DAY 2: Hounded by sprinklers, i end up on a picnic table. 3, 4, hrs. sleep? I arise at 5:00, hit the road at 5:30. before noon, I'm taking numerous breaks on another steep road. Wenatchee River rules. Already I vow never to do this again. Later-I reached Coulee City! Friendliest town in the West. Happy to be alive and drinking beer (I earned it). Burned to shit, dehydrated, victim of mountain, prairie, desert (a versatile state Washington). I'm ready for more despite myself. I'll take it state by state. There's a duality at work here- wicked suckiness, wicked ballsiness (good cop, bad cop?). I'm on schedule!?!? Paid $6.00 to camp. A neighbor explores the pantheon of musical cheese. Down from the tableland, 4 miles into the teeth of the oven-wind to find oneself in Death Valley Jr. (evil highlight of the day). Canada geese, heat lightning, gale force winds on Coulee Lake (balls of glory).
DAY 3: Thru the undulating burning prairie to Spokane (hellish city) and past. Good mileage day ruined by Shitsville, accelerated burns and bum knee. My first taste of canned ravioli cold. Sleepless night in the pines off the highway. Limping up the road before dawn.
DAY 4: Off day. Jolt and cherry pie breakfast. I limp to a campground where I doze fitfully and ponder existence. 2:00 on the road, feeling better, limp into Idaho and camp for free, a mudpack on my knee (in lieu of a banjo). Got wet 3 times today.
DAY 5: Another shitty night (surprise!) battling mosquitoes and cold. Early rise down the road to Sand Point, where I finally decide to tie a sock around my knee, helps immensely. Great improvement, mainly in attitude. I make it into Montana singing all the way, laughing maniacally, making decent mileage: it may take a year, but I'll do it. Got wet once: Yaak river. Beer at the border. Idaho, Montana very good to me. I'm in the Rockies, so I got walking ahead of me.
LATER, JULY 4th (DAY 11?): It looks like I'm quitting and it feels great. Montana's too damn big and too damn flat. I'm 15 miles west of Glasgow. I think I can catch a bus in Williston, N.D. , about 140 miles away. I'm sick of headwinds, traffic, bad shoulders, roadkill, diapers, but mostly the flat boredom of it all. The moment I said "Fuck it, I quit", the heavens opened. It takes a man to give up (and retain his marbles and nuts). This trip stopped offering me anything I wanted days ago. It would have been great to say I'd done it all, but so what. Better to try and fail and all that shit.
--John Everett
I converted to cold hard cash all the loving I was owed, buckled up my baggage, and hitched myself to the nearest moving caboose, a gallon of bourbon strapped to my back. Looking back on that homely burg, I adjusted my rug and spat a loathsome loogey. Shadrach Rebop was pitching his tent down the pike in Shapley Bend and I meant to crash his party for a dose of free grub til he sent me packing, which, knowing Shad as I did, would be just about long enough for a toad to piss.
(to be continued)
-John Everett
They were trapped in the church for 15 days before they were dragged out and beaten in the yard.
They were trapped in the church, nailed down by an angry mob of donuts.
They were trapped by an angry mob of giant donuts.
They were nailed down in the church for 15 days and the authorities refused to act.
The authorities preferred the donuts.
The authorities favored the giant donuts to Goatfoot John and Pepe the Bull.
The authorities could be held directly responsible for Goatfoot John's death.
The authorities could also be held directly responsible for Pepe the Bull's hospitalization.
But luckily, Pepe had grabbed his backpack out of the car.
In the backback were:
15 days later the giant donuts would tear the backpack apart on the front lawn as if they were searching for something they desperately needed.
Perhaps it was the computer disk.
Perhaps it was the regular, small donut.
Perhaps they never even found the thing they desperately needed.
--Shawn Wallace
The author's previous bike journeys involved riding from Seattle to about 10 miles west of Glasgow, Montana and giving up; and riding from Providence to Hamilton,Ontario and giving up and riding back to Buffalo.
Let it be known he is reasonably handsome and basically single but he does wear glasses. To this date, his penis has not been surgically altered.
DAY 1: I stopped at 5:00 in a park outside Hartford. NO TRESPASSING AFTER DARK but I want to spend the night. I'm a little cold and a little wet and a little bit old and a little bit blue and I feel weak but not tired.
This is the last time I try anything like this alone. There's too much misery to hog it all myself. It was cold and drizzly and overcast all day and I didn't feel up to snuff. On the bright side, the sun is breaking through and the clouds may be lifting and they haven't kicked me out yet.
Seattle made me young again but it wore off. 2 years ago I was full of piss and vinegar and rotgut and I blazed a molten trail through the Cascades and the Rockies; now i feel old and used up, ready to buy a house and play a few rubbers of bridge, more inclined toward cocktails than conquest.
2 DAYS LATER, I'm in another park hoping they don't make me leave. This place suits my needs. It's the Delaware and Hudson Canal Park right outside of Port Jervis on the NY/PA border. Yesterday went well. I got up with the sun and made it over the Connecticut River on the super-highway(the one I'm not supposed to be on). As the day unfolded, so did the clouds. I got to my parent's land in western Conn. about midday, already having decided I would spend the night there.
There I found peanut butter and little else, so I rode up and down a massive hill to the town of Kent to purchase canned food and beer and bananas. The trip consumed two hours and upon my return I consumed a massive calorie-fest, hit the sack early and arose at dawn massively refreshed.
I had decided yesterday to attempt riding to Cleveland and there catching a train to Chi; this would hinge, of course, on things like mileage, weather and state of mind. Today, however, despite a fine day of riding, I decided eastern seaboard be damned: hop the train in Scranton, spend a week in Chi-town, and ship it all out west to Seattle, where I can ride Rt. 101 down the coast to my brother in Oregon and even hit Crater Lake in the process, with an optional stopover in South Dakota on the way out.
Ye gods, the massive brilliance of it all! Plus it's an excuse to get off the road for a while.
Anyway, today was an arduous yet somehow glorious and circuitous trek through the foggy dawn into beautiful Duchess County and then, dear heart, I crossed a f*cking mountain range, I tell you! I don't even know what they're called but they were brutal s.o.b.s. Then I turned into a machine and destructed city upon city. P.S.: I am no longer shy about wearing skin-tight bike shorts.
Soon the sun will go down and I will adjourn to the edge of the field as unobtrusively as possible.
The night was spent in a semi-hallucinatory state, belabored by skeeters and the almighty dew. The Scranton idea remained fresh and beautiful as I labored over the arduous Poconos, slaloming daintily through the deer entrails. Toward noon, I topped the last rise and came roaring down the hill and through the towns to lovely Scranton, all ready to relax on the gleaming rails of Amtrak. But another bicycle nightmare was to ensue.
Scranton has a train station-but it's just for show! They have a bus station-but no bike boxes! I scoured the burg seething with calamitous rage but no box could I find. I briefly considered hocking the faithful steed and then it hit me-call Amtrak's toll-free number. Harrisburg, mine savior! I packed myself back up, hollering "Get thee behind me, Scranton!", and turned my madness to mileage. Special bonus-Rt. 11 to Harrisburg follows the Susquehanna to Chesapeake Bay-i.e. it's largely downhill. That nutsy manic pedalling demon took hold again. Yahoo!
I wrote that last bit in a strip-mall Burger King and took off down the road while I still had light. I tried stopping in a ballfield for five minutes but vicious striped mosquitoes ten feet tall drove me off. Passing a junkyard, I decided to ask if I could crash amongst the wrecks. Can't hurt to ask, I thought pessimistically, but hallelujah, Rick okayed it with Teddy and I was in like Flynn, and here I am next to the highway with springwater gushing endlessly from a pipe in the stone embankment. My faith in humanity is momentarily restored. I want to ask these guys if they feel like drinking a couple of beers cuz I sure as hell do. Tomorrow-Harrisburg or bust! I'm juiced, baby, juiced!
WELL,I MADE IT, no thanks to the Penna. Highway Dept.-they had me in a tube with semis breathing down my britches. I saw shoulders to make a grandmother weep. 15 miles of roadwork. Now I am safely ensconced on the 5:10 to Chicago with beer and pretzels in front of me. I still feel blitzed from the sun but life is so-so. When you're out on the road busting a gut, normalcy looks like the bee's knees but it's really not that exciting. Maybe my senses are just too dulled. Bring on the dancing girls!
IT'S JUNE 2; I'm out of Chicago operating on zombie time. I was scheduled to leave at 7:00 AM yesterday, no refunds, but the night before, my lovely hostess Heather decided, rather than get up early, I would simply not go to bed and go out and get sauced until dawn. Dawn was pre-empted by four o'clock and setting my alarm, I bedded down for a luxurious hour of booze-addled slumber. Needless to say, I jumped upright at 7:05, hurled my blanket at the floor and cursed loudly, my body a-quiver with self-hate. Yet somehow a reprieve was granted and after six hours locked in the Minneapolis bus depot for six hours here I sit, borne o'er the prairie, shriven and glassy-eyed. Chicago was a gas.
............
I spoke to a man who was a card-carrying member of the National Hobo Association; he was attending a convention in Brainerd, Minnesota. He gave me some tips on riding the rails. Thirty years he's been ducking the bulls and travelling free. I'll have to try it.
............
Boredom...insatiable boredom is gnawing at the bulwarks of my crumbling Roquefort sanity like a toothless capybara...
............
Seattle is picturesque as hell but the denizens fill me with contempt. If they're not boring PC yuppie-types, they're Top-Ramen sucking, no job-having wanna-be hippie grungers who dropped out of college to grow goatees and act incredibly casual but it all reads like bullshit and they all listen to Pearl Jam and they can all go suck eggs. I wanted to be a hippie but I hate everybody so damn much and I think that's healthy.
............
I left Seattle on a ferry across the Sound to Bremerton at 10:30, my head riddled with what felt like buckshot. The sun came out and Seattle lay spread-eagled behind us, a spurned nubile as we struck out boldly for unknown shores. Around noon I rode out of Bremerton headed for the coast and Rt. 101. Rain sprinkled down on me periodically and the sky was mainly gray. A few miles west of Montesano on the Chehalis River I found a broken-down fishing pier and I laid down my sleeping bag with rotting boards overhead. It rained all night and small animals scurried about my head. People partied loudly around a campfire across the river.
At 5:00 I roused myself and rode through the foggy dawn into the forest primeval. Firs and pines loomed all around and it kept on raining. Rt. 101 wended its way through sloughs and rivers spilling into the tidal flats. By noon I had covered 80 miles and a four mile bridge across the mouth of the Columbia to Astoria, Oregon. That started out beautiful and turned into a nightmare with headwinds all the way across. I pressed on down Rt. 30 to Portland getting very wet on a fine wide shoulder. At 3:30 with 61 miles left, I called it quits and took a motel. The one-armed hotel-keeper told me the hill in front of me was "a real bear".
He was right. I climbed up a mile and a half at five in the morning and started knocking off the miles. Again I was rained on heavily but by 10:00 I was in Portland.
It is now Thursday. Soon I will catch a Green Tortoise to Ashland. Earlier as I rode around town, I happened upon the train station and I decided to say goodbye to the bike, not without regrets, but there is snow on the mountains and rain in the valley and there will be fine days ahead, aye, and we two shall sup on tacos and whiskey under a Yucatan moon. Farewell.
--John Everett
Dr. Miracle was crouched behind Marisol's bed and Joe was standing by the night stand. Marisol ordered that Dr. Cass be sent away -- she did not want to be killed by his treatment the way Joe's wife was. But Dr. Cass insisted on treating her, to the fear of Dr. Miracle, who trembled in his concealment.
Marisol pulled the sheets close and said a word.
Dr. Hum could not believe his ears. He and Marisol were the only two who knew the four words that would start the Apocageep. Dr. Miracle moved from behind the bed to inside the closet. Dr. Miracle and Marisol were the only two who knew that Dr. Cass' treatment was sure to kill her, just as it had killed Joe's wife. Dr. Cass himself was oblivious and Joe didn't know shit. He's always been a blockhead.
Marisol was naked. She sat up in bed and uttered a second word.
Dr. Hum's jaw dropped. He couldn't believe that she had said the first two words in the Apocageep sequence. He shook his fist at her. Dr. Miracle shifted uncomfortably in the closet.
Marisol pushed her feet against the footboard and -- realizing it was too late for herself -- pronounced the third and second-to-last word of the sequence that would announce the Apocageep. Dr. Cass rummaged through his medicine bag. Joe fell into the night stand as Dr. Miracle pushed past him.
Marisol thre her pillow at Dr. Hum as she said the final word that would start the Apocageep.
Then the sun blinked out and the Apocageep began.
--Shawn Wallace
Twinkletoes was a dance instructor and he loved to dance all day and all night. This got quite annoying to Daisy, who loved Twinkletoes with all of her heart, but couldn't stand the fact that he seemed incapable of simply walking from one place to another. When he got a glass of milk, it was a tap dance. For changing the channel on the t.v. he tangoed. To bring food into the dining room, it was a minuet. In the shower, he would break-dance. Because Daisy loved Twinkletoes so very much, many times she would turn her head when she caught the flurry of his movements in the corner of her eye. It was all she could do to keep sane sometimes when she was tired and cranky. However, as angry as she would get, she never told Twinkletoes how much she despised his dancing.
Understandably, Twinkletoes had no idea that she felt this way. He was a very good dancer and he knew it. He thought everybody loved his dancing. When he went out in public he dazzled people with his footwork. People would come up to him in the street and try to give him money because they enjoyed his dancing so much. Anybody else would have looked crazy doing the mambo by himself in the public library, but not Twinkletoes.
They met when Daisy took dance lessons from the studio where Twinkletoes worked. She was a very clumsy dancer. She knew she was, but she enjoyed dancing alot. Not as much as Twinkletoes, but still a great deal. She decided to take dance lessons when her doctor had told her that she was slightly overweight and needed exercise. Daisy didn't dance very much compared to Twinkletoes but, once they moved in with each other she became skinny as a rail. Their house was three quarters of a mile out into the marsh and whenever they needed to go anywhere they had to walk all that distance to get to her car. Sometimes in the winter, the snow drifts got very bad and they would have to use snowshoes to get around.
This was hard for Twinkletoes because the snowshoes made it difficult to dance. However he was not only a fabulous dancer, but very imaginative and he invented a dance to do while wearing snowshoes. It would have been a very popular dance with his clients if his boss had allowed him to teach it to them. Twinkletoes' boss was very concerned about the liability insurance involved in a snowshoe dance.
When Twinkletoes was at work, Daisy ran a gin still behind their house. She made very good gin and on the weekends they would drink martinis or else gibsons and dance together all day and all night. This was the only time Daisy loved the fact that Twinkletoes was such a good dancer. He was so good that he could just carry her along with him, And she felt like she was transformed into the very breath that she felt on her neck every time Twinkletoes could lean in that close to her body. She could almost feel for a brief moment what Twinkletoes felt like all the time. She could almost feel like something special. Which she wasn't. In fact she was quite plain. The only special thing about her entire life was that she lived with someone as dazzling as Twinkletoes.
--Matt Lowe
While he was in Providence last month, he was kind enough to meet with me in between his lecture on Abstract representational expressionism at R.I.S.D. and his lecture entitled "Who will keep the Japanese in check? Ida Know!" at brown. I suggested we meet at Cappricio's because I figured that he would be comfortable in a upper class setting. Bil showed me he was a real down-to-earth kind of guy right off the bat. He said to me that he always looked forward to coming to Providence so he could check out the new girls at the Foxy Lady. I think he really likes the Idea of a free buffet too.
I was supposed to meet him on Thayer street. I was nervous as I had only a vague notion of what he looks like. Bil seems to have some kind of superstion about cameras, and will not allow any pictures to be taken of him, unless the photographer is a priest, and some part of a church is in the background. there are not too many current photographs of Mr. Keene. All I had to go on were the pictures that he draws of himself in the comics. I wandered around for a while and was starting to get discouraged when I spotted him engaged in a heated argument with Fred the Red inside the new age book store. After they Reached the mutual conclusion that Marijuana is in fact only mentally addictive Mr. Keene and I were on our way. this is the complete, unedited manuscript of what I had recorded on my tape machine on the next day.
Bil Keene: First off I want you to call me Bil. I told you that in the car. Secondly, I need another drink and some more of this Heavenly macaroni before we start.
Frodus: OK, I kinda have to take a leak anyway.
(sound of us getting up and leaving the table. Sounds of bil coming back and sitting down.)
BK: OOOOH YEAH! C'mere baby I got something for you!
(sounds of a pounding fist on the table and wolf whistles)
FRODUS: hi, boy do I feel better now; alright let's start over.
BK: sounds good to me.
FRODUS: So Bil, Welcome back to Rhode Island. when was the last time you were here?
BK: well that would have to be two years ago. At the time I was visiting the president of U.R.I. We worked on an underground newspaper together back in our college days. well his college days really, I dropped out of Columbia after my first semester and fell in on the fringes of that whole billy burroughs crowd and started traveling around the country. somehow, at some point, I hooked up with this eddy fellow, and we started a newspaper called "Neitzche's Ghost" we were a real cynical bunch back in those days.
FRODUS: So you were visiting with him down in kingston? gee that is too bad I wish I had known about it then.
BK: Well we were here actually. Quite a night. It was a Monday and Polly tried to win the amateur contest. Heh, heh quite a shimmy on that babe. I love Rhode Island. I am good friends with Buddy Cianci and Bert Crenca, and I was very close to Raymond, god rest his soul. I have a few friends in exeter too, mostly turf farmers though. nobody you would know.
FRODUS: That is all very interesting. I never knew that you were here so much. I always heard that you were kind of a Recluse, that you immersed yourself in C-span, CNN, and books on Psychology and philosophy.
BK: well that is how I usually act at home, but I am only home every other week due to my hectic lecture schedule. When I am out of town I like to live it up.
FRODUS: well the folks at RISD seemed to be a little apprehensive at booking you. you seem to have a reputation for missing scheduled lectures.
BK: well here we go, I thought you were a decent kid, and here you go dragging me through- HEY! wouldja lookit the melons on that one! (more wolf whistles)
FRODUS:I wasn't trying...
BK: Hey waitress! go fetch me another double bourbon and another beer for the kid! now what were we talking about?
FRODUS: lectures and your repu...
BK: oh yeah, I love lectures, I think of it as my duty to enrich the youth of today with the wisdom I have aquired over the years. I don't do it for money like that fucker Burroughs or that little pipe-hugger Ginsburg.(did I ever tell you that the cut up technique was something I invented?) I donate all the money I make lecturing to worthy causes. The last few lectures I've done have gone for the Wobblies, And before that I gave some money to the defense fund for Kashoggi, man he was railroaded! I gave a little to those negroes down in Florida who make that "rap" music.
FRODUS: so you have an interest in the censorship controversy?
BK: Of course! do you know how many of my comics have been refused by my syndicator? not even refused, in most cases they just run an old strip without telling me first. That is why in your Sunday paper you see that "Billy goes to the store and runs around the neiborhood then mommy gets mad because he took such a long time" strip so often. I guess its ok in some cases though. trudeau is getting sued by the post office for that stamp thing. I hate to think of what would have happened if they ran the "Billy goes home from school and runs through the Pentagon" strip I wrote last month.
FRODUS: You just mentioned billy twice in one minute, which reminded me that I wanted to ask you where you get the inspiration for your strip, and more importantly, are your characters representations of people you know?
BK: Shit, everyone asks me this question and i'm bored of answering it. can we move on to something else?
FRODUS: No really, It is important. I want to know what the inspiration is.
BK: Fuck you.
(Three minute pause, sounds of music and Mr. Keene lighting his cigar)
FRODUS: Hey sweet cakes! Howabout another round?
BK: Allright. have it your way. First off, The father is not me. It is my Square brother, and sometimes I get inspiration from his dopey kids, heh heh, yeah they are pretty funny sometimes. like the time I was over there and His daughter was playing with the second youngest son and she told him that a nickle was worth(un controlled laughter) oh boy (more laughter ) more than a dime(laughing) because it is bigger!
FRODUS:(laughing)that was a good one. Can you pass me that napkin so I can wipe my eyes?
BK: Sure, There are a million more like it. but I usually don't steal from them. that usually happens when I am too hung-over to think of something myself. Most of my stuff is my own. Like tomorrows strip. Man I got a great I dea. This one has a picture of Dolly and Jeffy standing in front of daddy, who has a surprised look on his face, and Dolly says: "Mommy says we are having 'pascheti for dinner"
(two minutes of laughter from both)
FRODUS: Getting Back to the actual characters though...
BK: yeah, well billy is sort of a young James Dean. Tough, yet sensitive, Naive and foolish, yet cunning at times. But most importantly a rebel through and through. Dolly is your typical woman, bossy, demanding, she shoots off her mouth a lot about things she could never understand and she is fat. Jeffy is the character I identify with the most. he is a lot like me when I was a kid. but he is different too you know. like the time he started crying when Dolly didn't give him any Ice cream and then mommy got angry because he was making too much noise. I wouldn't have taken that shit. I would have slammed that little bitch's head into the wall, that is why I would have been in trouble. I was never a pussy when I was a kid.
FRODUS: so you are saying your characters have a life of their own?
BK: yeah, that and this touches on that censorship thing too. I have a good example for this one. Boy I am feeling LOADED! howabout another round?
FRODUS:sure, I'll be right back. Student senate is paying for all of this anyway.
BK: Hey sweetie, if stick this fifty down your panties can I grab your tits?
(garbled response)
BK: What a fucking whore.
(pause)
FRODUS: Double bourbon right?
BK:yeah. Anyway, I was saying,... what was I saying?
FRODUS: You were telling me about how the characters have a life of their own and censorship.
BK: oh yeah! Back in the early eighties I had two great Ideas, first I wanted to do a thing on death, you know that whole deal with it kids 'cuz someone you know is probably going to die thing, and I was going to tie it in with a strong safety message and clean up with a racism thing.
FRODUS: well what happened?
BK:well they wouldn't print it.
FRODUS: I know that what was the strip about?
BK:well it was a two week series, not just one strip.
FRODUS:that is pretty unorthodox for you.
BK: well I usually only do it when they go on vacation, or when gran' ma comes to visit, but this strip was a masterpiece. the death/safety thing started with daddy buying a new refrigerator and mommy gets mad at PJ for smearing his diaper on the door. the next strip was a Sunday one and it was a "follow the path" type. The kids are playing hide and seek, and Dolly hides in the old fridge which daddy carelessly left behind the garage.
FRODUS: And Dolly dies?
BK: Rather perceptive young man.
FRODUS: Why Dolly? you seem to have a lot of anger directed towards her.
BK: I hate the little wise ass, she is always shooting off her mouth. I only put her in the strip in the first place 'cuz I could have Physical humor with her- you know, shit falling on her head and stuff. But when I got syndicated they made me promise not to have any violence in the strip, so I was stuck with her. So like I was saying, The next day I have a strip where jeffy has the door open and he is saying "Mommy, why is Dolly blue?" then I had a few straight grief ones, like when they are in the funeral parlor the boys are asking a million questions like "when can we go home and watch T.V." and "can I have Dolly's bike?" and "why is everyone crying?" you know- stuff like that. anyway, they end up adopting two adorable little negro boys from the inner city whose mother was dead and there father was a junkie. Quality stuff. but the syndicate wouldn't print that run, they said I could have the ghetto kids, but I had to keep Dolly too.
FRODUS: Why didn't you keep the ghetto kids?
BK: It goes back to the violence clause.
FRODUS: So, moving on, What would you say is the major influence upon your work?
BK: well, I would say my love for children, my love for humor and my former addiction to herion all play a major role in my work.
FRODUS: you were addicted to heroin?
BK: for a short while in the fifties. I'd really rather not talk about it.
Another thing is my own childhood.
FRODUS: was it a happy childhood?
BK: It was. I remember one day at the orphanage when I was seven years old. I think was coloring in my favorite coloring book and sister Mary-Agnes came up to me and asked me who had tied the cat to the back of the Mother Superior's habit. Of course I had done it. I had done it before, but this time was different. It occured to me not only to lie, but to lie to a nun. And do you know what I said?
FRODUS: No, what?
BK: I said "not me." A whole new world opened up for me, not only did those two words save me from another night spent sleeping in the cloak room, but I started a whole movement for children everywhere.
FRODUS: Heh, heh, So you are the one who invented the "lying" approach to struggles with authority?
BK: That is right
FRODUS: Alright! Thank-you I have done that myself. Moving on, I would like to comment on your distinctive art style.
BK: Well thank you, I tend to pride myself on that. It took me years to perfect it. See, in my own experience I have found that you have to be subtle in comics. I never use those wimp-out burn marks some writers use when someone is mad, I just make real dark, down pointing eyebrows. it goes like that. when, sa dolly is doing something clever, her eyebrows are frown shaped, but her eyes are half closed to show savvy. savvy is my new word. I just found out about it two days ago.
FRODUS: O.K. I Want to Know about your beginnings and what led you up to your pinacle of "the Family Circus".
BK: well, I have been drawing since I was a kid. But I guess my first real comic strip was called Burn Ward and revolved around the crazy antics of a group of garbage men who pretend to be surgeons in a major hospital, but then I started focusing on their kids more and more, which eventually grew into "Them Nutty Kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Which is was a raw version of what I have today. As A matter of fact, I have a copy with me that you can take.
to be continued