Pogo; an appreciation

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• Wednesday 17th February 2010

When I was around 7 or 8, my then-Uncle Irwin slipped me a book of animal cartoons called “Pogo.” I read and enjoyed all of it (and understood some of it), and Uncle Irwin kept giving me more books about Pogo, and I discovered that there was a FULL PAGE of it in the Sunday funnies (in color), and luckily, Pogo (and Walt Kelly’s sense of humor and language) became a permanent part of my life, and thank you Uncle Irwin.

I bring this up because I’ve been doing a slow peruse of one of the old books (The Incompleat Pogo), and I found a little bit of business that I regard as exceptional.

To set the stage:

We see a practice session of the Okeefenokee Swamp beanbag team, preparing to play the squad  from Igloo U. Albert the Alligator (dressed in a middy blouse) is the quarterback of the  team. He passes to his receivers, three bats (in derbies) named Bewitched, Bebothered, and Bemildred.

To my mind, this action and dialogue deserves comparison to the Marx Brothers. Non compass Memphis, indeed. U can’t ptouch this.

Annotations:

Mr. Crump, a politician made famous in the lyrics of W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues”:

Ptah, after whom Alice Coltrane named a killer song:

Non compos mentis? There ain’t no sanity clause.