snuffy smith's home identified by regional dialect

[James A. Landau]

In a digest dated 11/9/04 12:03:35 AM Eastern Standard Time,
LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU quotes:

> Nah, that was Li'l Abner.
>
>  At 04:00 PM 11/8/2004, you wrote:
>  >  http://joshreads.com/index.php?p=99
>  >
>  >Actually, I thought he lived in the Ozarks.

If memory serves, Al Capp was careful NEVER to identify the location of
Dogpatch.  Presumably he felt that Li'l Abner would have a more universal appeal if
Dogpatch were never identified with one geographical area.  Note that
Lockheed's secret aircraft development facility, which acquired the name "Skunk
Works", was in Los Angeles, not an area usually identified with backwoods folks.

One possible slip on Al Capp's part:  in the statue which regularly showed up
in the strip, General Jubilation T. Cornpone is wearing a uniform that, if
memory serves, was that of the Confederate Army.

There was a "Senator Phogbound" who was a regular character in the Li'l Abner
strip.  Was he the Senator from Dogpatch?  If so, Dogpatch was a state (but
where was the other Senator?)

Anyway, "us" Kentuckians liked to claim that Dogpatch was in Kentucky.  I
went to Seneca High School in Louisville, Kentucky, and the school's logo was a
drawing of Lonesome Polecat from the Li'l Abner strip that Mr. Capp gave
permission to use (and I do not doubt personally drew).  The school's athletic teams
were the "Redskins".  Ah, those pre-Politically Correct days, when a goofy
drawing of what was not yet called a "Native American" could be prominently
posted on the outside wall of the school.

In case anyone is interested, the name "Seneca" comes not from the Roman
philosopher but from nearby Seneca Park, one of a number of municipal parks
designed by Frederic Law Olmstead and named after Indian tribes.  Olmstead, as well
as being a landscape architect, was a journalist who before the Civil War
wrote a well-known book about the South (with much discussion of slavery), so our
Politically Incorrect school name had a very tenuous connection with
Emancipation and therefore with the civil rights and PC movements.

A related Al Capp-ism "Skunk Works", where Lonesome Polecat and a Caucasian
character whose name escapes me brewed up "Kickapoo joy juice."  MWCD10 says
(page 1101 column 2) "fr. the _Skonk Works_, illicit distilery in the comic
strip _Li'l Abner_ by Al Capp (ca. 1974)".  That the Skonk Works  is a distillery
is a deduction on Merriam-Webster's part, since the Skonk Works as drawn in
the strip consisted of a large kettle over a fire, with no sign of a still.  If
I can find a certain book which is hiding from me, I will challenge that date.
 Oddly, MWCD11 merely lists "Skunk Works" as a "service mark".

       - Jim Landau

Aside to Wilson Gray: I believe I said earlier that my copy of Clausewitz's
"On War" was AWOL.  Sunday I attended a talk by a chaplain who is stationed
with the troops in Iraq.  In a list of items to send to the troops, he listed
non-fiction books, particularly on military history (he said they are swamped
with paperback fiction.)  So I went through my library looking for military
history books that I haven't read and, lo and behold, that copy of Clausewitz
patriotically showed up and volunteered.

Anyway, this is an abridged version of the 1908 Colonel J. J. Graham
translation, reprinted by Penguin (Hammondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books
Ltd, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044427-0, edited by Anatol Rapoport).  Page 119 "War is a
mere continuation of policy by other means."

(Question:  Am I correct that a leading zero in an ISBN means a book
published in the United States?  This book, according to the reverse of the title
page, was "set, printed, and bound in Great Britain").