from
Ten Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo
by
Walt Kelly

We neither preached nor practiced tolerance; we were just too ignorant to know there was anything to tolerate. Miss Blackham never tried to harness compassion, as I see political parties doing. She just used it, constantly, casually, and some of it rubbed off.

It would be nice, Manhattan, if everything outside New York were Bridgeport, especially the Bridgeport of the Tens and Twenties, and Miss Blackham were on hand everywhere to say, “Now, are you really telling me the truth?” My thanks to her and my thanks to Bridgeport, which was more flower pot than melting pot, more by-way than highway, maybe even more end than beginning.

It has always seemed to me that “Groundhog Day” should be made a national holiday. Certainly it would have made a fitting holiday in honor of the spirit of the times into which we were moving. A lot of us became afraid of our own shadows and it did not look as if the winter would ever come to an end.

Porky:
Bombs is a problem, Owl; they is no good. No... they puts everything too everywhere an’ in li’l bits, too.

Owl:
That’s the advantage of this type bomb.. A atom bomb can put everything all over nowhere.. nothin’ to sweep up...

Porky:
No muss, eh?

Owl:
Absoloosely no muss... Solves your problem.

Porky:
Glad of that, tho’ it’s not eggs-zackly the problem I had in mind.

Porky:
Don’t take life so serious, son... It ain’t nohow permanent.

Worm:
Haw! Albert can’t spell his way thru a book of cigaret papers.

Albert:
I bet I could!

Owl:
Well, yo’ will have to have a poetry contest.

Worm:
Agreed!

Albert:
Fuddle-stucks! I’ll outscan that li’l’ grub two to one.

Worm:
Well! I’ll go home an’ work on my i-ambic pentameter.

Albert:
By tunkit, if you uses any machinery I’ll declare a foul!

Every once in a while some grinning gargoyle of a dedicated liberal searching for meaning, a professional liberal who believes in liberalism rather than in liberty, comes grinning at me with teeth set like a jack-o’-lantern and says, “Walter, tell me, what are you trying to do? What’s behind the strip?” Such a man is a cryptologist.

The answer is simple, but unacceptable to such questioners. I’ve hinted at it all along. I’m trying to have fun and make money at the same time.

To return to a favorite complaint of mine, there is altogether too much searching for meaning in this world. [...] It’s like the old question of whether or not a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it makes a noise. I don’t understand completely, and I don’t care to understand, the mechanics and physics of sound. I know that if it falls on me, I’ll make a noise. Knowledge and meaning can be too earnestly sought after.

There was a time in the proud days between 1948 and 1956 when a great many of us in this land of the free and home of the brave were anything but either. In these latter (1959) more or less golden days of happy preoccupation with other greeds and other envies we should remember this. We confounded our friends abroad and dumfounded our enemies at home. None of them expected that we were so soft in the head or so hard in the heart.

Those years were our own fault, not the fault of any one individual or group, and years like them will be our fault again. As I stand here on this platform I hold between thumb and forefinger a nose that remembers a list of many, many more than 205 belly-whopping heroes who sledded out of sight in the yellow gloom of that gathering wintry dark.

* Not all believers in segregation are lunatics, nor even dishonest men.

Mouse:
[...] The mongoose is a singular bird ’cause nobody can say two of ’em.

Owl:
You forget the first principle of democracy... You may deplore my right to say whatever I please but you’ll defend to the death whatever it is.

Pogo:
You made a pretzel out of that statement! It don’t go nothin’ like that...

Owl:
You been sleepin’ too much. The world changes... Change an’ progress go hand-in-hand... Yesterday’s rock is tomorrow’s dust... Words are not immutable. They move... they stir... they shift.

Pogo:
I was thinkin’ of them li’l’ alligator children it tell about in the paper what couldn’t play in the zoo with them crocodile children.

Albert:
What? You mean the crocodiles barred the alligators?

Pogo:
Nope, other way ’round... Alligators barred the crocodiles.

Albert:
Oh... Well, that’s all right... There’s a certain amount of horse sense in that, son.

Pogo:
I hear some boneheads can’t tell the difference.

Snavely:
The days of the Volstead Act was the golden era of full employment for snakes, serpents an’ other reptilia.

Pogo:
You was in bottle goods?

Snavely:
Not exactly... I worked for a fellow what served a glass of cold kerosene... When the customer come to his senses, me and a group of snails put on a floor show. We’d slither around squealin’, makin’ faces and beatin’ on li’l’ drums... The customer thought it was the best hangover in the business.... We was a rage.

Pogo:
A economic curiosity.

Albert:
You open up a school, next thing you know all kinds of ingnoramusses is comin’ in... They meets yo’ daughter... splits a orange with her, poof! They’s engaged, married, an’ livin’ in the attic. An’ I don’t want nobody marryin’ my daughter if he’s so ingnorant he gotta go to school in the first place.

Pogo:
But you ain’t got no daughter.

Snavely:
[...] Who sent you?

Webster Weevil:
Fella name of Sam.

Snavely:
Sam? Do I know him?

Webster:
No... but I does an’ I can vouch for him...

Snavely:
In that case come in, stranger! Any friend of yours ain’t no stranger to me, long as you says he’s okay... What’s he say ’bout you?

Webster:
He says I’m okay.

“Where do you get your ideas?” they ask. I don’t know whether novelists, playwrights, bank robbers or poets are asked the same question, but it certainly is the common question asked of every cartoonist.

If the question were asked in a fitting sense of awe, I would be a happier man. However, it seems to be prompted by the opinion that the cartoonist just doesn’t look bright enough to have any ideas at all.

Owl:
You recalls one year we went into the business of makin’ resolutions for folks...

Churchy:
Yep an’ we near got killed.

Owl:
Nemmine that... Listen to this sample resolution I made up... “I hereby resolves to give up smokin’ dollar seegars... I resolve to walk ’stead of ridin’ in a $10,000 car... I ain’t gonna buy ten suits... just one... I...” You can see this is a high-toned resolution... Only a very rich man could afford it.

Churchy:
Or, mebbe, a very poor one.