I was once an avid reader of the Sunday Funnies. I loved the madcap world of Dogpatch, Lil’ Abner, Mammy Yokum, and all. I also loved Pogo and his creator, Walt Kelly, but I’m sure you probably realized that already. I believe I basically grew up in Dogpatch. Rowan, Iowa is a small rural farm town. Romance is basically a matter of running away from the girls and eventually tiring out enough to get caught and married. I was a good athlete as a kid, probably why I didn’t get married until I was thirty-eight. More than one of the old church ladies was a Mammy Yokum. They fought the good fight for what is right by using a fast fist, a good dose of tonic, and an imperious, “I have spoken!” I married a woman like that. I had a Great Grandma that even looked like Mammy Yokum. There was more than one Hairless Joe hanging around town with a mind fixed on Kickapoo Joy Juice. There were even a few Shmoos. I was basically Joe Btfsplk with the little stormcloud forever above my head. I was in love with the only girl in town who looked like Daisy Mae, and I was chased by at least two different Sadie Hawkinses.
I used to read Al Capp’s strip on the front porch. It was my personal get away. We had an old student desk taken from the ancient Rowan School House. It was placed on the porch, in a corner by Mother’s German pump-organ, the one willed to her by her Great Aunt. There I would giggle about Abner’s spoonin’ and swoonin’ adventures. I remember when Frank Frazetta would draw Daisy Mae and the beautiful but smelly Moonshine McSwine. Man, I loved those curves! I didn’t realize then that the strip was portraying my own love life so subliminally. (I know there’s a better word than that, but can you say parallelly?) I didn’t like to think about romance other than to comment in front of girls that I hated girls and would not ever be trapped by a girl. That was all a lie, though, a big front. I secretly adored Alicia Stewart and she was my perfect Daisy Mae. So perfect, in fact, that I was embarrassed to even be in her presence for a moment. She would always wonder why I blushed so much. I never told her ( in an Abner-like way) how I felt about her.
http://youhavetobethistalltogoonthisride.blogspot.com
My Great Grandma Hinckley was every bit as furiously upright and moral as Pansy Yokum. She was the family matriarch, oldest living relative, and determiner of the family’s opinion on practically everything. She even wore red and white striped stockings once in a while, a matter of shameless pride in the face of the pervasive Methodist Puritanism that surrounded rural people. She had cures and remedies for everything that went in the face of my mother the registered nurse and all her book learnin’. In fact, she was such a believer in Vick’s Vapo-Rub that she even ate the stuff. She would come to our house to clean, purify, and straighten up not only the house and all its furniture, but our young and unruly souls as well. She stood for no nonsense. And, although no one ever tested her, she ruled with an iron fist.
Now, Hairless Joe was actually the opposite of hairless. He didn’t have eyes behind that sheepdog haircut of his. He goofed off up town, greeted everybody at the cafe, and, although most thought him worthless and foul, everyone greeted him in return. There was a major difference, though, between him and the comic strip Joe. No Lonesome Polecat, his little Indian friend. There was no sidekick to throw horseshoes into the Kickapoo Joy Juice to give it more kick. He went through life alone.
There were a lot of Shmoos in town. They were dangerous. They made you believe that you didn’t need jobs or money. Of course, they didn’t make you believe it through magical Shmoo power. They were more like my Dad, industrious to a fault. They did everything for you, paid for everything, and never taught you how to do things for yourself. My Dad, who had been a professional truck driver at one time, tried to teach me to drive, but after the third near-fatal wrong turn, he would end up leaving that hair-raising experience to high school driving instructors. He figured he had enough hair already and didn’t want to look like Hairless Joe.
Certainly that finally brings me back to the topic of me, Joe Btfsplk. I am the unluckiest man in the whole of Dogpatch, if not the world. Every intersection I drive up to yields an instant red light. The little storm cloud above my head is constantly raining on me. I’m given to long streaks of bad luck. My best efforts often come to naught. Still, like Joe, I keep my chin up. One good that comes from always expecting the worst is that I am never surprised unless it is a pleasant surprise. The bad things I am prepared for, the good ones I welcome.
Anyway, I used to imagine myself a resident of Dogpatch, USA. I was a good, wholesome youth with a world of promise before him, just like Lil’ Abner. I think I am still a resident, only now, I’m not Abner any more. My oldest son, Dorin, more of a naive fan of the Fearless Fosdicks of the world, and I am now more like Pappy Yokum, listening meekly to Mammy’s commands until the time comes when I am needed to step up and be the mouse that roared.
Ah, irony again! It ends up being anything but simple. You can write in simple, adjective-and-adverb-free sentences as Hemingway did, and still manage to convey deeply complicated and thoughtful ideas. One might even suggest that you can create poetic ideas in mere prose, dripping with layers of emotion, conflict, theme, and deeper implied meaning. You can also write prose in the intensely descriptive and convoluted style of a Charles Dickens with many complex sentences and pages-long paragraphs of detail, using comic juxtapositions of things, artfully revealing character development, and idiosyncratic dialogue all for comedic effect. Prose is a powerful and infinitely variable tool for creating meaning in words. Even when it is in the form of Mickian purple paisley prose that employs extra-wiggly sentence structure, pretzel-twisted ideas, and hyperbolically big words.
Catch a Falling Star 
Why Nudists are Necessary
I don’t expect you to accept my thesis whole-souled and become a nudist if you are a lifelong textile enthusiast. I understand the problem. The post-Victorian-era Christians, especially the fundamentalist extremists who think Adam and Eve’s nakedness is a sin after the fall from grace, work hard to put the fear of nakedness in everyone… from childhood onward.
But I have definitely learned in my older age that being nakedly open to new ideas is actually a good idea, not a sin. Human beings do not have to wear clothing to be mentally and physically healthy. And often, it is the very repressive nature of religion that causes the perversions and health problems that fire-and-brimstone preachers warn against.
The main stumbling block to a world where nudism and naturism are accepted as not only natural, but essential to a happy life, is the association nakedness automatically has with sexual activity. Pictures of naked people, especially naked and attractive people, are almost automatically considered porn. The average viewer of naturist and nudist materials assumes that the purpose of such material is to reach a sexual, and therefore evil, outcome. How nudist materials can actually affect the sex-lives of any but religiously repressed teenaged boys, I cannot effectively explain.
You may have noticed from being both a parent of your own children and a keen-eyed observer of other people’s children (only to prove you are a better parent than they are, of course) that it is harder to keep clothes on young children than it is to get them to take their clothing off. Kids enjoy swimming, playing, and running around in giggly circles completely naked. That urge to do such things that are inherently offensive to elderly church ladies has to be carefully trained out of them.
Being naked, though routinely trained out of us as a furless species, has provable health benefits. Vitamin D, acquired by spending time exposed to sunlight, is crucial to emotional health, and low quantities of vitamin D in the body result in a susceptability to severe and life-threatening depression. People are also attracted to other people with a healthy tan (not eaten up by skin cancer or constantly peeling from sunburn, but a healthy tan.) And I can testify from experience with nudism, if you are comfortable enough with the people around you to take off all your clothes in their presence, (family, doctors, other health professionals, and fellow nudists you both know and that show a reciprocal comfort with being nude in your presence,) there is a culture of trust, respect, and love around you.
And this portrait, recently done by me, of my young friend Naomi, demonstrates that there is no privacy issue from participating in nudism. This portrait of a young girl is not porn. She is not engaged in any sexual act. Her most private parts, though exposed, are not the focus of the portrait. She was using the pool when she saw me sketching things and offered to pose for me. I had her permission. I had her mother’s permission. And they both approved of the result, though Naomi thought I did not get the breasts right. I was given permission to share this picture, as long as I didn’t tell you the girl’s real name. It does not look enough like her so that her school friends will know that it is her if she doesn’t tell them. She is happy to now own the original, and there is really no way for you to track her down or accuse her of being an exhibitionist. There are many far more concerning pictures of girls her age on the internet and social media. It ends up simply being a work of art.
People need to see other people naked more. It gives you confidence that your naked body is no uglier than anybody else’s. It makes you feel like those naked people you are seeing are holding nothing back and are far more open and honest than the average politician. especially Senator Ted Cruz. (Special note to the world: I personally feel that Senator Ted Cruz is the one person on this Earth that you do NOT want to see naked. Not every nude body is a good thing.)
I myself regret that I waited so long to embrace nudism. I had chances as far back as age 28. But I had a traumatic experience, a childhood sexual assault, to overcome before I could ever have a positive body image. And now that I have come to a place of peace and self-acceptance, I can finally recapture some of that naked joy we all had once as a young child. Adam and Eve were supposed to be perfect in the eyes of God when they were comfortably naked in front of Him. It was only after the fall when they were wearing clothes that they were sinful.
So, now that I have not convinced you that you should become a nudist, I hope I have at least given you something to think about. And think about seriously. If you don’t believe the naked human form is a work of art, then I should warn you… don’t go into art museums and galleries.
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