Born Michael William Schall, in Maywood, CA in 1943. His name had been changed to Johnson by his stepdad and mom at age 14. When signing up with a nationwide artist registry, there were many Michael Johnsons, so the name Michael Schall Johnson was adopted as a pen name. At age twenty-six he and his new family moved to the Black Hills region of Wyoming in 1968, working as a Mountain States Tel. repairman. He put the first phones ever in the Four Corners, Wyoming area, about 30-40 of them, as he recalls. The visible ruts in the old Deadwood stage line trails and the tales of the stagecoach robberies were the inspiration for his historical novel, “The Bloody Road of Gold,” set in the late 1800s in the Black Hills. A lover of the westerns from childhood, stars like Tim McCoy, Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes, Andy Devine, Hopalong, Shane, etc., etc., were his idols as a boy. Spicing up this story are the likes of Calamity Jane, Seth Bullock, and probably the greatest lawman ever in the old west, D. Boone May, not as famous as others, but he should have been. Our hero and May together strive to eradicate the likes of Big Nose George Perot, Sam Bass and Lame Johnny Donahue, and many others from the Black Hills.
The mid-’70s saw him gaining a great deal of art education by working for and with some very talented artists around the movie industry as a museum and contracting artist in Los Angeles. Then as Art Editor for Newsreel Magazine 1983-1985.The book Mickey Schall Jackson Hole Lineman is generally a record of his early years of tramping and meandering through quite a good bit of the 1950s, the pleasurable Wyoming years of the ’60s, ’70s, and eighties, and finally ending up in Nevada. The crude illustrations, by the author, are intended to add some humor. An old Corvette also helps keep alive the love for old cars. He writes short stories that range from true to life to historical fiction and fantasy.
From Michael-
I didn’t get left at a bus station or dropped over a fence. But much of my childhood was a fearful time for me. Early in life, each family I lived with had varying rules (or lack of rules) on how they were enforced. Sometimes, I was pretty terrified. I have no fame nor any celebrities that I mingled with to cash in on, accounts, and stories. After my wobbly, fatherless, start in life, the journey I traveled was from the middle of the Second World War, onward to the 21st Century. I slept in ditches and was homeless when I left my mom and stepdad, as a pretty frightened teen. I was afraid of almost everything and everybody. I hoboed through the Mojave Desert when I was 18, just out of High School. I gradually learned to forgive my emotionally immature, selfish mother and my lingering anger, loneliness, and abandonment. I foolishly took on adult levels of responsibility to buy the impossible from my mom. I took pleasure in working my way up to the snowcapped mountains of Montana, Wyoming, and Nevada. Along the way, I had a couple of very good, responsible kids. I am an ordinary guy, that has had some extraordinary adventures. Amazingly, my life was transformed, when I was 49 years old, as I met the treasure of my life, Madeline and we are now living blissfully in our "golden years" in Las Vegas, Nevada. -------Michael
Bonnie says-------"I just received this TERRIFIC BOOK and already read it to Elza. It's going to be my favorite., next to Mr Jefferson. Truly a great book, I love the title and cover PERFECTOOOO! I am sitting in my chair watching the moon rise last night."
