THE VANISHING TOWN STORY

ON KIDS RESPONDING SCEPTICALLY TO A VOICE ON THE VIDEO PHONE:

 DAD (VO):

"KIDS! It's me, Dad!"

"I have to talk fast because I might get cut off any minute. Look, I can tell by your expressions that you don't recognize me anymore. That's okay...it's not your fault! Just bear with me!"

I tried to call your mother but she didn't recognize me either, and she hung up. It sounds fantastic, but...I honestly don't think she remembers having had a husband. Maybe you guys don't remember having a dad! By the time you wake up tomorrow you probably won't remember this conversation.

The whole crazy mess started a few weeks ago when I went out of town on business. Remember? You made me promise to bring back souvenirs and your mother drove me to the airport. Well, things in the city went okay for a while but I couldn't shake off the feeling that something was off kilter there, that things just weren't right. 

Maybe it was the people I saw on the street. They seemed different somehow. 

With every passing day they seemed to get more and more...aggressive. 

They'd get annoyed about little things. You had to be careful not to antagonize anyone.

I was at a restaurant and two men started a fight over who should have an empty table. I didn't get it. The place was full of empty tables. Why fight over them? They would have killed each other if someone hadn't pulled them apart.

Violence was becoming common. I'd stumble over corpses in the street. Like everybody else I learned to walk past without seeming to notice.

The media was no help. TV and newspapers were full of stories that ridiculed people who failed to take revenge. There were shows that showed how to load and fire a gun, and tips like the one about running over a person twice to be sure they were really dead.

Even kids TV was like that. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. 

It got so that nobody trusted their neighbors. Misunderstandings resulted in shootings.

I had the feeling that the town was being rapidly depopulated. Not only that, but buildings were falling into disrepair at an alarming rate. It only took a few days to put what looked like years of decay on them.   

Whatever or whoever was causing all this must have come to the conclusion that the homicides weren't happening fast enough. I began to hear rumors that people had been inexplicably whisked away into the sky. At first I didn't believe them.

According to the stories people thought they could cheat death by staying home with the doors locked, but it didn't work. If their time was up they'd still get sucked up, only if the windows were closed they couldn't get out. 

Eventually they'd starve to death and their lifeless corpses would continue banging against the ceiling. I didn't believe any of this til I took my first walk down a suburban street. I can't begin to describe the sickening feeling I got walking along and hearing thumps inside the homes.

I'm no fool. I tried to leave but it was too late. Every avenue was closed. Small roads were overgrown with brush and trees...

....big roads simply vanished. 

There was no way out.

In only a few weeks whole parts of town had become overgrown with vegetation. It was as if the whole place was being obliterated, section by section. I looked at a map and the town wasn't even listed anymore. I mentioned the name of the town to your mother on the phone and she never heard of it, even though it used to be the state capitol.

What was going on? I talked to a guy on the street who had a theory...he said maybe this has happened throughout history. Buildings go, people go, and nobody remembers. Maybe cleaners have to eliminate the past to make way for what's happening now. Maybe that's just the way things work. I don't know. I don't understand any of it.

Under that soil had been schools and streets and people leading their lives. Now there's just...what?...wild growth and a strangely unfriendly forest. That'll probably be my fate too, if one of the angry shooters doesn't find me first.

Wait a minute, someone's at the door. Maybe it's the police. I called them a little while ago. I'll be right back.

BAM!

****THE END****

c story by Eddie Fitzgerald 12/2014, photo copyrights owned by their respective owners. 

HOW TO DRESS A CARTOON CHARACTER

Traditional animal characters were often naked below the waist. Maybe that's one reason they were so appealing and funny. You wanted to laugh before they even did anything.

Modern designs are sometimes pantsless but they're designed in such a way as to de-emphasize the nudity.

For human characters the obvious way to go is clothes that are either too small or too big. I like the way Curly's jacket fits in this photo.

All my thrift store jackets are deliberately either too small or too big. I wish I could show you a picture of the miniature Uncle Eddie jacket John gave me a long time ago, but I don't have it anymore and I think I'll take a minute to tell you why. It spotlights an age-old wives trick that men need to know about.

It works like this: the wife waits til her husband is busy with something then asks him a few questions that have an obvious "no" answer, questions like: "Are you saving this ball of lint?" "Do want this pencil stub?" "How 'bout his used Kleenex?" She gets a nice litany of automatic "no's" going then casually throws in the important item, in this case: "Do you want to save this ugly old Uncle Eddie jacket?" The first ten times my wife tried this I reacted with horror that she could even think of such a thing, but she persisted and one day when I was seriously distracted I found myself saying, "Huh... oh, yeah...sure...whatever..." and that was the last time I ever saw my jacket. Now I live in fear that my more-precious-than-rubies Wrinkle Jacket will suffer the same fate.

But I digress.

 I like one-of-a-kind outfits myself.

Cartoonists should be fashion leaders, not fashion followers.

I like suit jackets (above) that flare out and stay flared.

What kind of dress shirt? One way to go is bulky one-size-fits-all shirts that always look ironed and new, like they just came out of the wrapper.

A certain kind of character should tuck in his shirt even though that's not the style now. In real life tucking it in requires constant adjustment and that's a great bit of business for a character with OCD.

Besides, tucked in shirts look great when they're pulled out (above) and allowed to hang loose. They retain their beautiful wrinkles at the shirt's bottom.

BTW, how do you like the crumpled forearm fabric and long cuffs?

Dress shirts come with all sorts of biases. This one is tight at the shoulders and loose everywhere else.

I wish I could have found a picture of a ballooning "parachute" backed tuck-in but, Alas!, it was not meant to be. Maybe next time.

BLACK FRIDAY 2014

Black Friday is here! If you're a cartoonist what better subject is there than this?

I have yet to see a photograph that adequately covers the subject.

Cartoonists OWN this holiday.

Photos can't do justice to it. What photographer has captured the essence of the crowded escalator?

None! That's the domain of cartoonists!

I'd have loved to have seen this kind of crowd for myself but I couldn't find a friend who'd do it with me, and I didn't want to go alone. I didn't want to shop, I just wanted to see the crowd.




When I watch videos like this one (above) I'm amazed at how many people mill around in a stupor. They seem to be anesthetized by the unfamiliar sights and sounds. It's funny to see the same super charged people who trampled old ladies to get into the store now mill about aimlessly, not knowing what to do next. That must be frustrating for goal oriented people who know exactly where they want to go and feel they have to push others aside to get anywhere at all.

On other videos I notice that nobody in the crowd can take big strides...there's no room...so everybody walks in little bird steps. Tiny steps and a forward inclination make you unstable so you tend to lean on the person infront of you with the result that they lean on the person infront of them. Eventually someone tries to break out by insinuating himself between two other people who are then forced to the sides and have to battle their way to the center again. Fascinating, eh?

HORN AND HARDART'S PUMPKIN PIE

That's Horn and Hardart's automat above, a noble restaurant that no longer exists now, but which is fondly remembered by everyone who took a meal there. What I remember best was their pumpkin pie. For kids its appearance in the Fall was a major event, eclipsed only by giant super holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving. 

Like I said, Horn and Hardart's is closed for good now but I discovered that the recipe they used is available on the net now. That means this mouth-watering food of the gods is available to anyone who's willing to take the trouble to make it. Now THAT'S news! Imagine it...no more plain brown pumpkin pie. The glorious original awaits...

...the glorious, textured ORANGE original, just like the innards of a real pumpkin!

On a practical note, I'll add that If you make this pie, don't buy the pumpkin mash in a can...what you want are real baking pumpkins (small), and real evaporated milk, not condensed milk, which is different.

Here's the recipe:

The recipe doesn't tell us how H&H made the pie crust. I seem to remember it tasting a bit like shortbread. And I can't tell from the wording if the pumpkin mash is pre-cooked. I don't think it is, but it would be nice to be certain. Also, I'll hazard a guess that H&H used a little more butter and spices than is allowed here. After all, people loved butter in those days! And where's the teaspoon full of orange peel scrapings!?

ADVENTURE STORY

"Hey, I was rummaging in some old boxes in the garage and 

dug up an adventure book I thought I'd lost . You want to hear a few paragraphs?  I gotta warn you...it's not for the feint of heart.

"Yikes! A spider! I'll just shake it out."

"Okay, here goes: 'On a night when the moon is at the full and the taboo of the rice feast is forgotten, a live hamadryad..."

"...um, that's a poisonous snake, I think..."

 "...a live hamadryad is thrown into a kettle of boiling blood, blood which is drained from the body of a young Dryad girl. Into the mixture are thrown the teeth of nine crocodiles and the skull of a female orangutan."

"The potion is stirred with a golden parang...slowly...and the scum spooned off and allowed to dry. It is ground to a powder then and blended with the thorn of the Klubi, the swamp plant..."

"Whew! This is pretty intense stuff!"

"See! I warned you! You didn't believe me, didja?"

"Maybe we'll skip ahead to another chapter. Something a little milder, something like...THIS."

Yikes! It's about snakes!

Good Lord! I HATE snakes!!!!!

"That background, that misty darkness, was an undulating blanket of horror. Out there, wriggling, crawling, crossed and interwoven like the design of some colossal tapestry, was a compact mass of snakes....they were watching him with a thousand pairs of eyes, and they were advancing slowly nearer."

"Then it happened. Before he could flail his arms forward, before he could throw his weight to the side, his legs buckled under him and he fell to the floor.

He screamed then shot a frantic glance over his shoulder."

"Like a man in an hypnotic trance he felt himself powerless to move. What he saw was the snakes.  With a slow and inexorable movement the snake mass crossed the intervening distance, and, cold and clinging, began to slide its coils over his body."

"That's it!!! I can't take any more!!!!!!!!!"

Holy Cow! 'Another spider! I gotta clean that garage!"