CSotD: Of Hamlets and Other Country Matters
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About five years ago, I was editing a twice-weekly newspaper in Farmington, Maine, and the publisher left, which meant I now was also editing a biweekly (other kind of biweekly) newspaper in Rangeley, which meant I was also writing three or four articles for each issue.
There was a marina-and-boat-shop-and-snowmobile-and-ATV-shop expanding, and I needed to go talk to the owner, so I called and said I was coming, then drove the 40 miles or so up there and discovered that he had gone out but would likely be back soon.
"Soon" being indefinite enough to begin with, twice so in the woods and twice that again in rural New England. And this wasn't even downtown metropolitan Rangeley. This was Oquossoc, one of its suburbs.
So I went across the street to the garage his family owned, in case he was over there, and, as I'm standing there waiting to talk to someone, I spy the above framed cartoon on the wall.
And the place I'm standing in is, yes, Koob's Garage. In fact, I'm looking for Larry Koob, son of the founder.
People didn't know a whole lot about the cartoon, which, after all, had been hanging there for about 35 years, but after that, every time I came up there, I'd stop by and I finally hit when the wife of the late Mr. Koob was in.
She said that George Booth had some friends with a cottage nearby and that he used to come up most summers, and he did this cartoon. I was a great deal more impressed than she was, since, in her world, he was simply a nice summer person and not a famous cartoonist.
(Not my first hint: If he were seen as a famous cartoonist, they'd have probably reframed the piece in light of those water stains. But this wasn't an art gallery.)
I wrote to the New Yorker and asked if they could get me in touch with Booth so I could do a piece on him and his travels to Oquossoc, but they never acknowledged it and so who knows. I left the job and that was the end of that.
However, if you want to know all about George Booth, here is a substantial interview with him from the Comics Journal, and I'll keep things short so you can go enjoy it.
It's all about him, but it's not everything about him. He doesn't mention Oquossoc, for instance, much less Koob's Garage.
But he's still remembered there as a nice fellow, and certainly not all summer people can make that claim.
Speaking of country matters:
Mark Trail, which I have often praised for its excellent, informative Sunday cartoons, which clash rather famously with its addictively clumsy weekday adventures, is, in that latter category, entering what I believe is some unexplored territory, a new arc in which Trail's nephew/ward Rusty is going into a dream sequence.
We'll see where this leads, but it ought to be interesting, in one sense or another.
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