Michael Nesmith aunts, and grandmother. Bette took temporary jobs ranging from clerical work to graphical design and developed very good secretarial skills, including shorthand and, auspiciously, touch typing. When Nesmith was 13, his mother invented the typewriter correction fluid later known commercially as Liquid Paper. Over the next 25 years she built the Liquid Paper Corporation into a multimillion-dollar international company, which she finally sold to Gillette in 1979 for US$48 million. She died a few months later, aged 56. Nesmith was enrolled in the Dallas public school system in 1949, aged 6. Describing himself as an indifferent student, he nevertheless participated
Michael Nesmith in the Air Force, Nesmith obtained a G.E.D. and was discharged under honorable conditions in 1962. He enrolled in San Antonio College, a community college, where he met John Kuehne (later to be known as John London) and began a musical collaboration. The duo won the first San Antonio College talent award, performing a mixture of standard folk songs and a few of Nesmith's original songs. While in college, Nesmith began to write more songs and poetry and after moving to Los Angeles, Nesmith began singing in folk clubs around the city and had one notable job as the "Hootmaster"