The leaves are gone and our topography is again revealed. Michigan's sand dunes are the best feature of the state, although yesterday was the start of deer season, so the tourism folks would rather promote gunplay than hiking. A law went into effect this year dropping the legal hunting age to 10. That is, with a "responsible" adult...which means to me just an older gun nut.
I don't mind the herd being thinned. I'm trying to grow a garden. Two weeks after buying a new car, A tiny green Ford. I hit a wild turkey and broke off the rear view mirror. A $444.00 repair. If the trees had been sparse, I'd have seen him coming and swerved, but leaves hide turkey and deer. Now they are exposed.In the Western Michigan shoreline area, when leaves fall you are left with huge mountains of sand. Where it is stable, forest grows dense. But If the sand can move or shift, it will, and it doesn't allow ground cover. In places the slope to the lake is like a moonscape of white sand.
I can easily walk to a section of the county which had a "NO CLIMBING, BEACH GRASS RESTORATION" SIGN 30 years ago when I left, and it is still there. The trail (created by generations of kids seeking a high place to drink beer) will never fill in, and no cop will climb it. Climbing a sand dune means three steps up for every step gained. I have lost the ability and I'm not fat.
Yesterday, with the limbs empty again, I came across a monster of a tree house built while I was gone. Nailed to a Beech Tree rooted over a sheer of a dune. Some adults likely collaborated but it was for the kids. I'd live there. Beech grow here, and they grow enormous, fat trunks easy to climb and strong like ox.
These young fellows are doing just that. They are Jack Harris and Pat Kirkpatrick, it is 1930, and they are trying to break the worlds record for tree sitting. I do not know if they made it, but they seem fairly confident.
Original Press Photograph, 1930 NEA Chicago Bureau Photographer Unidentified Collection Jim Linderman
Practice makes perfect.Anonymous primitive drawing based on a CDV Photograph 1884. Photograph Curtiss & Smith, Syracuse New York with Pencil sketchbook. Collection Jim Linderman
The answer, of course, is both. As often as possible. But let's say you want to grow bigger bonomos AND develop raccoon eyes. Strongman Joe Bonomo put most of his effort into growing the bust lines of MEN. Having been quite the gym rat in my 30s and 40s, I can assure you THIS method works. Strain your muscles to failure with repeated repetition until the muscle part you are working on is exhausted. Legs, arms, chest...doesn't matter, works for them all. Increase the weight a little bit every week. They'll grow back bigger and stronger. Supplement the program with additional lean protein (a few cans of tuna a day is enough, or drink no-sugar powdered protein in skim milk) and in a few months you'll have a chest like Joe did. On your "rest" days, go for a run. If you are out of town, do push-ups in your hotel room instead. It really is that simple, and you don't need a book for it. End of story. I am usually a bit tongue in cheek, but here? Nope. My contribution to the billion dollar weight and fitness industry, and it took one paragraph. Not only that, I'm giving it away!As for the female of the species? Well, the specific female chest parts Joe wants to pump up don't have too much muscle, so the tear and repair method doesn't work. Send in Joe's coupon and you'll receive ten pages of exercise, some good advice actually...and two more pages which will turn you into an Alice when you've been suffering as a Mary.
Here it is. You don't have to "click to enlarge" (or use the Bonomo ritual) because I will tell you.
Bras. 
See? Bras.Later Joe got into Dope.
One person who combines all the best qualities of both Mary AND Alice is Miram Linna, who has written the best article about Joe you will ever find. HEREMiriam is force...at NORTON RECORDS which is celebrating their 25th Anniversary AS I TYPE! If you do not know Norton, you must be snortin' and Joe warned you about that above.Ad for Bonomo Culture Institute 1950
One day someone will write a book on the relationship between the rudimentary graphics of World War Two and tattoo art, pin up art and the comics. Maybe I will!
Countless cartoonists, illustrators and artists began their careers drawing for their foxhole friends, mostly for duffel bags, helmets and such. Most of the soldiers were barely out of high school, and what should have been drawn in schoolbooks and scratched onto desks were being created as patches for patriotic young cannon fodder.
Death became a game. It had to. We were losing the war, and encouraging a little more war fever with a clever drawn gag didn't hurt. War is ugly and the furthest thing from funny, but gallows humor thrives in the face of atrocity, and many a bomb was decorated with humorous graffiti before being dropped.
The illustrations here come from an enormous collection of circa 1940 paper decals I found. All anonymous. All are on scraps of waxy paper, and I believe they are intended to be applied to uniforms, helmets and footlockers. I cleaned up and isolated the images from the paper backing. Anyone with more information on either the artist or the use of these graphic appliques of doom are encouraged to write.
World War Two decals circa 1940 collection Jim Linderman
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Post "light" today as I'm working on a project. Photographers adopted the "frontal" portrait style from traveling limners I suppose, but once in a while someone knew their better side. A nice example of a young gent who would not face the camera.Tintype Photograph, circa 1900 Collection Jim Linderman
Roy Carling captured the family farm right on the cusp of extinction. Roy was born in 1918 and lived to 2009. I purchased some 100 of his original cartoon drawings recently at a flea market and am just getting around to reading them. Roy lived and worked in Howard City, Michigan. Family farm. A term which evokes pleasant memories even if you never worked on one.
You won't see any gags by Roy about Listeria or E. coli outbreaks from somewhere affecting folks ten states over. There are no jokes about recalls or "lot numbers" to watch out for. Back when Roy was doing his farm gags, crops traveled to the market down the road, not across the country. Each cow had an affectionate name, and when she gave birth the calves got names too...(they sometimes even talked!) Property was bought and sold by the acre, not the million hectacres.Monsanto, patent owner of the genetically modified seeds everyone has been forced into relying on today evokes no pleasant memories, nor do any of the other "agri-business" companies now holding us and our elected officials by the turnips. In Roy's work you will see chickens strolling freely and stopping to peck at a feeder. You see they had beaks then, they weren't clipped off to prevent fights in the factory. Today, Roy's chickens would be known as "free-range" as if that is something strange.
You will see a farmer trying to figure out how to use his new combine, or getting his tractor repaired, or discussing the new "hired man". One man...who negotiates his monthly wage while the farm owner rolls in the dirt laughing. Junior is asked to open his piggybank for the next tractor payment. A farmer marvels at his new "six-row" tools. The big day is when the "poultry buyer" drives up while the wife gathers eggs and junior receives his allowance. One farmer here brags that he has doubled his flock size from 40 to 80 birds.
Roy depicted the world he knew, and that world had neighbors loaning their barbwire stretcher to each other. The "milk tank" springs a leak and the barn cats have a feast. A local eccentric stacks his chicken cages in piles of four. FOUR. Have you seen a chicken factory of late? Chicken skyscrapers. In fact they don't WANT you to see them. Long buildings back from the road with no signs...just enormous fans to remove the smell and warnings from a distant conglomerate to keep away. I can remember an elementary school with a visit to a farm. Not anymore.
Roy didn't know he was capturing the death of the family farm. In his work you see the silos getting bigger, the owners worried about being bought out, the first experience with breeders and traveling seed salesmen and putting up a barn sign as it changes ownership. The hardworking family imagines a bright future with "atomic" powered tractors. The availability of "new crop varieties" gives the wife a chance to argue for a new hat. After all, if corn comes in varieties, why shouldn't her wardrobe? 
Roy Carling numbered each cartoon and saved a few of the publications they appeared in. The newsletter of the Central Ohio Breeders Association runs Roy's gag with a farmer holding his hat out for donations while leaving the local IRS office. The New York Breeders Cooperative runs his "cow a minute" gag. Roy saved a letter from Land O Lakes asking for a turkey cartoon for the thanksgiving issue.Farms are not funny anymore.Original, hand-drawn gag cartoons by Roy Carling, circa 1960-1975 Collection Jim Linderman
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