Why, you young whipper-snapper…. When I was your age, we didn’t even have electrons, much less electronic communication and entertainment.
I learned to read – and dead-tree reading – from my parents. My Father read the newspaper, but not books. My Mother read books, but never the newspaper. Our home-town newspaper was a little, weekly, 8-page, fly-swatter, full of local gossip. We subscribed to a little, Mon./Sat, 10-page paper from the county-seat of the next county over, twenty-five miles away. Without local softball, hockey and curling, it might have shrunk to eight.
I soon found that the most interesting and educational section of it were the comic strips. This was just after World War II, and just as the Korean War was beginning. We needed all the humor and smiles that we could get. I followed the Katzenjammer Kids, Dagwood and Blondie, Bringing Up Father, Gasoline Alley, Joe Palooka, Mandrake the Magician, Little Orphan Annie, and Major Hoople’s Boarding House. “Mary Worth” was, and 65 years later still is, the print equivalent of later TV soap operas. Will that woman never die??!
The strip that taught me the most about the World, about society, about politics, about culture, and about religion, was Al Capp’s ‘L’il Abner. Capp used satire to point out failings. He mocked the powerful, to the delight of the common people, but he made fun of the common folk through the actions of the hillbillies in his strip.
While much of the action occurred in the unstated metropolis of Dogpatch, Capp sometimes changed things up by having L’il Abner read His favorite comic strip – a big-city, Dick Tracy-like cop named Fearless Fosdick. He also invented an eastern European country where strange things happened that influenced his characters. He called it Inner Slobovia. It, and its residents, were the predecessors of Scott Adams’ Dilbert strip’s Elbonia.
Some of Capp’s ideas and concepts have entered American culture. The most well-known is “Sadie Hawkins Day,” when it is socially acceptable for females to pursue the males. Capp had it as Leap Day – Feb. 29th – once every four years. It has become so popular that some places celebrate it at the end of every February. Some towns and/or high schools even have Sadie Hawkins Month.
Capp conceived a race of bowling-pin like creatures that he named Shmoos. They were friendly, lovable, helpful things like kittens. The wants and needs of Dogpatch residents were fairly simple, but if someone needed something…. Somehow, the shmoos would just provide it. They were also willing – anxious – to be cooked and eaten. They were tasty and filling – the ancestors of Star Trek’s food replicators and holodecks.
Capp had fun playing with words and names. A couple of times, Mammy Yokum had to explain the difference between an apple pie, and her a napple pie. One story arc told of an oily Yankee carpet-bagger-type, who was pursuing one of the virtuous local gals. The strip named him as Poole. She shunned his advances and sent him on his way, telling neighbors that there’s nothing lower than a Poole.
Even as an 8 or 9-year-old, I knew that there was something wrong with that. Years later I read an article which revealed that Capp had originally named him Sesspoole, but the Comic Strip Governing Board felt that it was too racy, and demanded that it be shortened, ruining the joke.
We’ve already been to the Poole in Slobovia. ‘Mammy’ Yokum’s real name was Pansy. ‘Pappy’ was Lucifer Ornamental Yokum. ‘Fearless’ Fosdick = fuzz-dick = police detective. His nemesis was Evil-Eye Fleagle. The famous flyer/aviator, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker visited the strip as Eddie Ricketyback, and the well-known lawyer, F. Lee Bailey became F Lea Bagg.
I close out this post with the J name, made famous by actor/singer ‘Stubby’ Kaye, in the 1959 movie – the beloved Confederate founder of Dogpatch
JUBILATION T. CORNPONE
Old tattered and torn-pone
Old toot your own horn-pone
He’s shattered and shorn-pone
Mark Greaney – Agent in Place
Crawford Killian – The Empire of Time
Archon's Den 