Sunday Funnies

I got to thinking about my life as a journalist.

My first memory of newspapers in general takes me back to Los Angeles during WWII.

I was five or six years old. My cautious parents, moving from New Mexico to paradise, had bought a nice little brand new bungalow in Hillside Village near Pasadena. Dad worked at Plumb Tool Company making the screwdrivers and such for the army which would soon be scattered all over north Africa and Mom with her hair done up in a bandana (Rosie the Riveter) worked part-time in a nearby factory making aluminum rivets for airplanes (Really!).

Sunday was a Big Day with everybody home, Dad and Mom sleeping late and Bro Joe and I having fun as always.

The Big Thing for me was a Sunday morning  radio program: "Uncle Bob Reads the Funnies". It was great.

The Sunday paper was delivered to our doorstep as was the milk in bottles with cream on top in those primitive days and I see on my morning bile rides that newspapers. now wrapped in plastic, are still delivered to homes--but not the milk (and certainly not the cream!)--though most of us get our news from the Internet these days.

The Sunday funnies were printed in color on big sheets of newsprint and "Uncle Bob"--a man who seemed to be a real nice guy-- would read the words in the voice balloons and sometimes explain some arcane adult things to us eager pre-reading listeners.

There was one comic strip  called "The Little King" which I sort of scorned because the artwork was so rudimentary I could have almost done it and it was not so funny to me. I liked Maggie and Jiggs, Snuffy Smith, Popeye and Dagwood and Blondie  though I didn't always understand their humor.


I really liked 'em ALL, but I think my favorite was Prince Val--because the detailed artwork was so very carefully done by a REAL artist and the story-- which was not funny-- was set in the days of old when knights were bold.

I also think I started to get an underlying deep main idea--that the printed symbols in the voice balloons were WORDS which made the characters come alive somehow and talk.

And, oh, this was a fascinating idea!

I would just HAVE to learn to read!

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