That being said, its worth to me was incalculable. Going back to my days as the cartoonist on the Tuesday Teen Page for the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, it was the starting place for every comic strip that I would ever create (a tip of the Funky felt-tip there to good ol’ Ernie Hemingway). It was my first sense of legitimacy. It became privy to all of my dreams, failures, and successes. It was the focal point of hours a lifetime of creative energy.
One time my best bud from high school and I were standing on a baseball field. More specifically, in the batter’s box at home plate. My friend was waxing somewhat philosophically about how that little patch of ground was the nervous nexus of so much focused anxiety, concentration, anger, joy, despair, and triumph when compared to the field around it. In many ways, those same thoughts applied to my drawing board. It was where I learned and struggled. In frustration, I once jammed a pencil into the board so hard that it dug a gouge in it. Realizing that I had possibly ruined the board for all time, I spackled some yellow oil paint into the gouge and smoothed the board back to its evenly flat surface. The smooth yellow spot on the board can be seen to this day. And it’s the place where I finally figured out how to do the job.
From the introduction to The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volumw 11
