My Artistic Friends Over The Years: Part 6 Tom N.

 

Summer went past and Sonja didn't seem impressed by Robert Condon and my musical, and I don't know what happened to the music score for Ya-Ha-Whoey wince then. I knew I was now graduated from High School with no where to go. My parents had long ago made it clear they were weren't sending me to college, and I didn't know any other way to go.  I had no money of my own to pay for the experience, and I didn't see any scholarships coming my way. My school grades were fairly good, but not in the right subjects to get me any grants.

I also realized Iwasn't going to win any athletic scholarship.

      I only participated in one sport at school, Track and Field. Perhaps if I had done what the coach wanted from the start I may have earned my way to a college. Everybody who came out for track had to audition in the different events. I did best running the mile; in fact, very well. I ran it faster than any other kid there, faster than most high schoolers of that time, close to the record on my first trial, so Coach Springer wanted me to run distant races. Problem was, long distant guys had to do a lot of running doing training, and I hated running. Therefore, it took up weight events because those boys ran the least.

     I threw the shot put and the discus.   (That is me   in the third row second from the right side wearing dark sweats. My good friend and writing partner, Ray Ayres is second from the left in the first row. He was basically the star of the team.)

     I wasn't built for those throwing events. I was tall and thin with little upper body strength. I did throw the discus further than anyone in our meet with Phoenixville, but I fell out of the circle and was disqualified.  

     Nope, I wasn't going to win any sports scholarships.

      Stuart Meisel had went off to college at Franklin & Marshall and Ronald Tipton had enlisted in the army. All I could do was find a job.  I had done squat labor on a farm the last couple of summers, but the farm wasn't looking for any more hands this year. I did get a job loading tomatoes onto 18-wheeler flatbeds in Lancaster County. Lifting bushel baskets of tomatoes and piling them 6 feet high down the length of the truck was hard and sweaty work.  All the Amish girls would come and watch us boys work and giggle.

      I finished that job and moved on to working for  Proctor and Gamble. I was in "field marketing". meaning I hung samples of their newest product, "Mr. Clean" on doorknobs. I toted a satchel filled with the 8 ounce bottles up one street an down another all day dropping each in a small bag I could hang over the doorknob. I'd ring the bell and walk away.

     There was a small group of boys who traveled with the van and the rest of us were local kids. Sometimes the van would follow behind up and down the street blasting that monotonous Mr. Clean jingle.  After we had covered all of Pottstown and the surrounding area we were let go. On that final day, though, the gang boss called me into the van and offered me a job on the traveling crew because he felt I was a very good worker. I was too young to say yes on my own, my parents had to sign because I wasn't 21 and they refused. Come on, what possible trouble could an 18 year old get into traveling alone across the USA with a bunch of teenagers?

     

Ronald had wanted me to join the Army with him on the buddy system, but again, my parents permission was needed and they didn't want me in the army, even if Uncle Sam did.  The did pay and allow me to go to IBM school. They frowned on higher education, but saw this as different because it involved operation machines, real work in

their minds. Little did they know is was wiring a lot of spaghetti wires on control boards. I would graduate from Florence Utz TAB School t the top go the class. More importantly, I met a fellow student named Tom Newman and we became fast friends.

     Besides studying IBM Machines, we had something else in common. We both wanted to be Cartoonist and were studying art in correspondence school. His was The Famous Artist School of art, while I was studying with Art Instruction, Inc.  The figure head for Famous Artist was Norman Rockwell and Charles Schulz was the spokes person for Art Instruction. I don't know how long Tom had been studying with Famous Artists.  I studied two years with Art Instruction, a secret my mom and I kept from my dad.

  

       Tom and I spend a lot of hours after class together, comparing our cartoons and talking about future plans. I stayed at his home in New Jersey sometimes. We would take the train line, that  in 1969 became the PATCO Line. The day we went across the river from Philadelphia to New Jersey, we were killing time in Wanamaker's store on Market Street. It was getting ear time for our train and we were lost in the store. We were running down stairs looking to get out and ended up on the mezzanine. We ran through a door and found ourselves in the Ladies Powder Room with a lot of women, some who began screaming. We got out of there  and found som steps down. The train had a stop right by the store basement. We were thinking police would be coming for us and were relieved to get into a train car.

Tom lived in Clementon, New Jersey on street that deadened at Clementon 
Amusement Park. It was a two block walk to the ark, and we spent a good amount of time there.

    We also spent a lot of time discussing our art and cartoons.

After we graduated we went separate way. I soon dropped out of my art studies. I wonder what happened to Tom. Did he ever become a cartoonist? On the left are some of his sketches.

Below is a piece we did together.