I used to love doodling. I was always drawing and sketching things in school. Battles scenes like the Alamo and “Custer’s Last Stand” captured my imagination as a youngster. I’d be merrily drawing away while distantly listening to the teacher do her thing, sitting in my classroom at the former Temple Street or Arlington Street schools. I invented flying cars and drew tanks, ships and World War II fighter planes.

At some point, Miss Snow, who was the principal and 6th-grade teacher at Arlington Street School, told my parents I had artistic talent and suggested I should take art lessons. My parents agreed, and we somehow connected with a gentleman named Maurice Easter.

“Mr. Easter” lived on Chester Street in the North End and taught group art classes in his cellar studio. He was a tall, soft-spoken guy who smoked a pipe and worked as a commercial artist at what was then simply called “the card shop” on Franklin Street.

My mom and dad managed to scrape up the money for weekly 90-minute art lessons every Saturday morning, in addition to cab fare from our Harvard Street apartment to Chester Street and back. Over the years I learned how to use charcoal pencils, pastels, watercolors and oil paints. My first drawing was a squirrel drawn in charcoals. Some of the drawings and paintings I did at Easter’s classes are hanging in my home here in Texas.

What made me think of him after all these years was a photo I stumbled across the other night on Facebook. It was a photo of a typical New Hampshire scene with a covered bridge spanning a rock-strewn stream.

Easter’s studio classes pretty much coincided with the school year, running from the fall through spring. But he also had a summer program, where one night a week, for several weeks, he would take a few students to sites around Nashua and Hollis. We’d set up outdoors and draw scenes very similar to the photo I saw on Facebook. In fact, we even drew a covered bridge somewhere around Hollis one time.

Those sessions were so special. I still recall enjoying the fresh air, punctuated by the aromatic scent of Mr. Easter’s pipe carried on gentle, early evening breezes. You could hear birds chirping and peeping away and water slapping against the rocks from a nearby stream. Another night we might be drawing trees in an apple orchard, or a dilapidated old barn. Fun stuff.

Much of the thrill of creating something out of nothing on blank paper or canvas is unknown to generations of kids growing up today in the digital age. It doesn’t mean everyone who came to know Maurice Easter through his art classes became gainfully employed artists. In fact, I stopped going to Easter’s art classes sometime in high school – at about the same time I discovered guitars and girls. However, I continued to doodle away in high school, drawing cartoons of rock and roll bands and creating characters I dubbed “Moon Goons.”

Still, some 50 years later, I find myself using what I learned back then, when I need to create a band logo or a design for a tattoo I want to get. Learning to draw is to learn about composition, balance, lighting and perspective. These skills are useful, too, when you’re taking a photo, creating a flower garden or decorating a patio.

Thanks to the encouragement of a 6th-grade teacher, I came to know Maurice Easter. Sure, I learned how to draw, but what I learned from him went beyond pencils and paints. I discovered there’s an inner peace that comes from the creative process, whether it’s art, writing or music. It’s little wonder that so many musicians, including John Lennon, attended art school before becoming rock ’n’ rollers.

I haven’t drawn or painted anything much in decades, but I’d love to again. Those skills still exist, after all. Maurice Easter taught me well. It wouldn’t take much for me to knock the rust off the old hinges and dive back into the art thing again. Some day soon I will, and I’m guessing Mr. Easter will be looking over my shoulder, gently guiding my hand.

Nashua native Paul Sylvain writes from his adopted home in Euless, Texas, and can be reached by email at psylvain.telegraph@yahoo.com