Remembering that my first published fiction appeared in our school newspaper. Spring 1945, Abilene High School newspaper The Battery, page three.
I have English teacher Selma Bishop to thank for this author’s launching. She assigned a personal experience essay. I wrote about the incident:
As I drove, Bill Williams leaned out the back window and sprayed water on people waiting for the bus. The victims took my car license plate number.
Noon next day (my car loaded with three coeds who were going to lunch downtown with me), the police arrested me. Escorted my car to police headquarters, took my fingerprints. Co-eds called a mom for ride back to school.
Typed my experience and turned into Miss Bishop. Some punctuation errors reduced my grade, but still received a B plus. I had her returned paper in my car when I went to the printers to get the bi-weekly newspaper ready for printing.
That’s when the printer pointed to an unexpected empty space and asked, “Where’s the copy?” Didn’t know. But I found my essay in my car, waited for the printer to set type, and made up “Hershel” for the author’s name. The Battery went to press.
The next day study-hall students were first to read “Squirt-gun Mob.” A few students told me to publish some more “Hershel” stories.
The next Hershel story appeared in Anne Bonny’s Wake, between book covers, published 2016. 227 pages. Took a while.
