Myers says that even though Bellairs' handwriting was lousy, he made up for it by being a wonderfully witty doodler. "He had a real talent for cartooning, and had he so chosen, I think he could have made something out of it by attending art school. However, such an idea was never even remotely on his personal radar screen. In all my years of knowing John, I never knew him to do anything so ambitious with his cartooning talent. His 'Mariner' drawings definitely reflect the influence of another untrained artist, James Thurber."

Oddly enough, Myers confirms Bellairs was a big time Edward Gorey fan during his college years. Even though Gorey would go on to illustrate twelve of John's books across eighteen years and they both resided in Massachusetts, we’re told the two never met.

Some of John’s cartoonish creations, such as Louis XI, are displayed throughout our correspondence section.

Scholastic honors:

• Woodrow Wilson fellowship (1959).
• Wilson Special Grant (1960).
• La Verne Noyes Fellowship (1960).

Literary honors:

• See list of awards.

University of Indiana Northwest, Gary Indiana; Part-time instructor of English, 1961-63.
College of St. Teresa, Winona, Minnesota; Instructor of English, 1963-65.
Shimer College, Mount Carroll, Illinois; Member of humanities faculty, 1966-67.
Emmanuel College, Boston, Massachusetts; Instructor in English, 1968-69.
Merrimack College, North Andover, Massachusetts; Instructor of English, 1969-71.

While Bellairs could drive, it was something he didn't particularly enjoy. He much preferred it when someone else was driving and, according to some of his friends, not only did they prefer it when someone else – other than John – was driving, so did the universe.

Longtime friend Dale Fitschen says it was a “genuinely frightening thing” to be in the back seat with John behind the wheel. Fitschen recalls a few visits to John during his time in Minnesota: "John drove the winding road on the bluffs of the Mississippi in the dark; he was leaning over the back seat, waving one or both hands, while one of the never-ending flow of his stories poured out. Most practical things, like steering a car, were a negligible distraction to what was happening in his head and his anecdotes. We all did our best to see that John didn't have to drive. He did when he needed to, but he was usually delighted to give up the wheel to someone else. It freed him to talk more freely."

Myers, as far as he can remember, was never a passenger in a car that John drove: "I couldn't have lived to my present age without having acquired some basic self-preservation skills!" He reminds us that undergraduates at Notre Dame during his and Bellairs on time on campus were not permitted to have cars. "At Chicago, none were necessary, due to the city's excellent public transportation system. I have no idea about whether he had a car in Minnesota but I'm fairly sure that he had none during his bachelor days in Boston and perhaps some nondescript secondhand something-or-other in Haverhill."

Bellairs notes his favorite type of car is a Honda Civic and his biggest pet peeve is Massachusetts drivers, adding "they leap at you from all directions" [John Bellairs' Favorites, 1985].

Marilyn Fitschen also notes that John did not like to drive on highways, as he was terrified of tailgating tractor-trailers, one of his many fears. In a January 18, 1990 letter to the Fitschens, Bellairs writes that he was "in a car accident, but came out bruised but OK." The accident, in which we’re told a truck drove him off the road (according to a letter sent to friend Gerald Kadish), was alluded to in a November 1990 article when asked why he doesn't drive: I had a car accident one. Luckily Haverhill has goods taxis and bus service and I go down to Boston on the train. I have kept my license and will lease a car occasionally but I am a lot happier not driving" [Author's Imagination Stuck at 10, 1990].

Around this time, Maura Bresnahan recalls that Bellairs visited her graduate class at Salem State College and she ended up giving him a ride back to Haverhill.

Myers thinks John would have been perfectly happy in a world without cars, somewhat like Professor Childermass: "to Childermass, and Bellairs as well, cars were a sometimes-necessary means of transportation, nothing more.

"Anyone with the slightest degree of mechanical ability would have been totally outside John's orbit. He once said to me that he didn't know anyone who had less of an interest in cars than he did and certainly would have hated them when they were 'broken' because he would have been completely helpless under the circumstances. My wife remembers getting completely hysterical over one of his tirades on how the workings of cars were a complete mystery to him. I'm sure that defrosting a refrigerator would be a mechanical process that he would also loathe."

Perhaps the knowledge of cars skipped John and was passed to his younger brother, Frank, who, like Anthony Monday's brother Keith, was a mechanic and quite knowledgeable about automobiles.

University of Notre Dame, A.B., 1959
University of Chicago, M.A., 1960

Like everyone else, John had his share of fears and anxieties that pestered him throughout his life. Many of these formulated in his youth and stayed with him through his adult years, though he was able to poke fun of his own phobis by writing about them in his letters and eventually his books. Some of the fears John harbored as an adult included:

• Being afraid of getting cut by rusty nails or pop-tops from soda cans and the resulting tetanus or lockjaw that surely must follow.
• Being poisoned by spoiled mayonnaise that had been left out of the refrigerator for more than five minutes. We're told this trait was drilled into him by his mom, but the concern was probably based on fact - mayonnaise in those days really was made from eggs and people got ill from potato salad left out in the sun at picnics.
• Sleeping in strange beds because they might have bed bugs.
• Choking on the bones of fish, thereby refusing to ever eat it.
• Driving on highways and being terrified of semi's tailgating him.
• A fear of flying, which made for extended travels to England, especially during his six-month stay in 1967. In a 1990 interview, Bellairs said he finally overcame it in 1975 "and then familiarity breeds contempt. In fact, my son and I flew in the summer of 1986 in the midst of terrorism scares and when all the hotels were empty and there were no lines anywhere and had a lovely time. So the fear is really irrational."

Thusly some of the above fears (plus others) were revealed in his novels, most notably through his young protagonists:

• Lewis, while snooping on his uncle, steps on the protruding head of a nail; it is noted he has a fear of tetanus [The House with a Clock in its Walls, 28].
• Aggie Sipes tells Rose Rita about the things she was worried about: "like rabies and tetanus and electrical shock and mayonnaise that had been left out of the icebox too long" [The Letter, the Witch and the Ring, 110].
• After breaking his arm after being chased by a dog, Anthony had a fear of dogs [The Dark Secret of Weatherend, 12].
• Sir Bertram Crabtree-Gore, first seen in The Pedant and the Shuffly, was slated to return to print in the short story, The Paranoid Sunglasses. In it, Sir Bertram wears vomit-colored sunglasses that revealed and ridiculed the character's paranoid peculiarities about leaving mayonnaise out in the sun, getting tetanus from rusty nails, and more.