doonesburies

Can I take a mo­ment to yam­mer on about the debt I owe Doones­bury?

So when I was five years old we moved to a sub­urb where I didn’t know any­one, there were no neigh­bors my age, and school wouldn’t start for sev­er­al more months. But we did live across the street from a li­brary. So I spent a huge amount of time over there. En­tire days. 

I wasn’t ex­act­ly over there read­ing Proust. I would spend a lot of time in pe­ri­od­i­cals and a ton of time in the aisle where the com­ic strip col­lec­tions were. 

I was (and of course still am) a huge Peanuts fan. So I nat­u­ral­ly de­voured those first. 

When I ran out of Peanuts, I turned on the Garfields and the Mad Mag­a­zine col­lec­tions and so on, even­tu­al­ly get­ting to the old­er Hi & Lois and Katzen­jam­mer Kids com­pi­la­tions and stuff like that. In fact, I think they even had a Fab­u­lous Fur­ry Freak Broth­ers book in there but I could be mis­rem­ber­ing that. 

So even­tu­al­ly the well runs dry. Ex­cept for the Doones­bury books. This was 1979, so there was about a decade’s worth of Doones­bury com­pi­la­tions there, and I had tried one be­fore but didn’t find it all that fun­ny. But what­ev­er, this is what was left and I’ll be damned if I’m go­ing to have to read … you know … books. 

So now I’m left with these Doonesburys. 

I re­mem­bered see­ing Zonker on one of the Read­ing is Cool style posters the li­brary had up, so he was my way ‘in’ as it were. A spaced-out hip­pie was some­thing that I could understand. 

I start­ed work­ing my way through the first book, which wasn’t easy – but af­ter awhile the po­lit­i­cal ref­er­ences start­ed kind of re­in­forc­ing each oth­er, and I was too pre­co­cious to give up and let this stuff beat me. It had been around for a decade. That means it’s ‘get’ able and if it is then I’m go­ing to hang with it till I get it. 

Even­tu­al­ly I start look­ing up the po­lit­i­cal names and events ref­er­enced. Im ask­ing my mom who “Ag­new” is over break­fast, etc. 

I’m not even in the first grade yet and Im al­ready feel­ing like I have a bit of a grasp on the ‘feel’ of the late 60s.

I stuck with it and went through all the books, even­tu­al­ly re-read­ing them lat­er which both re­in­forced what I was get­ting out of them since I knew more stuff now and also re­al­iz­ing there were whole lay­ers of jokes that I could tell were jokes but nev­er re­al­ly re­al­ly un­der­stood on first reading.

So any­way,
for teach­ing my 5 year old self far more about pol­i­tics than I would ever have ex­pect­ed to learn, for giv­ing me per­spec­tive into an era oth­er than my own (which is an im­por­tant les­son in it­self – re­gard­less of the era), and for in­grain­ing in me the les­son that I still use to this day that just be­cause you may not find some­thing in­ter­est­ing at first doesn’t mean there aren’t oth­er back doors into the ma­te­r­i­al, for all of that I owe Doones­bury a mas­sive debt. 

I would lit­er­al­ly be a dif­fer­ent per­son with­out that.
 
 

—ja­son malmberg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2016 Ja­son Malmberg.

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