June 26, 2009
Working on a series of nocturne studies in my sketchbook:

Check out the small boy on horseback in the second panel. He's riding through the desert on a tall horse. The Apache Kid is running in the other panels towards. . .Beauty, of course (last panel). These are sketches 9,216-9,220.

Several people have asked me how long Charlie Waters and I have been friends and are there any photos of the two of us. Although I haven't been able to locate any of us in grade school (we met in the third grade), fellow classmate, Michele (Gilpin) Bonham sent me a photo last week of Mrs. Klotch's fifth grade class, taken in 1958, at Grandview Elementary in Kingman, and lo and behold there we are:

Troublemakers? Oh, yes, In fact, Charlie (note the pachuko-waterfall-hair twirl in the front) and I got in the usual classroom trouble most boys get into. The next fall, Charlie's parents went to the school board and demanded that he be put in another classroom away from me. He was, and although it bothered my mother at the time, looking back from this perspective, it's kind of cool that I was the Eddie Haskall in the deal.

"That's a nice dress you have on, Mrs. Cleaver."
—Eddie Haskall, Leave It To Beaver