Reading the Funnies

 

My Dad never failed to read the “funnies” in the newspaper.
We didn’t always have time to read them in the morning Houston Post, but they were still there in the afternoon for after-school enjoyment.

I can still hear Dad’s high cackle at some punchline from Johnny Hart’s “B.C.” or the hi-jinks of the Bumstead’s in “Blondie,” from Dean Young and John Marshall.  The Blondie and Dagwood characters were those I closely identified with my parents—always up to something, and always laughing or creating laughs.

"Prince Valiant"

It was my father’s contagious mirthfulness that got me interested in reading the paper as a young boy. Hal Foster’s “Prince Valiant” was also a favorite, published in the Post only on the weekends—in color! As I got older, I was able to better appreciate more contemporary offerings from Tom Batiuk’s  “Funky Winkerbean” and “Doonesbury” from Gary Trudeau. And proving my sense of humor skidded to the warped side, Gary Larson’s “The Far Side,” to me, packed more punchline octane in a single cartoon panel than some of the newer strips combined.

“Doonesbury” whetted my appetite for that other entertainment page, the Editorials. My favorites were the letters to the Editor at the Post, who always answered in a humorous, deflective fashion. But there were also thoughtful observations from Lynn Ashby and Leon Hale.

Hale, in particular, was my literary hero—a modern-day O. Henry--who wrote of things from the Texas back country and life lessons from times gone by.

The Houston Post

I moved away from Houston in 1977, but my parents still continued to take the Houston Post until it was bought by its cross-town competitor, the Houston Chronicle, and ceased publication in April, 1995.

Nowadays I find the “funnies” on Facebook and Nextdoor, which calls into serious doubt the sanity of some of our neighbors. Reading their posts is sort of like “Letters to the Editor” without the witty rejoinders. That they would even post some statements is truly frightening. And then there’s Twitter, which offers a terrifying slice of the dark side…beyond the far side.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.C._(comic_strip)

https://johnhartstudios.com/

https://www.facebook.com/BCcomic/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blondie_(comic_strip)

https://www.facebook.com/blondiecomic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Valiant

https://www.facebook.com/Prince.Valiant.of.Thule?__tn__=%2Cd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funky_Winkerbean

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doonesbury

https://www.facebook.com/G.B.Trudeau.Doonesbury

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side

https://www.thefarside.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mother's Day Without Mom

My Mom's 1st Mother's Day
(May 1955)

I knew this day would come.
My Mother passed away in January of this year.
This will be our first Mother’s Day without her.

What do I miss most about my Mom?
The emotions are almost too complex to put into words.
I imagine the list will expand as the passing months and years go by.

My brother and sister have been sifting through some of Mom’s things—a normal process following the death of a loved-one. Mom marked some items that she thought we’d like to have with a note inside, or a simple hand-printed name on the back.

A Tiffany pen I gave her as a Mother’s Day gift one year turned up with a note on the inside of the box, “Brent gave me this pen from Tiffany's. He should have it when I 'croak.'"
Yes, my prim and proper school-marm Mom often so referred to her demise…and now we have it in writing.

In her later years, Mom was an avid crossword puzzle worker. She would dutifully work the daily puzzle in the Temple Telegram newspaper, but skipped the Sunday edition because, “it was too hard,” as she would say. Her spot at the kitchen table was frequently cluttered with the past week’s puzzles, clipped from the paper by my Dad, and worked in pen by my Mom. She was confident! 

A metal cart still stands sentinel next to her place at the table, laden with a giant crossword puzzle dictionary, extra pens, note pads, and crossword puzzle books.  There is also an assortment of greeting cards and her hand-written address book in that cart.

Mom was an avid card-sender.
In her desk I discovered many blank card envelopes with postage stamps already affixed. They’re the “forever” stamps issued by the post office, and knowing Mom, she probably bought them back in 2007 when the stamps were first introduced at 41-cents. She knew they’d be more expensive later.

Everyone says, “be sure to hug your loved-ones because you never know when it will be the last time you see them.” On this first Mother’s Day without my Mom, I take solace in the fact that we always did, and we always told her we loved her, too. She knew that she was loved.
And now, she is missed.

Remembering Randy Wells

1973 Pontiac Grand Prix

I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma over the Labor Day weekend of 1977. One of the first people I met at church that Sunday was a friendly, somewhat cocky guy named Randy Wells. Randy drove a ginormous 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix that smelled like vanilla and leather, and had a hood long enough to land a small aircraft. I drove a '76 Honda Civic hatchback, and he always poked fun of my small, "beep-beep" car. Ironically, Randy would loan me the use of his Pontiac a year or two later during my annual "snow crash" period of wrecking cars in the Oklahoma wintertime. It was terrifyingly powerful.

Not long after moving to Tulsa, I became enamored with one of Randy's sisters, Darlene, and to Randy's dismay we were soon a very thick couple. He once griped, "every time I find a new friend, one of my sisters takes him away."

Randy was also derisive of my Texan heritage and passion for the Lone Star state, even though I'd moved into The Indian Territory. Less than a decade later, I would return to Texas...with his sister and our children. And as fate often mocks us, Randy would move to Texas with his family a few decades later, settling in Huntsville. Randy and his family flourished in Texas. 

Randy Wells (1957-2021)

He was beloved by me and all that knew him, and he was taken too soon by COVID on Father's Day 2021.
Today (3/12) would have been Randy's 66th Birthday.
Rest in Peace, my brother-in-law and brother in Christ.