Category: Life with Pratts

It’s a Walt World, After All

The summer of ’65 is a source of fond childhood memories. I saw the Beatles in HELP!, and my eldest sister attended the first Beatles concert at Shea Stadium. I was captivated by an original James Bond Aston Martin DB5 that was on display over a weekend at a local shopping center, as a promotion for Thunderball.

The biggest event that summer was my family going to the New York World’s Fair. We were there for only one day, but I was enthralled by the fair and the memories remain vivid. As a kid, I knew nothing about the fair’s contentious origin or its controversial promoter, but the presence of Walt Disney couldn’t be mistaken or missed.

A WWII Mystery

The problem with old family snapshots is they don’t document themselves and, when there’s a note, it assumes knowledge on the part of the viewer. That guy in front resembled myself as a young guy, but he couldn’t have been my father, who enlisted in the Navy after turning 17 at the start of 1945, and was part of the Japan Occupation Force. The men in this picture were soldiers, not sailors.

Regardless of the family connection, whatever that may be, the questions are, what was the ship, and what happened after it reached Guam, assuming it did?

Follow-up: Were they Marines, and not Army? I’m told the caps might tell the story.

Follow-up: Mystery solved. The guy in back looked enough like my late father-in-law that I looked up his brother, also deceased, and that’s him. To my surprise, given the fatigues they were wearing, he was a Navy Seabee.

A Progressive Meal

After my freshman year of high school, until I left for college in Western Massachusetts, I mostly listened to WBCN, the legendary alternative radio station in Boston at 104.1 FM. ‘BCN was where I first heard David Bowie, Ten Years After and Captain Beefheart, along with the comedy troupes Firesign Theatre and Monty Python. Progressive music was well-represented on WBCN, and I remember enjoying this King Crimson record in particular.

Walkering Distance

As I have mentioned before, I grew up in Connecticut surrounded by cartoonists. Unfortunately, I didn’t begin to realize that until shortly before my family moved to Massachusetts. What might have been if we hadn’t moved!

Mort Walker passed away a couple of years ago, and his sons continue the family business. Brian Walker’s studio is only two miles from where I lived as a kid.

Reveille – A Family Legacy In Comics from Dave Walker on Vimeo.

A tip o’ the ol’ DogRat toupee to Mark Evanier, who recently featured this video on his NewsFromME blog.

Jumped… or PUSHED??

Seeing that a new LG 12000 BTU A/C (with WiFi!) had been delivered, the old LG 12000 BTU A/C in the living room didn’t want to come out of its metal cage. I kept pulling on the tray, but it refused to budge. After a brief struggle, I realized what the old LG wanted was a Thelma & Louise style ending. So I let it take the honorable way out… right out the window.