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quiscalus · Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 10:33 pm Post subject:

Smokey, I've been meaning to ask you this for ages: Can you refresh my memory as to who "Smokey Stover" was? Unless I'm mixed up, wasn't he a funny pages character? A jug-toting hillbilly?
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"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing." -- Melville

Smokey Stover · Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 11:26 pm Post subject:

quiscalus · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 12:01 am Post subject:

Thanks for clarifying. I was indeed confusing Smokey with Snuffy.

I remember Lil' Abner very well. I always loved the Schmoo...

I also remember that Capp, who was rather conservative, would inject his political point of view into the strip -- much more often than I probably was aware, being so young. I do remember that one of his characters was "Phoney Joanie," a not-too-subtle caricature of Joan Baez.

I'm a huge Krazy Kat fan. I've got most of the books that reprinted the strip. I think Krazy and Ignatz first appeared around 1925. ( And no, I wasn't around to read them when they were first published, LOL.)

Now that my beloved "Calvin and Hobbes" is no more, the only modern comic strip I care for is "Mutts."
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"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing." -- Melville

Smokey Stover · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:31 am Post subject: Nuts about Mutts.

I read Mutts every day. Have you ever heard of Skeezix? I discovered recently that that is part of a code I agreed on with a credit card company to let me prove my identity. Question: What was the name of your first pet? Answer: Skeezix.

Before I forget, I duly note that Quiscalus is 5'3". You did say that, didn't you? That's exactly the height of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I take it that you think you have more in common with Giulietta Masina. Well, okay, but now I have to think of you in an entirely different manner. No more Shirley Maclaine. Now you are somewhat short, with medium long blondish hair and an infectious smile. Okay, got the message.

By the way, I'm totally okay with short girls (as well as tall ones). I once had a girl friend who would have to wear high heels to reach 5',

I was always a great admirer of Li'l Abner and of his creator, Al Capp. But on one of our changes of residence we found ourselves in an Al Capp-free zone. The local newspaper thought Capp was too liberal, probably a Comsymp. I'm sure you've heard the word. Communist sympathizer. That's what the HUAC people and the McCarthyites thought of him.

I looked him up yesterday, wanting to know more about his supposed tergiversation. I'm still not sure that he "turned conservative," but perhaps he did. His ridicule of Joan Baez as Joaney Phoaney was a terrible mistake, but his contempt for the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) finds me with the same contempt. I had no use for those people, perhaps because I was acquainted with the head of the SDS at Harvard one year.

I personally think it perfectly possible that Grumpy Al was ticked off at the anti-war protesters of the '60s because they were so childish. (Probably because they were young enough to be called children.) He had been a liberal protester when it was difficult, when you were likely to lose your friends, and quite possibly face smear campaigns, "investigations," and possible loss of job.

I really don't know. I tend to agree with George Bernard Shaw, who thought that if you were a true liberal when you were young, you would just become more so as you got older.

I learned something important for MY picture of Al Capp, if not for anyone else's. When he was nine years old, he lost a leg in an accident. During World War II and for some time thereafter he would visit military and other hospitals to try to bring hope and some cheer to the patients, especially the amputees.

ASIDE: Grumpy Al was actually what we called Al Newhouse, who owned a restaurant in Tinyville, where I grew up. After basketball games the students would head for the soda fountains at Lamparelli's pharmacy, and at Grumpy Al's restaurant. But Al hated students. They were so noisy. So he would close early on the nights of basketball games, so as not to have to serve a bunch of noisy teenagers.

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According to Smokey,
Circumstances alter cases.

quiscalus · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:52 pm Post subject:

Forget the medium-length blonde hair, smokey. Try short black hair. (My hair used to be reddish-brown, and I never colored it when I was young...except green once, in my David Bowie/Mott the Hoople/glitter days. Once it started turning gray, I decided I wasn't ready for that. I'm not normally vain -- I'd rather buy a book than have a manicure...in fact, I've NEVER had a a manicure -- but I'm vain enough not to want gray hair just yet. So I figured, if I was going to color my hair, I might as well have fun with it and make it the color I always wanted to have: black. No one has ever accused me of acting my age. Or dressing my age...although I'm not certain what "dressing my age" would entail.)

Well, my apologies to Al Capp (yeah, I know he's deceased) for thinking he was a conservative. I knew about the leg, but only from some references to Capp in Michael Chabon's excellent novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." Thanks for enlightening me, smokey.

And what G.B. Shaw said is certainly true in my case.

Did you really grow up in a place called Tinyville? Is that anywhere near my favorite town, East Bumfuk?

Oh, I remember Skeezix. "Gasoline Alley." Another childhood favorite, along with "Moon Mullins" and "Dick Tracey." "Dondi" was a little too wimpy for me. The cool thing about "Gasoline Alley" was that the characters aged, almost in real time.
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"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing." -- Melville

Smokey Stover · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:45 pm Post subject: Tinyville

No, Quiscalus, Tinyville is closer to West Bumfuk. In fact, it is in the southeast corner of New York State. Since I see you're hard to fool, Tinyville is what I call the town where I spent my most interesting years, namely grades 2 through 8. It is actually named Clymer, after George Clymer, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was from Pennsylvania, and I think the founders of Clymer probably thought they were in Pennsylvania. But they were actually about a mile from the Penna. border. You could always tell when you crossed the border from NY into PA, because the roads suddenly got much worse.

I think we probably remember our childhood years better than any other. Each year is a bigger fraction of our total life than any years thereafter. The world is becoming known to us for the first time, and really makes an impression.

Clymer was a good place for a boy to grow up. Not so good for an adult, unless you enjoyed being ruled, essentially, by the consistory board of the Dutch Reformed Church, or being unable to go to dances because they were forbidden, as was liquor. Official fun, like movies and dances, were not permitted, but there was some unofficial fun. Barbara and Caroline, schoolmates of mine who were a year ahead of me, and who lived next-door to each other, were deflowered on the floor of Mr. Meerdink's chicken coop. Roger Beckerink, who owned the Red & WHite store, was told by the consistory board that his store would be boycotted unless he got rid of that woman--not his wife--that he was fooling around with. (Roger, Jr., was a classmate of mine.) The woman left town pretty quick.

But for boys, heaven. Seemingly endless woods and meadows in one direction, right across from my house, with snakes and toads and salamanders and skunks--all the good things, with the cow pasture and a nearby grove being used once a year for the firemen's picnic, with its three-legged races, egg-throwing contests, greased pig chase, and the like. In another direction there was a pond, created by a dam, below which were muskrat in abundance, and turtles, which could also be found in the pond.

The weather in Tinyville was typical of upstate New York. Hot and humid in the summer, snowbelt precipitation in the winter. Storms, when they came, could be dramatic. Snowstorms were often blizzards. In the summer, when a rainstorm came, it was often preceded by a day of suddenly darkening skies, cumulus clouds turning into strato-cumulus before your eyes, then an inundation with lightning and thunder.

Not every rain was a storm. We had a house with a tin roof. The sound of the rain hitting the roof was like music. Outdoors in the evening we could see a sky full of stars in every direction, none of this pervasive glow that you find in cities hampering the view of the stars. To the east we could see the Milky Way (the rest of it, that is), to the west Cassiopeia and Orion. Although our latitude wasn't particularly northerly, we often got a display of the Northern Lights.

It was in Tinyville that I expreienced my first dramatic intimation of puberty. I knew, technically, what puberty was--I could read, after all. But the event was surprising and unexpected. It happened while I was walking home from school on the last day of the seventh grade. I was thirteen. Nothing unusual in the larger scheme of things, but unique for me.
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So, Quiscalus, you color your hair. Why do defensive about it? Women your age SHOULD color their hair, as a favor to their husbands if for no other reason. Colored hair is prettier than grey hair. Don't you owe it to your loved ones to be pretty? Actually, I think anything goes in the "making yourself prettier" department. If you think plastic surgery is what you need, go for it. I've had plastic surgery, too. Actually, it's because I had an accident in the garden, took myself to the E.R. at about 5:15 p.m., and had to wait for a plastic surgeon to be called from his supper to sew up my eyelid. Really embarrassing to me, really annoying for him.

Later.
_________________
According to Smokey,
Circumstances alter cases.

DurhamDawg · Sliver STAR Joined: 08 May 2006 Posts: 225

Hey Smokey, want to make sure you know about Tracian's new board:

http://socialissues.proboards80.com/index.cgi

it may end up replacing this one....
_________________
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." - Mark Twain

Smokey Stover · Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 3:35 am Post subject: Tinyville

To Quiscalus:

I made a major error regarding Tinyville. It is nearer to WEST Bumfuk, not East.

To Durham Dawg

My reply to you has just been erased by the program. I'll substitute this. Tracian let me know about the new site, and I have posted. It was difficult for me, as the type is too small, and in places it's even smaller, and in other places even more difficult for me to read. I may be driven off a site by typographic considerations.

But my post does contain at least one decent laugh. Excuse me, indecent laugh.
_________________
According to Smokey,
Circumstances alter cases.

DurhamDawg · Sliver STAR Joined: 08 May 2006 Posts: 225

Smokey - yes, I saw your post over there.... hope you can deal with the small type. You might be able to make it show up bigger by tweaking your browser settings. In Mozilla, you can choose 'view," then "text size," then "increase." Might help.
_________________
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." - Mark Twain

Smokey Stover · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:42 am Post subject: