Compound Eyes & The Katzenjammer Kids

Someone throws the Panama City News-Herald our way every morning. Linda pays for it a year at a time, and reads it faithfully. Yesterday it got soaked in the predawn downpour.

For some reason the newspaper habit left me years ago, probably because the news online is more instantaneous and relevant, or more likely because after reading The Harrisburg Patriot every morning our years in Pennsylvania, when we got to Apalachicola the newspaper was only a weekly and the habit lapsed. Now, when there’s something local that I need to read Linda tells me or sets it aside for me to look at later. She just read me an obit, for example.

After working the crossword puzzle she sets the comics section aside for me. All my favorites aren’t necessarily in it, and between a couple of websites most all the comics are available online, but reading real comics in a real newspaper is part of being real. Whoever scorns the comics needs to remember “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” That goes whether the work and play are physical or mental.

Sometimes the set-aside comics stack up before I get to them. They are now, as a matter of fact. Or fiction. They’re there from before I went to my silent retreat through yesterday, including two Sunday comic sections. Linda is leaving in a few minutes to take an older friend, who lives in St. A. Towers and doesn’t drive, to the lab to have blood drawn. While she’s gone, I might read the stack of comics and catch up, there’s no future in letting that stack get any higher. One reason there’s no future in it is that if it stacks up any more Linda may toss it.

The other family member who likes the comics is Caroline. Ten years old, Caroline is brilliant, but that we both like the comics doesn’t rub her brilliance off on me. She’s been reading since she was three or so. One day when she was about four she put down a science piece she was reading and asked her mother, “Did you know flies have compound eyes?” Another time in 3K or 4K her teacher chose her to read the prayers from the Book of Common Prayer at a school event for parents. She read perfectly. Afterward, other parents commented that she did so well memorizing the prayers. Tass said, “she didn’t memorize, she was reading.” This is no ordinary child. She blows my mind.

If the News-Herald is tossed onto the back driveway we know it’s our regular carrier. If it’s tossed into the front yard we know it was thrown by a substitute and we worry about our newspaper carrier, who was out with a heart attack for several months, then suddenly returned.

My grandfather used to read the comics to my cousin Ann. Pop called them "the funnies." Ann would crawl up in Pop’s lap to hear the latest about Li’l Abner, the Katzenjammer Kids, Alley Oop, and Red Ryder.

Last week on my way to Mobile I stopped by St. John’s Cemetery and told Mom and Pop and Mamoo and Daddy Walt that I still love them. Also found Daddy Walt’s brother Elbert Gentry. I remember Uncle Eb, 1872 - 1942. A partner at Gentry Bros. Loans & Pawns (Est. 1909), he died when I was six.

Daddy Walt used to introduce himself, "My name's Walter Gentry, I've been in business since nine."

Time to read Garfield and Dilbert.