John Shuttleworth, Founder of Mother Earth News, Interview Part I
(Page 10 of 17)
January/February 1975
By John Shuttleworth
When all was said and done, then, I certainly did not enjoy having polio and — given the choice — I'd most certainly have avoided it if I could. Still, like so many other things in my life, polio definitely helped program me for what I'm now doing.
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Number one, it gave me — right or wrong — a deeply felt gut suspicion that all the pesticides, preservatives, plastics and other chemical "wonders" of the modern world never really do accomplish the good they're supposed to do. Rationally or irrationally, in fact, I have a strong feeling that when you consider the pollution created by their manufacture, their demands on nonrenewable resources, their devious side effects, the problems created by their disposal, etc., that most, if not all, of these "miracle" man-made products are bad. Just plain bad. I've still got a grudge against DDT, you see.
Number two, polio quite directly hurt me, physically and emotionally, about as deeply as I think I can be hurt. It showed me my absolute limits at a relatively early age, in other words, and thereby gave me an extremely valuable form of self-knowledge that some people never have.
Number three, it left me with the distinct feeling that every day of my life after that period in the iron lung was a gift, a gift to be used wisely and well.
Number four, by leaving me to work out ways around my physical handicaps — which I did — polio reinforced one of the main lessons taught me by my parents: that hard work will solve anything.
And, number five, by saddling me with some severe physical limitations just as I was entering the time of fife when physical strength is most important, polio encouraged me to leapfrog on to the next — and more intellectually focused — stage of existence. That is: Since I could not meaningfully compete on the teenage playing fields of basketball and baseball, I quickly moved up into the adult, dog-eat-dog, competitive world of freelance writing and cartooning.
PLOWBOY: The Big Time!
SHUTTLEWORTH: Yes, this was the Big Time. One of the arenas where the gladiators fought for their daily bread. Unlike factories and offices with their child labor laws and other restrictions, however, this was a "for real" section of adult life in which a 14-year-old kid could compete on equal terms.
As long as I prepared my submissions neatly and professionally, and as long as my work was up to adult standards, no magazine editor had any real way of knowing whether I was 14 or 44 or 94. So I plunged in and, by the time I was 16 or 17, I had sold a lot of gags to cartoonists, cartoons of my own to several middle and minor magazines and a self-illustrated article to an international aviation publication.
I never made a great deal of money with this part-time work, but it gave me a tremendous amount of self-confidence and prestige at a time when I needed it. And, although I didn't know it then, the small success I enjoyed as a freelancer back there in the mid-50s would eventually lead me — virtually by the nose — into founding Mother Earth News 15 years later.
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