Sometimes a Great Notion

The late Roy Paul Nelson taught journalism at the University of Oregon where I met him during my association with that institution in the 1960s and '70s. Roy Paul was an authority on print typefaces  and taught classes on the subject. Writers, he instructed, should select a type face that is appropriate to the subject of their narrative. He was also a cartoonist and his editorial cartoons were used by the local Eugene Register Guard newspaper. I once told him I had observed that his distaste for smoking often showed up in his cartoons by his drawing any negative character with a cigarette held in his fingers. A book he wrote for his cartooning class was titled, "How To Draw a Straight Line".

We became friends and I take a modicum of pride in having something I wrote included in a textbook Roy Paul used for a class he taught in satirical writing. Imagine that; a wannabe famous author getting something he wrote included in a real college textbook.

My contribution was titled, "The Passing of Gas".  It made the case that new advances in the automobile industry had created energy generating technology that would eliminate petroleum as a necessary ingredient for the internal combustion engine.  The revolutionary result included parts that would create a vacuum that would suck air into a pipe protruding from the rear of the vehicle and send it into a chamber where multiple jets of high pressure air programmed with alternating blasts would move pistons up and down causing the drive shaft to turn which would make the wheels go around. All of the technical jargon, of course,  was strung together as a means of supporting the title.

Someday when my time comes to depart this mortal coil, one line in my obit must read, "His published writing included manuscripts for college text books. Also he predicted electric cars."