Growing Up with Stephen King

I recall my high school days with all of my class mates with fondness. But one of my high school years was out of the ordinary, to say the least. I had the opportunity to have Stephen King, The Master Of Horror, as my English teacher. His classes were beyond the ordinary and mandatory educational school board requirements-although we did learn basic English concepts thru his teaching. His teaching methods were based on his experience as a new writer and publisher of the book "Salem's Lot". which later became a movie.

I always looked forward to English class with Stephen King. He always had some horrific tale to tell and while he was relating his tales of horror, we were learning creative writing techniques and basic sentence structure to possibly write and publish our own books someday. I believe he always wished at least some of us to become writers such as he. Nevertheless, We never left his class un-entertained or un-educated.

As you all know, he resides In Bangor, Maine with his wife and family. You can always see him walking along the sidewalk reading as he walks. No one really pays attention to him-they just wave and say hi-because we all know his family and our children went to school with his children. He eats at the same restaurants-goes to the same ball games and attends the same school meetings as all of us living there and shops at the same grocery stores that we all do.

During Halloween festivities and trick or treating, he had this tradition of handing out treats to area children. As you can imagine there was a line of people with children a mile long, if not longer. His home and grounds on West Broadway in Bangor, were lighted and decorated with the most bizarre Halloween goblins and ghouls -with sounds effects to enhance the eeriness of the night. He does have a fence around his property for security reasons, but the iron fence posts, at one time, sported bats. Due to his popularity as a horror writer, some fans decided to abscond with his bats, so the remaining iron bats were removed and not replaced. His Halloween tradition has been abandoned to this date because of the over-whelming response that his Halloween night festivities brought forth and for security reasons and safety reasons for he and his family members.

Today ,when traveling up or down West Broadway, you can always see some fans stopping to take photos of his home and property, which sets back of the street and is surrounded by this same iron fence. If your lucky enough to be in the same restaurant as Stephen King, he will graciously autograph any of his books or a napkin from the dinner table. I personally have several first edition -signed copies his wonderful books and a signed napkin that he and his wife signed while dining in a eating establishment that I was managing and I never forget that Stephen King was my English teacher in high school before he was the famous Master of Horror.