political cartoon in the editorial section. I became a big fan of Bill Mauldin, the Pulitzer Prize Prize-winning cartoonist syndicated in newspapers throughout the United States. Mr. Mauldin was also the author of the Willie and Joe cartoons documenting World War II in the Stars and Stripes newspaper. I wrote a letter to Mr. Mauldin telling him I wanted his job. He never got back to me. I can’t believe he would think a 13-year-old would be a threat to his career.
I did pursue my dream. I took art classes in high school and majored in Fine Arts in college. All along, I was doodling and sketching cartoon caricatures of people I knew and celebrities. To me, being a cartoonist meant being good at drawing. I learned that the drawing part is secondary to the most essential element of a cartoon, the writing. Some of the best cartoons out there are just a bunch of scribbles, but well written. Have you ever seen the early versions of some of your favorite cartoons? Looking at them is excruciating, but the joke in the cartoon is hilarious. Cartoonists are often hired more for their creative writing than their artistic talent. Many cartoonists get in the door with some great ideas for cartoons and eventually hire someone to do the illustration while they concentrate on the content. Please look at an early Doonesbury cartoon by Garry Trudeau and compare it to today: night and day. Trudeau may sketch out an idea, but an illustrator does the actual art. Trudeau has brilliant ideas and is a great satirist…and a bleeding heart, lefty, communist liberal (That’s for all my right-leaning readers).
I can say that I realized my dream. I have done a comic strip (as an advertising tool), had political cartoons published (only locally), and had caricatures of celebrities published in national publications. I have been fortunate to have worked in the publishing world, but I became something I never thought I would become: a writer.
Anytime I sent a comic strip out to syndicates for consideration, they usually praised my writing in the rejection letter. Wasn’t that nice of them? A few syndicates showed interest, but that’s as far as it went. While working on publishing magazines, I found myself writing more and more, and honestly, I had no idea when that began. I think it was after I just changed a light bulb, and the publisher needed a few lines on the latest hot car on the market.
Before you could hit delete on your keyboard, I regularly contributed to several magazines. I started by writing headlines and subheads (Yes, our goal was to make you think the following article was something it truly wasn’t). I wrote profiles on small restaurant, blurbs for our “Best Of” section, and eventually a monthly humor column…and that’s no joke. Get it? I crack myself up.
I have retired from publishing, but I am still writing. I am in the process of writing a basketball article for my former magazine. I do four or five articles a year. The problem with that is that it requires research, interviews, and transcribing before I start writing. BORING…but it pays well. (Don’t tell my editor how much I really love it. She may cut what she pays me.)
In my weekly (sometimes) column, I sit down and start typing until my wife calls me for dinner. That’s usually a good place to stop.
So, let’s summarize. I wanted to be a baseball player when I was young and finished my career as a writer. I have written articles about professional baseball, maybe that counts as being in that sport. Of course, I still have a shot to play the game. The White Sox are desperate, and I’ll play for almost nothing. Maybe I need an agent. I’m clinging to this dream because if I don’t, that would be admitting that I have grown up.
Sorry, I’m done for the day. Wife just said one of her spectacular pot pies is ready for dinner. Honey, I’m on my way.
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