Speaking of football, which we weren’t, this cartoon is from the same October week in 2002 as yesterday’s classic A&J. It also was drawn with a felt-tip pen, which I seldom used at that time. I’ve told you that the old pen points I’ve used to draw Arlo and Janis from the beginning, the kind that are inserted into a pen staff and dipped in a bottle of India ink, are becoming difficult to find, at least the ones I favor. I’ve never told you where I got my original supply, though. I was at a rummage sale in Jackson, Mississippi, where I was working at the newspaper and developing the comic strip in my spare time. Among the junk at that sale, I came upon several plastic sandwich bags filled with unused pen points. I think there were about half a dozen bags at 50 cents apiece—per bag, I mean. I have never known how that stash of pen points came to be there, but that was a lot of pen points, let me tell you. About 26 years worth.
