He came on as Jim Ed Poole with Curtis, the Attack Chicken, in a cage, and sold photographs of himself to people, giving them more money in change then they paid for the photo. The first sound effects guy you probably met was your brother who lay in the bunk bed below you and worked on his drip sound late at night, and wouldn't quit even when you dropped things on him. Or the kid who sat behind you in school and made sounds during physics tests and when the teacher left the room and when you reached down for a pencil.
Sound effects are a child's art.
It started when you were a living kid and got soldiers and lined them up on the living room floor behind barricades and they banged away at each other. The guys who weren't that good at making sounds, like me, we became authors, and the guys who could do the mortars and dive bombers and hand grenades won the war and they became sound-effects men. Anniversary Copyright 2000 Minnesota Public Radio and Garrison Keillor.