Bill: When I was about eight years old my father brought home a dusty Royal manual typewriter. I watched him clean it up, back to its shiney, jet black beauty. It was fascinating! He removed the ribbon, and the little glass window panels from each side, and sprayed soapy liquid all over it. After a thorough rinsing, he put the typewriter in the oven, ,just long enough to dry it, so it wouldn't rust. Then he placed it proudly on a stand beside his desk.
My dad's job was to repair adding machines, typewriters, and such. Somebody gave him this typewriter instead of cash. Because of computers, that job almost doesn't exist anymore. These days they just replace a circuit board. Back then, typewriters had all these moving parts, springs and levers and so forth.
Dad was a big letter writer to the newspaper. If something happened in town that he didn't like, man, he'd be writing a letter to the newspaper, just typing away on that Royal, like, "I wish the Mayor could explain to me how he justifies spending tax payers' money to fund police bothering kids on bicycles just because they take up one parking space with three bicycles in front of the Rexall drug store where they spend their money on comic books, cokes and French fries" and things like that.
He told me he wanted to write a book about his time in South America, when he was a pilot for the Army Air Corps during World War II, but he never got around to it. Too busy supporting our family.
I made my own comic books, too. I stapled about ten sheets of blank typing paper together and drew the comic book panels and everything. I created a character named "Igneous Man" who was a cross between DC Comic's Metamorpho and Marvel's The Thing from The Fantastic Four. Igneous Man could turn into scorching lava, or make himself shiny to reflect light into an assassin's eyes so they couldn't aim their gun - anything that had to do with volcanic rock. Back then, you could learn about science from comic books; like, The Flash could vibrate his atoms so fast, he could run through walls. There was a villain called "Mr. 103" because, at that time, there were 103 known elements, and he could change into all of them.
As for why I liked to write, I don't know, it was just naturally what I liked. Some kids found they were good at baseball or math. It wasn't anything I can explain, I was just naturally drawn to writing. I sensed early on that there was a whole world of writers and film makers and TV shows and that it was a legitimate pastime. People thought I was weird, that I lived in my own dream world. I felt I had to defend myself for wanting to make up stories and people. And maybe I am weird, but now I don't care.
When I got a little older I really got into horror movies. I especially liked those Hammer Studios films, with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Veronica Carlson, because you could see a superbad, lusty vampire biting a sexy, half-naked girl on the neck without having to openly acknowledge sexual urges. I first learned about Edgar Allen Poe through those Roger Corman "B" movies with Vincent Price. I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Dracula by Bram Stoker because I had seen the movies.
