Skeezix

My parents used a private language my brother and I assumed was nonsensical and limited to our family. Much of it, I’ve slowly learned, was actually drawn from the popular culture of roughly the 1920s through the 1950s. When referring to an Everyman, an average Joe, my father would sometimes say “Joe Posidewalken” – and I’m not certain of that spelling. What seemed like gibberish I was able to decode last year after reading Douglas Bukowski's Pictures Of Home: A Memoir Of Family And City. Bukowski explained that Polish immigrants to the United States, at least in his native Chicago (and apparently in my native Cleveland), often lived in cheap basement apartments in which the only windows were at ground level, opening on the sidewalk. My father’s parents were born in Poland and came to the United State about a century ago. If they never lived in such an apartment themselves, they probably knew other newly minted Americans who did. In effect, “Joe Posidewalken” was Polish-American for a regular Joe, somebody like you an me.

Another word, also referring to an Everyman but with the implication of fecklessness or limited intelligence, and usually applied to a child (me, my brother), was “Skeezix.” With the publication of Walt and Skeezix, by Drawn &Quarterly Books, of Montreal, I’ve solved another minor childhood mystery. “Walt” is Walt Wallet and “Skeezix” is his adopted son in the 88-year-old comic strip “Gasoline Alley.” The strip was the creation of Frank O. King, and was first published in the Chicago Tribune in 1918. It started with the premise of Walt and his friends – Doc, Avery and Bill – repairing and talking about their automobiles, then still a novelty. Thus, “Gasoline Alley.”

According to some accounts, the Trib’s editor wanted to attract more female readers and told King to add a baby to the plot. Walt was a pear-shaped bachelor and grease monkey, but King solved the plot dilemma ala Moses and Tom Jones: On Valentine’s Day 1921, a baby in a basket showed up on Walt’s doorstep.

Drawn & Quarterly has produced a beautiful, candy box-shaped volume, reprinting all the strips from 1921-1922. The introduction by Jeet Heer, unfortunately, is cliched and unhelpful: “The falling leave remind us that change is a constant part of experience and one day the son will have a life apart from the father.” Thanks a lot. The publisher plans to print, incrementally over the next 20 years or so, all of “Gasoline Alley” so long as it was drawn by King, into the 1960s. The strip still appears in newspapers today, drawn by Jim Scancarelli, and the characters continue to age in real time. Walt later married. His wife, Phyllis Blossom, died in the strip on April 26, 2004, at the age of 105.

The strips from the 1920s have a leisurely, conversational pace, like the talk of guys idly working on their car. Often, very little happens, but the strips have a cumulative, novel-like impact over time. The day of Skeezix’s arrival goes like this: In the first frame, Walt wakes in bed and says, “What in blazes can anybody want – ringing my doorbell before daylight in the morning?” In the second, he has already donned his voluminous flowered robe and is squeezing into his slippers: “If Bill’s car has got stalled somewhere and he wants me to pull him out he’s out of luck!” Next, Walt is about to open his front door, and says, “And if it’s somebody’s joke I’ll show ‘em I’m hard boiled!” Finally, we see the sleeping baby in the basket on the snow-covered porch, a note saying “Walt” pinned to his blanket. With both hands, Walt holds his head, out of which flies a large, emphatic exclamation point.

Walt reminds me of two of his contemporaries, Laurel and Hardy. There’s the same innocence and good-heartedness, forever compromised by naivete. A “skeezix,” by the way, is supposedly a motherless calf, though Webster’s Third says the origin is unknown and gives “rascal” as a synonym – as in “Little Rascals” (“Our Gang”), created by Hal Roach,.as was the teaming of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. All of these products of American popular culture from the pre-Depression 1920s share a gentleness and essential simplicity and decency.

The strip indirectly intersects my life. My father was born two and a half months after Skeezix, on May 3, 1921. He probably breathed it in, along with Tarzan, Jack Benny and James Cagney movies. Here’s the strip that ran the day my father was born: Walt says to the black maid, Rachel, who is washing clothes: “I entered Skeezix in the baby contest, Rachel. You don’t think any other baby would have a chance to win out do you?” Rachel answers, “No, Mista Walt! Skeezix is the grandest baby ever was!” In the next frame, set in the alley, Walt’s buddies say, “Yessir, in a baby contest Skeezix ought to have a walkway!” and Walt replies, “That the way I feel about it.” In the third frame, Walt tell two well-dressed women, “Think Skeezix has a chance?” and they reply, “Certainly! He’s a perfectly marvelous child!” In the last frame, Walt is walking, smiling, head held high, and says, “I feel sorry for foolish parents who think there is the most wonderful baby!”

King’s humor is rooted in the familiar, in family and work. His art is never as dazzling as, say, Winsor McCay’s (“Little Nemo in Slumberland”) or George Herriman’s (“Krazy Kat”), but their styles would be inappropriate for King’s subject matter – the dailiness of American, working-class life. I stayed up too late last night reading Walt and Skeezix, partly as an indulgence in nostalgia. What I love about it is Walt’s growing father instincts and abilities (Holding up Skeezix to a woman at the door, Walt say, “Isn’t he a dandy?”), and the small details of American life, including the language, circa 1921. Walt mounts two flashlights on Skeezix’s baby stroller for night walks. A bootlegger tries to sell Walt a pint (“the real stuff”), but when Skeezix hiccups at the same time, Walt pulls him from his stroller and says, “Skeezix, you come up here and let me smell your breath!”