About Me
About Me
From Trouble to Storytelling
I’m Hal T. Horowitz and welcome to my site. If you’re wondering about the T, I’ve always liked to tell people that Trouble is my middle name. I’ve been making up stories since childhood, leading teachers I didn’t even know to occasionally “borrow” me for a few minutes to amuse their students while they took a break. That I missed parts of my own class could not have brought my grades much lower. My own teachers frequently complained to my parents that I spent more time staring out the window than I did at the blackboard.
I was born in Chicago in 1943. My family moved to Los Angeles when I was 10 and due to a series of subsequent, almost annual moves up and toward “a better life,” I attended few schools for more than a year or two, so I learned to make friends quickly. I began putting pen to paper at 14 after acing a creative writing assignment in the 9th grade and I pursued my newfound writing interests as a journalism student throughout high school.
I was born in Chicago in 1943. My family moved to Los Angeles when I was 10 and due to a series of subsequent, almost annual moves up and toward “a better life,” I attended few schools for more than a year or two, so I learned to make friends quickly. I began putting pen to paper at 14 after acing a creative writing assignment in the 9th grade and I pursued my newfound writing interests as a journalism student throughout high school.
I’m Hal T. Horowitz and welcome to my site. If you’re wondering about the T, I’ve always liked to tell people that Trouble is my middle name. I’ve been making up stories since childhood, leading teachers I didn’t even know to occasionally “borrow” me for a few minutes to amuse their students while they took a break. That I missed parts of my own class could not have brought my grades much lower. My own teachers frequently complained to my parents that I spent more time staring out the window than I did at the blackboard.
I was born in Chicago in 1943. My family moved to Los Angeles when I was 10 and due to a series of subsequent, almost annual moves up and toward “a better life,” I attended few schools for more than a year or two, so I learned to make friends quickly. I began putting pen to paper at 14 after acing a creative writing assignment in the 9th grade and I pursued my newfound writing interests as a journalism student throughout high school.
I was born in Chicago in 1943. My family moved to Los Angeles when I was 10 and due to a series of subsequent, almost annual moves up and toward “a better life,” I attended few schools for more than a year or two, so I learned to make friends quickly. I began putting pen to paper at 14 after acing a creative writing assignment in the 9th grade and I pursued my newfound writing interests as a journalism student throughout high school.
Meet Hal T. Horowitz
Halie, King of the Alley
- Welcome to my site. First, let me clarify a couple of things. One, my name is Hal. Not Harold, Henry, or Harry. Just Hal—right there on the birth certificate. And two, when people ask what the “T” stands for, no matter what I tell them, Trouble is not really my middle name. Although, in years gone by, it wouldn’t have been far off.
- I’ve been making up stories since I was about seven years old. Teachers I didn’t even know would occasionally “borrow” me for a few minutes to entertain their classes with made-up tales while they took a break. Missing parts of my own classes probably didn’t help my grades much. My teachers often complained to my parents that I spent more time staring out the window — likely imagining myself saving fair maidens from fire-breathing dragons — than I did looking at the blackboard.
- I was born in Chicago in 1943. The alley behind our apartment was my first backyard. Its flowers were remnants of old cobblestone, its shrubs were trash cans, and its trees were telephone poles and power lines. Our neighbors’ back porches, mostly identical shades of gray or aging brown, rose as high as three stories. And oh, what stories those alleys held.
- Kids had nicknames back then. Mine was “Halie, King of the Alley.”
- For the most part, our parents considered the alley a safe place to play — providing it was still light outside. It was close to home, usually filled with other kids, and almost always within sight or hearing of at least one parent. The caveat was always, “…if it was still light out.”
- The alley had a darker side. Few of us ever saw it. Unfortunately, I was one of the few.
The Road Through Life
At 17, in lieu of starting college in the fall as planned, I was ready to pack up and go on the road with a traveling rodeo. There’s a longer story there but the spoiler is that I did start college, but I dropped out to join the Air Force where I found I was able to satisfy my desire to create stories by ghostwriting letters for my less articulate buddies to their mothers, wives and girlfriends. In 1962 I spent the first half of a two-week leave hitchhiking the entirety of the old Route 66, from Chicago to LA, recording the best of the adventure on 8mm film.
- When I was 10, my parents dragged me, kicking and screaming, to Los Angeles. I got used to it quickly. But then came a series of nearly annual moves in search of “that better life” my parents kept saying they wanted to give us. Over the next seven school years, I only attended one school for more than two consecutive years.
- The upside was that I learned to make friends quickly.
- At 14, after acing a creative writing assignment in the ninth grade, I began putting pen to paper more seriously. I pursued my newfound interest in writing as a journalism student throughout high school.
- At 17, instead of starting college in the fall as planned, I was ready to pack up and hit the road with a traveling rodeo company. There’s a longer story there, but here’s the spoiler: I did not run away with the rodeo.
- Came September, I started college. Came December, however, I found myself in the Air Force.
- In 1962, during a two-week leave, I spent the first week of it hitchhiking the entire length of the old Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles. A few years later, and now qualified for GI benefits, I returned to school, and from there, through the conduit of commercial equipment financing, I entered the corporate world. Thirty years later, I reinvented myself as an executive recruiter, where I spent another 20 years. The combined experience yielded a treasure of other people’s histories.
At 17, in lieu of starting college in the fall as planned, I was ready to pack up and go on the road with a traveling rodeo. There’s a longer story there but the spoiler is that I did start college, but I dropped out to join the Air Force where I found I was able to satisfy my desire to create stories by ghostwriting letters for my less articulate buddies to their mothers, wives and girlfriends. In 1962 I spent the first half of a two-week leave hitchhiking the entirety of the old Route 66, from Chicago to LA, recording the best of the adventure on 8mm film.
From a Lifetime of Stories to Photo by Broom
- At 80, with the full support of my late wife of nearly 50 years, along with my three children and four grandchildren, I completed and published my debut novel, Photo by Broom.
- Photo by Broom is an epic story spanning five generations of a Scots-Irish family and their journey from the Old World to the New. At the heart of the story is Tam Wade Broom, the fifth generation of the family and an award-winning photojournalist whose journey eventually takes him back across the ocean — back to the world his family left behind.
- I’ve spent a lifetime collecting stories, living a few of my own, and imagining and creating countless others. Photo by Broom is the first novel I’ve shared with the world.
- I hope you’ll join me on the journey.