snuffy smith's home identified by regional dialect

[Wilson Gray]

On Nov 9, 2004, at 9:11 AM, James A. Landau wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: snuffy smith's home identified by regional dialect
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> 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").
>

The white guy's name was/is? (I've been under the impression that the
strip died with Al Capp, but that's merely an assumption on my part; I
don't know f' sho') "Big Barnsmell." I agree that the general wore
Confederate grey. But isn't the term "skonk works" way, way, way older
than 1974? Or does the date refer to the term "*Skunk* Works"? Do you
remember Bashington T. Bullmoose? "What's good for General Bullmoose is
good for the U.S.A." Wolfbane? The Wolf Girl? What was the name of the
guy who always wore a zoot suit with the drape shape and the reet pleat
and had the power of the whammy?

And Olmsted was really quite a good writer as well as the king of
American landscape architecture.

-Wilson Gray