Last Tuesday morning I opened an e-mail and read the following:
"Hi Gary, Check out Alexander's t-shirt in tomorrow's strip!"
The succinct and curious message was from my friend, John Marshall. I knew the strip he was referring to because John is the artist for the long-running, syndicated "Blondie" comic. As anyone who follows the funny pages knows, Alexander is the forever teenage son of the titular character and her husband, Dagwood Bumstead.
John's artwork will occasionally include some sly reference to his hometown, Endicott, NY -- usually a long-gone local landmark, such as Elk's Bakery, E-J Shoe Factory, or Woody's Record Shop. I couldn't wait to find out what he had come up with for the next day's publication, and why John believed that it would be of particular interest to me.
The following morning I was up with the dogs, as usual, at 6 a.m. (Here, I will digress to offer one of my critical tips to a successful marriage: if you are the partner who insisted on having one or more dogs, don't, under any circumstances, expect your spouse to get up at dawn to let them out to relieve themselves, and always patrol the yard each day for those little brown bombs that have a habit of hiding out wherever your wife or husband is going to step next.) I don't know what time our paper is normally delivered -- I just know it's always there in the tube below our mailbox when I mosey out to get it sometime around mid-morning. But on last Wednesday, September 15, the sun had barely broken the horizon when I checked to see if it had arrived. It had. I came back into the house and opened to page 10B. I had to find my glasses and hold the paper up to the light to make it out, printed there on front of Alexander's shirt in all three panels, a familiar word followed by my favorite number -- Reprise 60s.
Our band's name there for the world (or at least a big chunk of it) to see.
Wow, how cool is that? Not the way we might have planned for national recognition, but a wonderful surprise and a thoughtful tribute from a great guy, a respected artist and a true friend.
See the strip on-line at www.Blondie.com.
