snuffy smith's home identified by regional dialect

[Jeff Prucher]

--- Michael McKernan <mckernan at LOCALNET.COM> wrote:
>
> John Baker wrote:
>
> >A strip in the first year or two identified Li'l Abner's home as
> >"Dogpatch, >Kentucky."  I don't recall the state being mentioned in the
> >later years of the >strip, which may be why the Dogpatch, USA amusement
> >park was in Arkansas.
>
> Coming in late to this discussion, please forgive this intrusion:  Based on
> a fairly careful reading (some years ago) of the first three years of Li'l
> Abner dailies, I don't remember seeing any mention of Kentucky as the site
> of Dogpatch.  Capp seems to go to great pains to generalize 'the mountains
> of the South' in various forms, rather than being specific.  In many ways,
> Capp deliberately sought to control public reaction/beliefs concerning Li'l
> Abner.
>
> Course, I could have missed it, or it could have occurred in a Sunday strip
> (I haven't seen many Sundays; don't even know when Sundays began for this
> strip).
>
> If you have a citation for a specific date for this (or a secondary
> source), John, I'd very much appreciate it if you'd post it.  (I have the
> first three years of dailies handy, so I can quickly check such a reference
> for those years.)

This may not be much to go on, but Denis Kitchen, the publisher of the Li'l
Abner reprints, says: "Very early in the continuity Capp once referred to
Dogpatch being in Kentucky, but he was careful afterwards to keep its location
generic, probably to avoid cancellations from offended subscribing newspapers
in Kentucky."  (Website here:
http://www.deniskitchen.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=S&Category_Code=bios.dogpatch)
 Natcherly, we might still want to see some hard evidence of this.

Jeff Prucher

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