Cartoon

Guest Poster: Grandpa Franklin

Al Otis and his Pirates
Grandpa Franklin

Three days late for father’s day and way too earlier for Halloween it is a guest post FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!!  Here is a drawing by my Grandpa Franklin my mom sent me recently that as the writing on the drawing says is: “Al Otis and his Pirates circa 1927 at Moose hall in Aberdeen, Washington”. Or as his caption says “at midway”.  “Midway” to what in Aberdeen I don’t know. Click to see bigger. As you can see not much has changed in Aberdeen since 1927 compared to the last time I was there. I assume the skinheads throwing bottles are just out of frame in my Grandfather’s rendering.  Below the drawing is a picture of Franklin Gillespie, my grandfather.

Grandpa was a musician and a later a teacher. He graduated from Centralia High School in Centralia, Washington and then joined up with Al and his Pirates before moving on to tour around with an Archie Loveland and then bigger names like Horace Heidt and his band.

My mom has always told me that Grandpa loved cartooning but this is the first that I have seen of any of his drawings.   I got to meet him once when I was little bitty when the family had traveled down to his house in Sacramento. I remember him playing piano, showing me how to draw a boot and telling me “try it you’ll like it,” in a funny voice when I didn’t want to eat something.

Punk with Dog

Punk with Dog
My second in the punks with dogs series. Maybe one day I’ll have enough for a showing. I’ll call it “Punks with Dogs” and real punks can show up with their dogs and try and bum smokes from me and when I say truthfully I don’t have any they can mutter under their breath at me.

Juggler Dude

Juggler

Goes with this guy from long ago. I think I must subconsciously want to join the circus. I have always admired the Carnynary arts.

Facebox

Facebox

Hey there, hey you, how’s it going? Good, I hope. Here be a facebox. It has one mouth and a separate tongue. Boy that sure is funny. By the way, thanks for reading and looking at this thing. I appreciate it, I really do.

I guess I don’t promote this as hard as I could or as hard as other people promote their sites or as hard as people expect me to. This week I had two friends come up and say to me that they had no idea that I had a blog and why didn’t I tell them about it. I just assumed that they knew. I mean I talk about it sometimes and once in a while post something on FB but I haven’t made t-shirts with the address on it, or work it into conversations, or start a twitter and locate everyone I have ever met and send out non stop send out reminders. I don’t want to be that asshole. I just try and draw stuff and keep it up and and so far it’s good and fun and it seems like more people look at this and come back and whoever you are I really appreciate it and once in a while someone says something about likely something and that is real nice.

So anyway, thank you and thanks for reading and if you see a drawing of a disgusting box with a tongue shooting out of it and you think that your gross-o weirdo buddy would really think that is tops I would sure appreciate your recommendation for them to check it out. I said appreciate about 12 times.

Thank you