The Unified Theory of Mister Pitts #5

Family Comics Reading Time Around the Breakfast Table

Some of these memories are as clear as if they happened yesterday. This memory, although somewhat reinterpreted here for the purposes of illustration, is one of these.

We lived on Beech Street in Pampa, Texas at the time. It would have been a rare morning when my father didn’t have to be at the Courthouse Cafe, the restaurant he owned and managed. This fact seems somewhat remarkable to me now, that he owned and managed his own restaurant, as he was only about 24 years of age here. But he did. Times were different then, I suppose, in so many ways. I am sure there are young restaurant owners now as well. But a man of his age with that level of responsibility, a wife, three children, and his own very challenging and time-consuming business, seems less commonplace now.

I note here that I am drinking coffee at age four. It would have been sweet and had a lot of milk in it. I think this “coffee-milk” was a Cajun custom. My mother was a Guidry, her extended family hailed from Vermillion Parish in Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country.

Also, both my parents wore heavy black-framed eyeglasses. My mom’s were cat-eye style, and my father’s were of the Clark Kent style. I loved and coveted their glasses and was very pleased when my eyesight was determined to be sufficiently poor that I could get a pair. Mine were like my dad’s, including the little silver decoration at the corner of the temple. I still wear a similar pair to this day, and I wouldn’t dream of getting corrective surgery to avoid wearing eyeglasses. I do love my spectacles.

I remember two comics specifically; Peanuts by Charles Schulz, and The Family Circus, By Bil Keane. I understood the humor of The Family Circus better, but I preferred the cartooning style of Charles Schulz. What in particular fascinated me so much about Schulz’s art I do not know, but that fascination remains to this day. I mention the melancholy of Peanuts. It was so different from anything else on the comics page in this way. Watching the holiday special, A Charlie Brown Christmas again just recently, I was reminded how very much ahead of its time, or perhaps just OF its time Peanuts was. In the special, Charlie Brown is dealing with holiday depression, something one might not expect in an animated holiday special, ostensibly one targeted towards children. It sure gave the story some heart though, and made the ending that much more reassuring and satisfying.