Leapers

Chuck Nash is a leaper, or a leapling, depending on who you listen to.

I was talking to Chuck Nash Friday and I found out he was a leaper. No, not a leper, he doesn't have Hansen's Disease, he was born on February 29 so he only has a birthday every four years - such people are called leapers or leaplings. He said he was 68, which may be how many years have past since his birth, but he has only seen 17 birthdays.

Such distinctions are not legally worth noting, on normal years their birthdays are considered to take place either February 28 or March 1. However there are good and sufficient reasons to consider it. Gilbert and Sullivan created an entire comic opera, Pirates of Penzance, using the dilemma to drive the action. I'll have to keep Chuck's birthday in mind and maybe I can wreak some humorous havoc with the knowledge in the future.

While leaving the building after talking with Chuck I ran into Kurt Moore who said he had been taken to lunch by a group of women in a sort of Sadie Hawkins Day celebration. While that brilliant creation of Al Capp shares the same logic as the leap year - women ask men to dance, etc. - it doesn't occur in February. No, as any true fan of Li'l Abner knows Sadie Hawkins' Day is in November.

As a kid I got hooked on Li'l Abner, little knowing Capp hid social commentary in the hilarious antics of his hillbilly creations. Later, as I grew to understand more of what Capp was actually saying I found it even more humorous. If any one person is responsible for my political lean to the right, it is Al Capp.

I loved all the characters in Dogpatch, Li'l Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy and Pappy Yokum, Lonesome Polecat, Stupefyin' Jones, Hairless Joe, Joe Btfsplk and all the others, but most of all I loved the Shmoos. No matter what you needed the Shmoos were the perfect answer. Need something to eat? Fried Shmoo tasted like chicken, broiled Shmoo tasted like steak and baked Schmoo was ham-tastic. Need leather? Shmoo hide shaved thin made the best leather. Lumber? Shmoo hide cut thick made great lumber. Shmoo whiskers made toothpicks and even their eyes could be used as buttons.

Alas the Shmoos were destroyed. Well, actually they were destroyed many times but one always seemed to survived to repopulate them. The reason Shmoo had to go was not that they were so bad for humans, but that they were too good. With Shmoos giving so much of themselves humans found they didn't need to work and society broke down.

Another Capp creation was the group known as Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything or S.W.I.N.E. He captured the mindless protesting that such populations are well-known for. Too bad the generation that spawned S.W.I.N.E. hasn't learned anything new in all the intervening years since Capp first put them in his strip.

Well I'll have to go out and find me some of that there Kickapoo Joy Juice Hairless Joe and Lonesome Polecat brew up to celebrate his life and his creativity.