My Artistic Friends Over The Years: Part 2 Ronald

 You might think the picture of Ronald and his Sousaphone would have qualified him for Stuart and my band. No, Ronald Walter Tipton was a close friend to both Stuart and me beginning in Third Grade, but he was not include in our band.

Ronald has been a writer as far back as I, but most of it was through Journals or Blogs. He currently write a Blog called "Retired in Delaware".

We became friends because we shard similar backgrounds and we remain close friends still nearly 70 years later, speaking to each other on Facetime nearly every morning.  He calls me in th morning doing what we did a lot together as boys, taking a walk. He takes me on a virtual walk. 

     He and I met and became friends because of Comic Books. Mrs. Ezrah assigned out third grade class at East Ward in Downingtown o write an original short story. We had to then read our creations in front go the class.  (I did get an A for my story and it went up on the bulletin board.) When Ronald try his story I piped up and said, "I read that story in a Scrooge McDuck comic", which I had. Scrooge McDuck was one of my favorite comics.

This is a character drawing I did of Ronald on the left. He followed me out of school and I thought he was going to hit me for outing his story, but when he caught up to me he asked, "Do you like comic books?" I said yes, and we began trading comics.  He would tote a box down to my house. I wasn't interested in a number he had with titles such as Romance or Love. Not my cup of tea. He claims a female cousin foisted them off on him.

        We also discovered we were both interested in art. He wanted to an Interior Designer at that time, and he was designing and entering clothes designs to Fritz Ritz or Katy Keene Comics, which ever was holding such contest at the time.

I was more interested in taking clothes off of Archie's girlfriends, Veronica and Betty.

I tried to get Ronald to collaborate on some stories, but never got him interested in pursuing that idea. He wrote a story, "The Potato Chip King" that I tried to sell, but the editor of one magazine wrote a nasty rejection on how it insulted every one in the South. Needless to say, he didn't publish it.

He wrote a story called, "The Wreckage" that I liked enough to rewrite it under both our names and this one I peddled about. It was taken, but I still may try selling it.