GARDEN OF ART: Collected Cartoons, Comics, Sketches and Art: March 2008

Monday, March 31, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #2 by Lem

Think I'll go see what's on the television tonight.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #3 by Lem

The Hector cartoons often reflected something that had been in the news at the time (1958-1959) I was doing them. I was 17-18 years old. There must have been an item about homosexuality in the Catholic Church. This was a subject I knew almost nothing about. A lot of things about sex were not openly discussed in the fifties. This was before I learned my best friend was Gay.The cartoon below was a sketch done on yellow-lined notebook paper in pencil. I inked a similar sketch in ink later. You will notice a dog in some of the Hector cartoons, but not in others. I was oscillating between Hector being a man or a dog.If you look closely, you will see Larry 58 and Lem appear as blades of grass.

Another problem for the Pope.

A couple other versions of the same gag.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #4 by Lem

Lost dog? May I be of help!

Friday, March 28, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #5 by Lem

What'd'ya want? Blood?

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #6 by Lem

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #7 by Lem

I'll never go to that garage again. Listen to the banging under the hood!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #8 by Lem

For those born much later than I, this cartoon was drawn before the arrival of the CD. It fact, this cartoon preceded the introduction of the tape cassette. We listened to music on phonographs that played records. In order to do so, a needle was required which scratched along grooves in the record surface while it spun on a turntable.

My first records were on a hard vinyl at 78 rpms. The seventy-eights had a small hole in the center for holding it to the turntable. Then came smaller records called forty-fives (45 rpm), but they had a bigger hole in the center, much bigger. By the time I drew this cartoon, we had advanced to the thirty-three and a third rpm record. These were bigger than the 78s, but were back with the small hole.

Another version of the same cartoon gag.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #9 by Lem

This one may take some explaining. In 1959, I went to an IBM training school. I was taught how to operate, program and wire various TAB equipment. One of the worse things that could happen was for an error light to blink on a machine you were working on. It was something everyone in class felt nervous about. This cartoon came from those classes. In the cartoon all the error and warning lights are blinking on what I believe is a collator. When I went to this school, TAB was being called the "job of the future". The last time I saw any of the equipment I learned about it was on display at the Smithsonian Institute as history.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #10 by Lem

I wonder what's keepin' him?

This cartoon went to The Purple Treehouse for Funny Bunny Friday 6.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #11 by Lem

Friday, March 21, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #12 by Lem

Help, I'm a prisoner in your carborator!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life # 13 by Lem

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life # 14 by Lem

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Hector's Hectic Life #15 by Lem plus My Scars and Coal

"Fore" -- This cartoon was real for me. When I was in my midteens, Stuart, one of my friends, suggested we play golf in his yard. He had a rather large yard, though not quite golf course size. It may have been suitable to a chip 'n' putt, but we knew nothing about golf except you hit a small white ball with a club and tried to get it into a hole somewhere. We choose only to use the Number One Wood, the driver.

We went outside, he, me and a third friend. I struck at a ball and it sailed across the yard, not breaking anything, and then I handed the golf club to our third friend and told him to wait until I was out of the way.

He didn't wait.

He caught me smack dab in the middle of my forehead, fortunately missing my glasses. Those cartoons of seeing little stars are true. I saw stars and planets swirling around in a sudden darkness. I never fell over. I heard voices talking to me from down a well somewhere and opened my eyes.

Stuart asked if I was okay.

I said I was.

Then Gary, the boy who had struck me said, "you're bleeding."

I waved him off. Just then I saw a spurt of blood stream down my lens. One spurt after another began. Gary began yelling something, I don't recall what. Stuart was shouting for his mother, who soon came out of the house. She took one look at me and began dashing about in a circle screaming. Here I stood with these three people running back and forth and all shouting. I turned and calmly walked to my family doctor, who conveniently was Stuart's next door neighbor and had his office there.

I was taken immediately to the Doctor's examination room and laid on the table. Someone called my home and soon my mother and grandmother were there, clucking and squawking like two frightened hens.

I was making jokes while Dr. Neff sewed up my head. I probably wasn't so brave; I was probably in shock.

I carried a scar down the center of my forehead for years, a nice match for the long scar on my left cheek where a barb wire fence barb had once went through my lower face when I fell upon it in kindergarten.

No, we were not such young terrors that Mrs. Helms fenced us in like cattle. We were on a field trip up behind the town's railroad tracks and the fence ran along a neighboring pasture. We had went there to collect coal (anyone remember coal, our homes were once heated by it) for a project. I still have the coal paperweight I made that day.

I don't have the scars. Age eventually wore them away.

Me in 1946 after graduating from Mrs. Helms kindergarten, surrounded by the paperweight I made from coal as it appears today. It probably hasn't changed much. I have.