I am not well again after a couple of weeks of rain and cold working on my arthritis. So I am going to merely post a few past Paffoonies to make up today’s post. If you would like to see what Paffoonies are all about, then go to Google picture search “Beyer Paffooney”. It will basically give you a Mickian art gallery, peppered with other pictures that I used in posts that aren’t actually Paffoonies (but the algorithm doesn’t know that).
Filed under artwork, Paffooney, Uncategorized
It bothers me that my sense of sight and my ability to type are both deteriorating now when I still have so many more stories to tell. I want to write more about my time as a school teacher, recalling the students I learned to both love and hate… often at the same time. And I want to put more of my surrealistic ideas into fantasy-comedy stories,,, with illustrations I drew myself. But I am having a hard time typing this… and drawing is nearly impossible. My hands hurt with the cold weather. This paragraph took twenty minutes with as many corrections… or more.
So bare with me… I mean bear with me… like two bears… but it is easier to explain and make jokes than go back to make corrections.
When it warms up, things will get better… I hope.
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When I was 12, my favorite novel was Rudyard Kipling’s First Jungle Book. I loved it. From page one to the last sentence of the story about the White Seal. I owned a paperback copy that I still have 51 years later. I bought it from the school book order form, Scholastic, I think. I used my allowance money, earned at a nickel a week. Along with the chapter books I had read previously, The Swiss Family Robinson, the White Stag, and Treasure Island, it guided my view of life. Every grove and forest in Iowa became the jungle in the summer of 1968. The windswept fields of corn and soy beans easily transformed into tropical seas. I imagined pirates, natives, and buried treasures everywhere. When I found a piece of a brass candlestick with the necessary curved part, which became the cursed Ahnk from The Jungle Book. Midnight, Grandma Aldrich’s blue-eyed black cat, became my Bagheera. I traveled with an invisible Baloo. You know, it was only a year or so before that when I saw the Disney movie. So, of course, dancing and singing was a part of being a jungle boy.
In the book, unlike the movie, Mowgli was naked in the jungle. He didn’t wear clothes until the first time he submitted himself to the man village. He took them off again when he escaped. I had to try that too. I went to the BinghamPark woods down by the Iowa River. I found a tree where I could put my clothes, and I took everything off. I figured roaming the woods like Mowgli would be great. Boy, I was a stupid child. Problem number one struck with my first naked step in the forest. Dang! There must not be any twigs or nettles in Mowgli’s jungle. I tried hopping from place to place, but in minutes I was wearing at least my socks and shoes. Hanging branches and brambles were a problem, too. They clutched at me, striping me with welts and scrapes. Certain parts you just don’t want pricked by a bramble bush. It was like God suddenly planted those pointed things everywhere. Okay, shoes and socks and shorts. Well, then I began to get cold. Iowa is never very warm even in the height of summer. I had already defeated the whole naked in the forest thing when I put my shorts back on, so, what the heck! It just didn’t work like I thought.
I still believed that the ways of the jungle were an essential part of my young life. I read and reread what the Jungle Book says about the “Law of the Jungle”. I tried to make sense of it as a credo to live by. Of course, at twelve we are always among the wisest and all-knowing of God’s creatures. We can make sense of the world in our own weird little way, and no one will ever be able to sway us from the philosophy we live by, no matter how silly it is. I still think about my “Jungle Book Period” as an important part of my young life. There are things about young Mowgli and Jim Hawkins and the Robinsons that formed a significant part of my character. I would one day make use of those determined and resourceful qualities to stay alive in the classroom jungles of South Texas. I tried to make others see it. I shared Kipling and Stevenson with kids and hoped that I could make them learn, as I did, how to be that little boy facing and succeeding against the dangerous jungle around him.
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Thanks for the idea, Norm.
I really didn’t know what I was going to write about in this post. I have been tired all day, not able to get any sleep after what happened last night a 3:55 a.m.
So… What happened?
The monkey sitting at the random screwy events typewriter decided to write about late-night driving done by tired women.
I was awakened by a loud smash. Followed by the sound of metal and plastic in a trash compactor accompanied by a screeching sound that obviously had to be producing sparks. Sorta like a car rolling over. Then a car alarm sounded like someone was breaking into a car.
I was smart enough to put my shoes on. It was a cold night, so I had my red pajamas on rather than being naked. I grabbed my phone to go look and stumbled downstairs, bleary-eyed and ready to find a crashed airplane on our side lawn.
But it wasn’t an airplane. I dreamed about that part. It was a compact car with a caved-in front fender and crushed parts that suggested it had rolled completely over and come to rest on its wheels again.
Once the alarm had gone off, the car had gone completely dark. I looked for smoke… none. I looked for movement on the driver’s side, and there was none.
I was certain it was a very bad outcome. I was completely awake by that time, and I knew the most helpful thing I could do was call 911. The neighbor to the south appeared, and he went to check on the driver as he heard me talking to the 911 operator.
There were three police cars in about two minutes, and an ambulance came seconds afterward.
The lady who had been driving woke up and opened her car door before the police arrived. And she seemed fine. She told the neighbor that she had fallen asleep at the wheel. She had glanced off the side of the huge live oak on the corner by our house, tearing off a chunk of bark. She wasn’t sure her car had rolled over, but she thought it had. She seemed okay. Maybe being asleep and relaxed had made her rubbery enough to not get badly hurt. She had been wearing a seatbelt with a shoulder harness, and it helped save her life.
The police and ambulance took over then. I went back to bed to obsess about what happened for what was left of my night.
So, I haven’t given up, Norman. But, I haven’t slept enough. And I haven’t figured it all out, yet.
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700 days in a row of posting at least once on WordPress daily. It is my second-longest string of posting ever. I may surpass the two years I did a few years ago. But I also might not.
My health is deteriorating. I am having trouble even getting the basic things of life done. My novel writing has slowed to a crawl. My vision is blurring, I feel like every time I drive may be the last time due to a fatal car accident.
My world will evaporate quickly after my last breath. My wife will do nothing to keep my books in print. My kids may not find it essential either. They really haven’t read any of them. My artwork will probably hit the trash pile.
Of course, the world we all currently live in may not outlast me by very many years.
But my personal despair is not long-lasting. I will happily go about what business I can tomorrow, even if it is only looking at Twitter and watching some TV shows. And you shouldn’t worry overmuch either. What comes next is beyond my power to alter. Beyond yours as well. So, make the most of today. And tomorrow if it is given to us.
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Little Red-Haired Girl
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
That little red-haired girl, so cute, so nice
You only looked and looked from afar
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
You could’ve held her hand
You could’ve walked her home from school
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
She never got your Valentine
At least, you forgot to sign your name
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
No hope of marriage now, nor children for old age
Happily ever after has now long gone
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
Now every love poem is a sad poem
And the world is blue and down
You never told her that you loved her…
You never told her that you loved her…
You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown
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It is said that Friday the 13th, though really unlikely to be lucky for you if you are a Knight Templar, is a lucky day once you survive one with no bad luck at all.
So, did I experience any good luck on this infamously unlucky day?
Well, I sold a book. Not today the 13th, but I discovered I sold it on Amazon today.
The weather has been cripplingly cold on my arthritic joints, making it hard to write, draw, or walk for essential exercise to keep my diabetes and arthritis in check. But when I went out for a walk at the usual time, the weather was perfect for it… not too cold, not too warm for how I was dressed, and beautiful sunshine to light my way.
My hemorrhoid has stopped bleeding, so I managed to do some nude meditation today for the first time in months. With friends… but they are only imaginary.
I got a voicemail from a publisher wanting to talk to me about one of my books. I know they will only want to make money in some way that I will have to pay for. I have become cynical about the publishing industry. But it is interest from a publisher in some of my books.
The chalkboard girl is right, It is foolish to believe in good or bad luck. We make our own meaning in life. And that is a superpower.
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When I was a kid old enough to begin to see and interact with the real world in the tragic and magical 1960s, the first comic books available to me, long before my parents would allow me to pick up and buy Spiderman and Batman and (shudder) comics with monsters in them, were the kid-friendly comics of the Harvey Brothers.
Now, you have to understand that Harvey Comics had been around since the 1940s and made their money on characters licensed first from the Brookwood Publications company that Alfred Harvey bought out in 1941 to provide the building, equipment, and publishing personnel to start producing comic books.
Robert B. Harvey and Leon Harvey joined the company to help produce titles they now owned the rights too like Black Cat, the Shield, Shock Gibson, and Captain Freedom.
…………………………………………Of course, most of those characters didn’t last very long. Black Cat was the only title still being published by Harvey in the 1950s.
They would go on to license characters from Famous Studios, the animated cartoon works of Max Fleischer and his brother Dave. That’s when the kid- friendly, parent-approved comic books of Fleischer creations like Casper the Friendly Ghost opened up the world of comic books to seven-year-old Mickey circa 1963.
Now, it is probably obvious that there are many ways that Harvey Comics influenced me as a storyteller later in life. It goes without saying that my dedication to childish humor in stories derives from this comic-book source. The cuteness of characters is another necessity of comic storytelling gleaned from these ripe fields of baby faces. And stories advanced by magical means and absurd sidetracks also come from here. But did you ever notice that Casper and the other ghosts all perform in the nude? Yes, I think my childhood longing to be a nudist began with Casper’s naked adventures. But unlike Casper, my urges along those lines were suppressed and repressed by parents and society as a whole. So watching Casper and Spooky and Pearl (Spooky’s goilfriend) romp naked through comic book hijinks were a sublimated substitution for that childhood desire. (Sure, none of them had genitals, but it wasn’t about that.)
…………………………………………….Of course, there were many other Harvey characters to enjoy that actually did wear clothes. I was particularly fond of Hot Stuff because he made such an art out of burning things and being a bad kid and roasting the backsides of fools and hypocrites with his trident. And he only ever wore a fireproof diaper, so he was almost a nudist too.
There were many other characters licensed by Harvey as well, including Felix the Cat, Little Audrey, Baby Huey, and the characters from Walter Lance Studios like Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, and Chilly Willy.
So, now you know the true story of how my innocent childhood was warped and woven and corrupted by the characters of Harvey Comics.
Filed under artists I admire, autobiography, collage, comic book heroes, goofy thoughts, humor, Uncategorized
Catch a Falling Star 
The Cowboy Code
When I was a boy playing cowboys and Indians with cap pistols and rubber tomahawks, we all knew that cowboys had a code. The guy in the white hat always shoots straight. He knows right from wrong. He only shoots the bad guy. He even shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand if he can. Westerns are about right and wrong, good and bad, and the unyieldingly good knights of plains.
And boys believe what they see on TV and in the movie theaters. People who make television shows never lie, do they? In fact, Wyatt Earp was based on a real guy who really lived and really shot the bad guys at the gosh-darn real OK Corral.
Daniel Boone was a real guy too. He faced the opening up of new lands full of deadly dangers. And when Fess Parker played him in 1964, wearing Davy Crockett’s coonskin hat, he walked the earth like a guardian angel, making everyone safe by the end of the episode. He even knew which Indians were good and which were bad. Mingo was always on Daniel’s side. And when they spoke to each other about the dangers they faced, it was never about killing the people they feared. It was about doing what is was right, about helping the community at Boonesboro to survive. Being encouraging… looking forward to a more settled future created by following the cowboy frontier code.
So, I am left wondering what ever happened to the cowboy code? I listen to Republican presidential candidates talking about dipping bullets in pig’s blood to kill Muslims, and building walls against Mexican immigrants, and why our right to carry assault rifles is sacred, and I wonder what happened. Didn’t they experience the same education from the television versions of the Great American Mythology? Didn’t they learn the code too?
I am old enough now to know that cap guns are not real guns and you cannot solve problems by shooting somebody. But that was never the point of the cowboy code. We need straight-shooters again in our lives, not to shoot people, but to tell the unvarnished truth. We need wise people who can tell who are the good Indians and who are the bad We need them to shoot the weapons out of the bad guys’ hands. And I know that’s asking for leaders to be larger than life and be more perfect than a man can actually be. But Daniel Boone was a real man. Myths and legends start with a fundamental truth.
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Filed under autobiography, commentary, cowboys, humor, insight, philosophy, politics, Uncategorized
Tagged as autobiography, childhood beliefs, cowboy code, Daniel Boone, humor, politics, Red Ryder, Roy Rogers, Wyatt Earp