Get your Capp together

Does anybody else miss Al Capp? What a genius. He wrote a comic strip within a comic strip, Fearless Fosdick, the trigger-happy, square-jawed, police detective hero in the comic strip read by his comic strip character Li’l Abner. Happily blasting away with his automatic pistol, he drilled huge, Swiss cheese-like holes through his intended target and completely oblivious, any hapless person that happened to also be in the line of fire.

He took us to brave new worlds, like Lower Slobovia, a place where the snow was always over your waist and the little self-sacrificing Schmoo lived (see below). We watched in awe as bad luck struck again and again around the little man with the storm cloud that followed him everywhere, Joe Blfx, a person that many of us could identify with. And who can forget General Bullmoose and his credo, “What’s good for General Bullmose is good for the USA,”  an early warning about all those corporate executives that did a number on us recently.

He invented Sadie Hawkins Day, when the girls chased the boys who had to marry them if they got caught. The Sadie Hawkins Dance where the girls have to ask the boys, exists to this day. Li’l Abner, although an exceptional physical specimen, was not violent. He didn’t have to be. His mother, Mammy Yokum, a diminutive, elderly woman, tough as shoe leather, was always up for a fight, especially if her son’s well being was at stake. This is somehow vaguely familiar.

And now for the Schmoo; this little guy was devoted to the service of humanity. About 3 feet tall and roughly the same shape and color as a bowling pin, they lived in Lower Slobovia, a land of perpetual snow, populated by hillbilly-like creatures. Schmoos would become whatever you needed. They could be beasts of burden, pulling your sleigh through  the drifts, a ham, a loaf of bread, or a bottle of milk. Nobody starved in Lower Slobovia.

Some cultures look upon dogs in much the same way. Man’s best friend and a fine meal. Some primitive cultures look upon other cultures in much the same way, just not around here.

Al Capp fell into disfavor with the emerging liberal movement of the ‘60s, accused of being right wing to the extreme. Oddly, he had started out on the Left, and then moved to the Right in his later years. Today we bemoan corrupt politicians and misuse of public funds as if this was something new. The musical movie version of Li’l Abner had a sarcastic song in the true Al Capp spirit that embodied the concerns of average Americans way back in the 1950s. Truly, “The country’s in the very best of hands.”

Bill Abrams resides in Pine Plains, just south of Lower Slobovia.