This is one of those questions where, when you think about it, the influence itself is measured by the action it produces. For instance, the greatest invention ever, it could be argued, might be the printing press because of the action it produced and the ultimate influences it made - printing the written word and, thus, creating more books, and thus, more people reading, thus higher education. So, in that light and besides the obvious influence of our Lord Jesus Christ, I would say it was old Mr. White. I didn't know him by any other name as a kid but he a was a pretty good man who drank a little bit too much maybe, white hair, tall as a flagpole and his cowboy hat was always sat way back on his head giving him an approachable demeanor (even when he probably wasn't). He was a neighbor of my family and I saw him practically everyday and he saw me too, usually reading comic books; the Human Torch, Submariner, The Rawhide Kid. Mr. White asked me one day what I had in my back pocket. It was a comic book, I'm sure, and he went in his house and came out with an old scarred up book. He said "maybe someday you'll quit drinking that goat milk and start chewin on some meat". The book was Call of the Wild by Jack London and I couldn't get enough of it. Then came The Lone Star Ranger by Zane Grey then all those Louis La'more westerns I could handle and when Mr. White ran out of those he handed me "Catcher in the Rye", 1984, you name it. So, I guess old Mr. White who always said "you done already boy?" and laugh, was my printing press. When he died a few years later, he left me a number of his possessions - and I didn't have to pack up a thing.