Skipper: Trolley & Sax Man

Left: 1st published 1972 | Right: 1st published 1935

I bought these two cartoon compilations in the summer and dipped into them now-and-then whenever I needed some laughs - which was often. I still frequently pull Toonerville Trolley off the shelf for emergency use :-)

Railway Ribaldry was the first one I bought. It's a 2014 reprint of cartoonist William Heath Robinson's 1935 book that was published to commemorate the centenary of the Great Western Railway. It's full of debonair and droll railway boffin humour. I especially like the ways Robinson often used the page as a design element.

Skipper wails on his sax

And then there's Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Trolley! It's completely wild and crazy. Feral maybe? It's a bracing contrast to Railway Ribaldry.

The internet tells me that what I think of as the Toonerville Trolley cartoons were actually called Toonerville Folks, or at times, alternatively, The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All The Trains. Whatever the name, it ran in the Chicago Post and in syndication from 1908 to 1955 when Fox retired.

Skipper and his trolley were prominent characters of course, but the cast of characters was vast. The table of contents lists 86!  

The antics of children in the wilds of what was then thought of as an emerging U.S. suburbia - which looks more like the country from where I sit in the over developed 21st century - are prominently featured. 

Remember when vacant lots abounded in our land and kids played on them the year round? Remember when trolley cars crisscrossed every street and some lines ended in the "country"?... Remember when suburbia could be located only a few miles from downtown?

Some introductory thoughts from 1972 to Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Trolley by co-compiler Herb Galewitz.

Ok, this is 30Squares the last I looked, so let's get some highly speculative E. L. Moore connections out of way before I bust. Mr. Moore also had a large cast of characters in his articles. Was that in anyway influenced by the large cast of Toonerville Folks? Not to mention his character naming convention has a Toonerville vibe. And what about that name, Toonerville Folks? Mr. Moore's photography studio, which focused on child portraiture, was called Little Folks Studio. Coincidence? Completely unrelated? The most likely answers are Yes and Yes. But, still, I keep these sorts of things in the back of my mind, and let me tell you they itch back there :-)

Toonerville Folks reached the end of the line on February 9, 1955, when the seventy-year-old Fox retired to Florida. Wisely, neither the Syndicate nor Fox sought a replacement. The "vacant lot" era of American life was disappearing. It was beaten by the population explosion of post-Word War II, suburban developers, and urban blight. Today, seventeen years later, we have "progressed" to professional Little Leagues, artificial grass, and the disappearance of street life. It is enough to make a grown man cry.

Herb Galewitz wraps up his introductory comments on a downbeat.

At least the '70s didn't usher in the end of the saxophone ...

... and I got to wondering, was there any Skipper-style Toonerville Trolley music out there?

I found this piece recorded sometime in 1944 or 1945 by Raymond Scott and his orchestra:

The time period's right, but it sounds a little too smooth. I imagine Skipper belting out something more raucous.

I kept looking and found this 1967 song by The Electric Prunes whose lead singer was ....

... James Lowe. At this point music searching stopped dead as I pondered this strange coincidence. This James Lowe parts his name in the middle. His full name turns out to be Thaddeus James Lowe, a descendent of none other than Thaddeus Lowe who built the Mt. Lowe electric railway, which we've discussed here in the past.

These coincidences are making me dizzy. I think I'll go lie down. Ask Katrinka to wake me when the trolley gets here.

The trolley is actually a mobile jazz club. I wonder if it stops at Baker St.?