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This is the nerve center of my home, the coffee station. It is where I spend my first conscious moments every day. Above the coffee pot is an original drawing by Jack Davis. Its subject, Alfred E. Newman, and his words are familiar, but this particular rendering has been seen by few. I will tell you its story.
The late Paul Burnett taught journalism at Auburn University. When it came to the basics, he was rock solid. If an aspiring reporter could have but one mentor, there was no one better than Paul Burnett. That was fortunate, because he represented exactly one half of the journalism faculty at Auburn in the early 70s. However, he was stupefyingly wrong about one thing: he liked to tell his students, “All you need to start a newspaper is a typewriter.” My young bride Rheta and I, students of his, bought this clap-trap and departed Auburn for St. Simons Island, Georgia, where we established a weekly newspaper. St. Simons was a young reporter’s dream, an interesting character and an interesting history around every corner. Nobody ever had more fun going broke than we.
One day, someone told us, “Jack Davis is vacationing on Sea Island.” Having derived a significant portion of my education from Mad Magazine, I knew exactly who Jack Davis was. It turned out Jack, a Georgia native, was an annual visitor to nearby Sea Island, the Palm Springs of the deep south. We reached him by telephone, which you could do in those days, and he agreed to let us come out for an interview. We knew nothing about Jack, really, except his work, but we learned firsthand the grace and good nature for which he was famed among colleagues. He sat with us pups on a screened porch, spending over an hour of his vacation entertaining our naïve, earnest probing. After the last note and photograph were taken, and he was home free, he asked, “Would you like me to draw something for your article?” Would we. The next day, a friend of his dropped the above drawing at our office.
It might be my favorite possession. Jack Davis died yesterday at 91. It just now occurs to me, many of you may think you don’t know who Jack Davis is. Google him. You will be amazed.
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95 responses to “Where My Day Begins”
Since the Next Big Creative Thing from Hollywood seems to be all-female cast reboots of classic movies (observes the man with the all-female staff), I thought I’d make a few suggestions for them…
1. Twelve Angry Men (Twelve Angry Women)
2. Spartacus (Spartaca)
3. The Longest Day (Would fix the complaint there aren’t enough movie roles for actresses)
4. The Red Baron (The Red Baroness)
5. Master and Commander (Mistress and Commander)
6. The Quite Man (The Quite Woman)
7. The Godfather (The Godmother)
8. King Kong (Queen Kong)
9. The Third Man (The Third Woman)
10. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Ms. Smith Goes to Washington)
11. Bonnie & Clyde (Bonnie & Clarissa)
12. Midnight Cowboy (Midnight Cowgirl)
13. His Girl Friday (Her Girl Friday)
14. Yankee Doodle Dandy (Yankee Doodle Danni)
15. Cool Hand Luke (Cool Hand Lucy)
I actually may have seen that last one, at a drive-in, many years ago. At least I remember it featured a bunch of scantily-clad females in a prison setting.
My only memory of movies at drive ins was Ben Hur. We looked up to watch the chariot race. I actually know who I saw that with, something I cannot say about many movies and certainly not at a drive in.
Been Her. Now that’s a good one for you Ghost.
No one likes a clever woman.
Jackie, and the sequel: Been Her, Done That
Ghost, Mistress and Commander sounds like the captain’s into games ashore. And His Girl Friday could be either Her Girl Friday or Her Man Friday with today’s changed society.
And would you remake Thelma and Louise with a male cast?
Would the Quiet Woman be a science fiction movie?
Thanks for the cool story, JJ.
Wrote a nice long comment. Realized as soon as I hit Submit that I should have copied/saved it first. It disappeared. Computer doesn’t like me today.
Only remake title for “Thelma and Louise” I could think of was “Louise and Thelma”, which seemed to lack something. Perhaps “Hillary and Debbie”?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoQoN0cVUAECBEC.jpg
“Her Man Friday” sounds too much like a reboot of “Robinson Crusoe”. “Her Girl Friday” sounds more, ah, interesting.
Twitter is a great addition to the A&J family. Should JJ continue to update his current where abouts on it, we have one less thing to worry us. His current self reported location is @BostonComicCon.
It’s kind of neat to know someone that we respect and that has some notoriety such as JJ would have a hero of his own. 91 is a life well lived. He gave a LOT of people great enjoyment. Now I just wish that I didn’t have so much to worry about!
And how about Rain Woman?
Rewrote my comment elsewhere, cut and pasted here, went nowhere again. Will this one work?
Weird! Anything more than a couple of sentences and I get a message about the requested URL being unavailable. I’ll try again later, I guess.
Not just unavailable – rejected!
Isn’t that just like a man, Ruth Anne? Or does your computer have a female name?
Mark Quiet Woman is simply an oxymoron.
I am in a hurry to go see if Walmart finished giving away the shrubs at 75% off . I got a truck load. Can’t play word games but will think about it enroute.
Maybe if I break it up?
We’ve been on a cleaning/sorting spree lately. In part, it’s to bring order to “the room that no one is allowed to see” (Who knows? I might even start using my sewing machine again.) It’s also to make the job easier for whichever niece or nephew gets stuck dealing with our junk when we’re gone. Hopefully we have many years to work on this, but given how much stuff we’ve inherited and kept we may need all of them.
Part 2: Much of what we’ve found (in boxes that haven’t been opened in years) is already trash and some of what we’ve kept probably should be. Some pictures, clippings, and memorabilia will end up being scanned and shared on Facebook. Other items will be offered to our city or county history museums. Finding things to offer for the current exhibit on life in Winter Park during WWII was one of our motivations; they’re displaying some of my parents’ leftover oil ration coupons as well as the newspapers they kept announcing the war’s end.
Part 3 – that inspired the rest: Another of the things we found is a June 1959 issue of Playboy. Bob says he thinks he got and kept it for the article by Kerouac, “Origins of the Beat Generation”; the centerfold is missing which unfortunately means so is the jokes page. The music and theater reviews and the ads are interesting too.
Forgot to say I have four almost grown hens out in breezeway in dog carrier. We are going to put in garden as free range pet chickens to eat bugs. Four different breeds. They were the ones no one wanted to take home. And 50 lbs. Of feed and fancy water and food containers. They will get the expensive dog kennel to keep from being eaten by hawks and a large dog house for now.
My mom always claimed I was conceived in Winter Park during the war as my father was stationed there for his final pilot’s training before shipping off to Africa and then Italy. Was there a base there?
Ruth Anne, you might see if any of the local university or school libraries might want old books or newspapers for historical value in teaching. And talking about the ads in the Playboy, look at the ads in any old magazine. It’s fascinating (to me anyway) what they sold and how much they asked for it. And look at what has vanished from the market over the years and how it was packaged.
By the way, check out this site: http://birminghamrewound.com/
The co-founder, Tim Hollis, has a museum in his home where he displays his collection. He has fast-food giveaway items, old games, and a ton of other stuff. If you run across anything like that, drop him an email. He might want it.
Jackie, there was an airbase named McCoy in Orlando. The Navy took over part of it in the early 1970’s and turned it into a training base. It’s where I went to boot camp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCoy_Air_Force_Base
Mark: Quiet Woman would obviously be a fantasy film.
Debbe – https://scontent.ford1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/13668955_1075796275821111_3712560729182777413_n.jpg?efg=eyJpIjoibCJ9&oh=ebf2691c969d8be862544d6cb274b20f&oe=5829C9C5
Your next piece of jewelry?
Orlando Air Force Base was on what was then the outer edges of Orlando and Winter Park; it was later the Naval Training Center. McCoy was south of town; it was a SAC base during the Cold War and Vietnam years. It turned into Orlando International Airport.
First time I was really aware of the sound of B-52s was during the Cuban Missile Crisis – a steady stream of them being brought into McCoy and staged there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCoy_Air_Force_Base