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 Click for words events WORD ROOTS: FIRST SPARK With a jolt from Mr. Electrico, Ray Bradbury was hooked
Welcome to "Word Roots," the first of a regularly recurring series investigating what propelled some of our finest writers to first put pen to paper. It's not every day that you get to meet your lifelong hero. It's even more unbelievable when the two of you become friends, quicksilver fast. But that's exactly what happened. I remember late winter nights as a teenager, hunkered down under the depths of Downy-fresh quilts and comforters with two very muddy dogs piled on top for extra insulation. I remember, every night, well beyond my bedtime, the banshee wail of the freight train as it roared over the frozen January plains. It came every witching hour, reliable as an old friend. And I remember what kept me awake all those nights -- what kept the amber burning in my bedroom window. I remember "The Martian Chronicles." I remember "Dandelion Wine." "The Illustrated Man." "Something Wicked This Way Comes." I remember. For a lot of fuzzy-cheeked adolescents, Ray Bradbury cleverly built a bridge that ushered us unwittingly into the dark and foreboding moors of literature. This, in itself, was a feat of masterful sleight of hand. Ray Bradbury, for several generations now, has done what English teachers across the country have mostly been incapable of accomplishing -- he has assured young readers that it is safe to read literature. Bradbury paved a fanciful, yellow-brick road for the likes of Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Faulkner. So how did he do it? How has this 80-year-old man introduced so many to the realms of reading? His ideas are simple and imaginative and accessible on the very first read. "All my stories are metaphors," he says. So where did it all come from? Where does a young boy, born in Waukegan on August 22, 1920, find the kindling to fire one of the greatest storytelling machines of modern times? What first drove Ray Bradbury to the craft of writing? Over the course of the last year, I have had the good fortune of learning the answer to this and a lot of other questions surrounding the life and work of Ray Douglas Bradbury. Chalk it all up to the very best perk of the journalist -- meeting your heroes. In the last months, we have lunched on deli sandwiches at his house; we have motored around Los Angeles late at night in his limousine; we have traveled to his second home in Palm Springs. In the process, we have become an unlikely duo. But even with forty-six years between us, there's a kinship that defies age. I suppose what it comes down to is the fact that we are still boys at heart. We collect toys. We both marvel at the stars and the moon. We love trains. We devour candy bars two at a time. We get buzzed on merlot in the waning hours of the afternoon like kids experimenting with their first taste of alcohol when, in actuality, we both sport well-seasoned livers. And we talk. Endlessly. Reflecting back upon the genesis of his career as a writer, Bradbury recalls his days growing up at 11 South St. James Street in Waukegan in the 1920s. At the time, while he didn't know it, the ingredients of this great author's imagination were percolating. He would wander downtown to the old movie housesí The Genesse and The Elite, to see films like "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "The Phantom of the Opera." His Aunt Neva -- twelve years his senior, would introduce him to "The Wizard of Oz," Edgar Allen Poe and to his favorite holiday, Halloween. They would decorate the house with harvest corn and jack-o'-lanterns. During this time, he also discovered Buck Rogers and Tarzan and the "John Carter of Mars" series. The primordial sea of Ray Bradbury's imagination was churning. "And then I met Mr. Electrico," he says. Labor Day Weekend, 1932. A threadbare carnival pitched tents along the late summer shores of Lake Michigan. Mr. Electrico, a magician, would strap himself into an electric chair and charge himself with thousands of volts of blue lightning. "His eyes went aflame, his hair stood on end and sparks danced between his teeth," Bradbury remembers. "He brushed an Excalibur sword over the heads of the children in the audience, knighting them with fire." When Mr. Electrico came to the young, enchanted Bradbury sitting on the sawdust floor, he tapped the boy on each shoulder and then the tip of his nose and proclaimed: "Live Forever!" Just a few days later, Ray Bradbury started writing his first stories. He has never stopped. "Why did he say that to me?" Bradbury questions, sitting in a Santa Monica restaurant. "Why did that strange man say, 'Live Forever?' Whatever it was, I decided it was a good idea." A few weeks ago, around midnight on a Saturday, I was thinking about Bradbury and his encounter with the mysterious carnie, Mr. Electrico. I plucked Bradbury's dark carnival classic, "Something Wicked This Way Comes," off the bookshelf and began reading. It was just like old times. It was late; the only light in the house illuminated the words: "First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys... " Then, the phone rang. I picked it up. "Sam, it's Ray calling," said the voice on the other end. Ray, you've been calling for years.
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