that usual gang
of idiots – Mad would not
be Mad without you
Al Jaffee has died.
The New York Times reports that:
Al Jaffee, a cartoonist who folded in when the trend in magazine publishing was to fold out, thereby creating one of Mad magazine’s most recognizable and enduring features, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 102.
“I have this idea,” he recalled telling them. “I think it’s a funny idea, but I know you’re not going to buy it. But I’m going to show it to you anyway. And you’re not going to buy it because it mutilates the magazine.”
The men did buy it, and then asked for more, and the inside back cover quickly became Mr. Jaffee’s turf. Although other regular Mad features changed artists over the years, no one but Mr. Jaffee drew a fold-in for 55 years.
Anyone my age knows Mad Magazine.
Odd little jokes and word play that I first read in Mad still come to my mind on a regular basis.
I am not sure of who bought them in my family.
There was a built in cupboard with three drawers in our family room and that was where all our comic books were stored.
The Mad Magazines also got tossed in there.
The thing was, I never knew where they came from or who bought them.
But there they where.
And always, ALWAYS, someone had already folded the fold in.
Then when I was in Junior High, I happened to be in Kay’s Drugstore on the North End (NOTE: Not the North East side as some folks thought was implied by the NE on the street signs – the NE stood for North End) of Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up.
I happened to be in Kay’s Drugstore with money in my pocket.
I must have been sent up to the Avenue (as Plainfield Ave was called) to get my hair cut at Dick’s Barbershop.
If you were a boy my age and you lived on the North End of Grand Rapids, you got your hair cut at Dick’s Barbershop.
That meant we all looked the same in our school pictures.
That also meant that when you got to Dick’s you stood outside until it looked like Dick or Arnold had a free chair,
If you didn’t wait and just walked right in you might end up in Nick’s chair.
Nick, AKA ‘Nick the Butcher’, had this bad habit of catching his razor on that bony part behind your ear.
“Whup,” he would say, “might have nicked you there.”
If was bad enough you would get Band-Aid stuck on your head under your ear lobe.
You would see these Band-Aids under other kids ears at school and point and laugh and say “Nick the Butcher got you.”
But I digress.
I must have been sent to get my hair cut and had some change left over so I could go to Kay’s and get a candy bar or something.
Instead I looked at the comics and Mad Magazine.
I still remember how it felt when I figured out I had enough money to buy my own copy of Mad.
It felt great and at the same time, almost wrong.
It wasn’t that Mad Magazine was banned in our house or anything like.
But it was … off color … shall we say.
I am not sure why I felt it was wrong but I do remember feeling that my Mom would not be happy if I came home with it.
So I made the decision that Mom just wouldn’t know.
I grabbed a copy and went to the counter to pay feeling both good and bad and very grown up.
It came to me that who ever it was at Kay’s who was working at the cash register and would check me out would most likely know who I was and if not WHO I was, would know I was a Hoffman and the fact that I bought a copy of Mad Magazine might be mentioned to my Mom the next time she came in.
I quickly rationalized that being from a family of 11 kids, the chances were good that while my family would be known, I would escape in the anonymity of being the 8th kid and I could live with those chances.
I got my copy of Mad and read it all the way home.
When I got home, I put the Mad flat under my sweater, walked in the house and yelled, I’M HOME.
My Mom was in the kitchen (she was usually in the kitchen – in the days when all of us were living at home, 6 o’clock dinner time preparations started with 2 dozen pork chops around 4pm) and she told me to stop and turn around.
Busted! I thought but then she just complimented me on my hair cut.
Until the hippy era, I had to same hair cut which was universally known as a ‘Princeton’ or a buzz cut with bangs.
I pretty much looked the same from 1964 to 1972 except that I got glasses.
I said thanks and walked as innocently as I could through the kitchen to my room.
I walked so innocently that had my Mom been watching she would known I was up to something but she turned her back and I made it downstairs.
In my room, I closed the door and slipped the Mad Magazine out from under my sweater.
I sat on my bed with extreme satisfaction and did a ‘first time’ back page fold-in for the first time.
BOY HOWDY but did I feel like something!
There then was the rub,
How did I brag about this to my brothers without revealing that I had brought a Mad Magazine home?
As much as I wanted to tell everyone what I did, I made the decision that not getting caught was better than showing off.
I stayed in my room and read Mad Magazine.
Dinner time came and I hid the magazine under my bed.
After dinner I went a back to my room and read through the Mad version of the movie the Guns of Navarone.
By bedtime I had finished every page, panel and joke including all the Sergio Aragones Marginals.
The next morning presented the problem of what to do with the magazine.
I had thought that if I could smuggle it upstairs into the comic book drawer I would be safe.
But that meant sharing it with my brothers and I felt, it was MY copy.
I kinda made my bed, which I never did, and slid the magazine under the pillow and pulled the covers up over the pillow and tucked it in.
That was safe and sound for me.
That afternoon I got home from school.
I’M HOME, I yelled as I came in as any of my brothers and sisters would have yelled.
My Mom poked her had out of the laundry room (which is where she was if she wasn’t in the kitchen) to say hello and ask about my day and as I stood talking with her I looked at the laundry piled up and saw that it was all bedding from the boys rooms.
Mom just kept talking about this and that as my stomach dropped into my shoes.
She want back to her laundry and I walked into the kitchen and made noise getting some cookies and when enough time had passed I ran down to my room.
My bed had been remade with clean sheets and blankets.
I stood for a minute just looking.
Without moving into the room, I stood and looked at my desk and the bureau and the floor of the room.
Nothing.
Hoping beyond hope, I laid on the floor and looked under the bed.
Maybe when my Mom made the bed, the Mad Magazine had fallen out and landed, undetected, under the bed.
Nope.
I stood up.
I reached out and raised up my pillow.
There under the pillow, tucked under the blanket was my Mad Magazine.
Al Jaffee has died.
I remember him with very fond memories.
Some of which are about his stuff inside Mad magazine.
No Haiku For You 