CSotD: My favorite cartoonist
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I've mentioned several times that I grew up with access to a lot of cartoon collections. I'm not sure how often I've said that I also had the opportunity to watch cartoons being made from time to time.
My father was a mining engineer by trade but had been an amateur cartoonist through college and beyond, including at MIT's "VooDoo", a venerable humor magazine which may or may not still exist. If they do, their website could use a little updating.
But by the time I came along and made him a father of three on his way to being a father of six, his main art project each year was the family Christmas card.
Here's the first one that featured me. The Christmas Seals weren't on the cards we sent out, since everyone would have seen them and would catch the parallel, but I'm glad someone stuck these on later, because I wouldn't have gotten it in retrospect:
He went back and forth over the years between trying to draw what we looked like and doing what I would consider "cartoons." I liked the cartoony years best (This is from 1951):
Yes, even when I was being typecast (1952):
The cards did a good job of keeping distant friends up-to-date on changes, not just in our relative sizes but in what we were up to. For example, when, in the same year, we added my uncle Ted to the family and moved from Pennsylvania to the rural Adirondacks, Dad did a fine graphic roundup of not just the personnel changes but the cultural/climatic one as well:
And the best of his "realistic" pieces came the next year, with the addition of the first of my two little sisters, Lois. For that one, he let the two youngest take the stage and left the rest of us out, which was a good decision, since this was the result:
After being up in the North Woods for a half-dozen years, my folks built a house and I can pretty much pinpoint the date of the move, because we were still in company housing for the Kennedy assassination but were in the new house for Thanksgiving. And there were a few odds and ends yet to do by Christmas, as indicated here:
The biggest challenge came in 1970. Everyone expected and looked forward to the card each year, but the change in our family that year had been devastating: Just before his senior year in high school, my little brother was killed in an automobile accident.
Now what? Do you break the tradition? If not, how do you handle it?
The answer is, you don't overthink it. The vast majority of our friends knew what had happened, but the card had to make its annual statement: Here's where we're at.
Here's where we were at:
Then, as we got older and began to scatter, Dad faced the same dilemma Lynn Johnston ran into with "For Better or For Worse" — how do you track grown-and-gone kids?
And, unlike the Patterson brood, we weren't willing to go back and start over.
He gave it a heroic try in 1973, and I think he did a pretty good job considering how much ground he was attempting to cover in a 7×5 inch space (including a small map for friends attempting to find the new digs), but there is, well, a hint of the Hail Mary Pass in this herculean effort:
His best work came when he was just being silly, and he went back to more humorous work, once he was, I think, more used to the empty nest and no longer felt required to try to encompass the whole fam damily in the annual graphic update.
At which point even a major heart attack had its humorous elements:
His third-to-last card is another of my favorites, especially as I approach the age he was when he drew it:
For many years, I wondered what might have happened if he'd pursued cartooning, but the more I've been around the pros, the more I see that they need it and he didn't. As a college friend who became a successful actress said, a lot of people want it, but not many people have to have it — and you have to have to have it.
My dad enjoyed cartooning, and our friends and family loved the annual cards. Within our family, the annual cards are a way we mark the years, like the people who measure their kids each year in the doorway or line up everyone in the same place for a photo.
He liked to draw, but he had no urge to be a professional. He liked his life the way it was.
On the other hand, if they had ever called him up to the Big Time, he did have the hat!
Merry Christmas, and thanks for stopping by, today and every time!
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