The day Miss Connor tried to end my art career

It was the first day of class and I was a second grader at Hillcrest Grammar School. My seat in Miss Connor’s class was adjacent to Ronnie Hamilton’s.

Hillcrest had two classes for each grade, first through sixth, and Ronnie and I, having been in different classes the previous year, had just met.

While the ancient (she was in her early 40s) Miss Connor was droning on about what was expected of us that term, I glanced over and noticed that Ronnie was busy drawing on a crisp new sheet of notebook paper.

I leaned over to get a glimpse of what he was sketching. It was a four-engine airplane with U.S. Air Force insignias on the fuselage and machine guns blasting.

As Miss Conner waxed poetic about remembering to wash our hands after visiting the restroom, I opened my new pack of Blue Horse notebook paper.

I had never gotten any closer to creating art than a box of eight Crayola crayons and a Roy Rogers coloring book, but I figured if Ronnie could draw a B-17 that I could too. So, I did. Not to brag but mine was better.

I was just finishing up the crew’s parachutes delivering them safely to earth due to an attack by an enemy aircraft when I heard a voice say, “You boys are certainly no Norman Rockwells. And this most certainly is not art period.”

We were called to the front of the classroom wondering which grade this Norman kid was in. Next our drawings were ripped into strips and consigned to the trash can.

Then we had to press our noses into separate corners at the front of the room. Miss Conner surreptitiously allowed the class to snicker at us two for several long seconds before finally shushing them.

My humiliation was all consuming. I sensed every eye in the class on me and felt my ears turning red. At that moment I lost all interest in drawing. That lasted until 2020.

Jumping ahead, in the spring of 1980 my wife and I had moved to Surfside Beach, S.C., just south of Myrtle Beach. We relocated there hoping that I might find full-time work as a musician.

My wife got a day job in an insurance company, and I landed a gig with an established band that was working five nights a week.

I picked up a seafood restaurant solo gig on Sundays and Mondays, giving me seven nights a week of playing and singing Jimmy Buffett songs for tourists.

Then Labor Day came along and the tourist business dropped off significantly. That cut us to just two nights a week which was not nearly enough to make my share of our expenses.

I needed to find a day job. So, I looked in the Sun Times for some kind of job that I thought might pay enough to keep us going until the tourists returned the next summer and I could go back to being a full-time musician.

In those days most restaurants closed for the offseason, so I couldn’t even find work as a dishwasher, much less an entertainer. I found a job trying to sell used cars in Conway. I sold one car in a month. The customer brought it back the next day.

I was getting desperate. Then one morning I was perusing the help wanted section of the Sun Times when I spied an ad that simply said, “Sign artist needed. Tyson Sign Co.”

I called the number and got an interview which took place in their art department where I was asked to draw a picture of a motel sign for a fictitious establishment called “The Wave Runner.”

I sketched out the name in a script and added a guy on a surfboard. I was hired.

I kept that day job for two years while playing six nights a week in the summer and three in the off-season. The reason I kept my day job was because my wife and I had decided we were going to buy a used sailboat and travel for as long as our money lasted.

I left my guitar with my in-laws in Tennessee, and we set off for the Bahamas where we spent our winters for the next two years. In the summers we sailed the Chesapeake.

At the end of our great adventure, we found ourselves in Annapolis where we sold the boat. I found a gig with a bluegrass band and worked days for a large sign company, again drawing signs for the sales department to use in their presentations.

That lasted a couple of years, and we wound up in Knoxville, Tenn., where I worked playing music seven nights a week. Then on to North Carolina where I formed my own band and worked as a full-time musician and storyteller until COVID-19 shut the world down.

I spent the first three months of quarantine writing songs and creating stories until I just ran out of ideas. So, one day out of the blue I decided to do a drawing of my grandfather’s pocketknife.

I put it up on my Facebook page and someone asked if I would be willing to sell it. To which I replied that the knife wasn’t for sale. I was surprised to learn that the thing the fellow wanted to buy was the drawing.

Six years later I have sold well over 200 drawings of everything from Coleman lanterns to grandchildren to entertainers.

After all those years of drawing nothing but mundane renderings of motel and restaurant signage, I even did a commission of an old barbeque sign for a fellow who was living in Idaho.

Turns out he was originally from East Tennessee. He sent me a text when he received it, saying when he looked at that drawing it became his cure for homesickness.

Some of us discover our gifts later than others. I’m sure glad I finally found the joy of putting pencil to paper.