| HOME |
| ABOUT |
| WRITING |
| TREKS |
| Scrapbook |
| Resume |
| Visits |
Growing up . . .
To begin at the beginning, the house over there on the left is where I grew up in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. The place where you grow up has a lot to do with who you become. While I've lived in Southern California for the past twenty years, I still consider the Pacific Northwest as home. The time when I was growing up -- the 1950s -- is considered a "Golden Age" today. I never throught of it that way; it was just the way it was. It was the time of the Bomb (crouching under our desks at school during air raid drills), television (watching it in the downtown store window of the Bon Marche), rock and roll and (for me) the discovery of science fiction.
The map on the right shows the neighborhood where I grew up. Below is Greenwood Elementary School where I spent the 2nd through 6th grades. It looks almost the same now as it did then.
This was where I discovered reading and writing. In the beginning it was comic books and comic strips. My favorites were Terry and the Pirates, Pogo, Steve Canyon, Twin Earths, Dick Tracy, Tarzan and Flash Gordon. I also have fond memories of Jack Williamson's wonderful Beyond Mars weekly science fiction strip.
It was not in the Seattle newspapers, so I rushed out every Tuesday to buy the New York News Sunday Edition where it was published.
Much of what I've learned about writing came from those comics. Milton Caniff was my idol in those days. He was a master storyteller and I anxiously awaited each new daily episode. Today, re-reading the collected Steve Canyon strips I continue to marvel at his craft. I would recommend that any young writer study his work. No one was better at crafting an exciting adventure story.
In those "olden days" comic strips were one of the major reasons you bought one newspaper over another -- and strips like Dick Tracy, Li'l Abner and Steve Canyon sold a lot of papers.
And, of course, don't forget the classic Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim adventures by Alex Raymond. One of the high points of my writing career was when I took a staff job at Filmation Studios. My first assignment was to translate the Flash Gordon stories into an animated TV series. The show, which I story edited and wrote most of the episodes remains one of my favorites.
One of the fond memories of Greenwood School was being a member of the Safety Patrol. Mornings, noon and after school we stopped traffic to allow kids to cross the street. Pouring rain or even the rare snowstorm never kept us from our appointed duties.
Before moving to Greenwood, we lived with my Grandmother on a quiet tree-lined street in the Wallingford District, a couple of miles west of the University of Washington. My entertainment then was comic books and Saturday afternoon movies. It was mostly westerns in those days. Across the street from our house was a huge (at least it was to me in those days) vacant lot where we kids could pretend to be cowboys. It's a shame that there are so few vacant lots available for today's kids to transform into virtual playworlds. Imagination is a wondrous tool which is too often restrained by today's techno-toys. I'm glad that in those Wallingford days there was not yet television -- we listened to radio.
"Return with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear . . ." Radio was the gateway that opened a thousand different worlds in the mind. Afternoons there were the exploits of Dick Tracy, Superman, Terry and the Pirates, and Tom Mix.
Later in the evening it was Tarzan and The long Ranger. Saturday morning was Let's Pretend and Buster Brown's Gang. Sunday afternoon was time to enter the dark and mysterious domain of The Shadow. Sunday evenings it was comedy time with Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Charlie McCarthy and Our Miss Brooks. And, late at night, with lights out and deep under the covers I would follow Jack, Doc and Reggie in I Love A Mystery.
John Marshall Junior High School (it's over there on the left) is where I started my writing career. I had written stories before that and was even selected to participate in an all-city summer creative writing class, but it was here that my I began to take seriously the concept of making a living as a writer. Journalism was my original goal. There was a workshop class in printing where we not only wrote articles, but we set the type (by hand) and published an ocassional school newspaper. While I love the advantages that technology has brought us, there was a romance in that print shop that has become lost in our21st century digital world.
One of my favorite places in Seattle then (and now) is Green Lake. When I graduated to Junior High, I often walked from my house to school around the lake. It was about two miles but on sunny spring mornings it was a nice way to start the day. Every 4th of July there would be fireworks at the lake which was a highlight of the summer. During schools vacations it was a pleasure to sit on the grass and read about faraway places.
Return to the top of the page
Faraway places . . .
One of the perks of being a writer is going to places on the pretense of doing research. I've been lucky to have traveled to some interesting corners of the world. First it was courtesy of the U.S. Air Force as a radar technician in such exotic locales as Texas, Mississippi, North Dakota and Alaska -- north of Nome. Later, before moving to Southern California, I lived for a while in Chicago and New York City. Both nice cities in quite different ways.
One of our favorite travel destinations has been Hawaii. Although we haven't been there in a few years, there was a time not that long ago when we'd spend two weeks a year in Hawaii. During a dozen plus visits we've been to every one of the islands, but Maui remains special. For several years we had a time-share apartment on the beach. We'd spend a week and then my mom and her friend would join us for a day or so and she'd have the apartment for the second week. At night, when you're away from the lights of Honolulu, the sky is filled with thousands of stars that you never see in the city. It's a dazzling panorama to fire the imagination of a science fiction writer.
We had friends living in Geneva, Switzerland, and visited them once in spring and once in the winter. High point of the winter trip was a train ride to the Matterhorn. My first trip across the ocean (Atlantic) was a solo trip to London where a rendezvous with a writer friend introduced me to the delights of British theatre. During my week there I attended a different production every night. Later trips, with my wife, took us back to England and to Holland, where we discovered the wonders of Amsterdam.
Several years ago we had the opportunity to visit Japan. There was a major international computer conference in Tokyo in a neighborhood called Sunshine City. We spent one week in and around the conference area exploring. There is an elevated train that circles the city and it was a great way to see the city. This was about fifteen years ago so I imagine that much has changed since, but we found the country both strange and delightful.
Being squeezed together, with no real escape from your neighbors, the Japanese have learned to find solitude in the midst of chaos.
While we enjoyed strolling around Tokyo the real treat came during our second week when we took the bullet train to Kyoto. The war had not really touched Kyoto so the city remains as it has been for centuries, both in structures and attitude. It is a quiet island in a sea of change.
Return to the top of the page
. . . to be continued
Updated 02.06.2001