More Stilwell -- Cafeteria expansion

Another installment in my ego trip down memory lane, digitally restoring the comic strip "Stilwell," which ran in the Cleveland State University student weekly The Cauldron from 1971 through '73. As baby boomers, we of my generation have spent a lifetime burdening ever facet of society, and so in the 1970s, of course, we were wreaking havoc on the state funded universities that had cropped up to deal with our numbers. Stilwell cafeteria, in Stilwell Hall, centrally located on campus, was apparently in need of more space to handle the growing student body. So in the fall of 1971, space just down the hallway was opened as an annex to the cafeteria. What happens in this Nov. 9, 1971, cartoon is a baby boomer inevitability.

The bulletin board you see in the background actually did exist just to the right of the main doorways into the cafeteria, open for use by all. Seeing my depiction of it reminds me that at some point during my freshman or sophomore years, before I first stepped into the offices of The Cauldron and discovered a career path, and definitely before the comic strip was conceived, I created and posted a parody "newspaper" composed of clippings from the Cleveland Press and The Plain Dealer, pasted up crudely on 8 1/2 by 14 paper and photocopied on a photocopier, then tacked up on that bulletin board. I believe I called it The Cleveland Crumm. It poked fun at some of the content in those two papers, as I recall. Yes, Cleveland had not one but two newspapers, back then. I can't explain what I had hoped to accomplish by producing and posting those, but I think they offer a hint of why I came within one letter grade of flunking out of Cleveland State during my first two years.

A riddle

Nobody actually got hurt...

...in the making of this cartoon. It's just a pun.

More Stilwell frogs -- Reality Bites

Continuing, in no particular order, the digital restoration of "Stilwell," the comic that ran in 1971-73 in the Cleveland State University student weekly, The Cauldron... It's now the fall quarter of 1971. The strip had debuted during the previous spring quarter, and I was beginning to notice that it had a bit of a following. I had never done anything of noticeable significance before (or since, for that matter), so it was somewhat of an ego boost. (I remember that a student actually said to me that the cartoons were the only thing worth reading in the paper. Such was the caliber of intellectual curiosity that I surrounded myself with while I was there.) Be that as it may, realizing that some of the jabs that I took at campus life were resonating with my fellow students, I wondered if the crabby cafeteria lady who often had appeared in my comic had ever seen the strip. That's what inspired this one, published on Oct. 19, 1971. I had heard that they later transferred her to the Fenn Tower eatery across the street and that she eventually lost her job, though I can't verify that. I always wondered if I had had anything to do with that. I did know from personal experience that this woman, whose main job was manning the cash register at the end of the Stilwell cafeteria line, was unreasonably caustic with people who requested change for the vending machines adjacent to the checkout line. You have to remember that back in the early 1970s, coinage was more dominant as a medium of exchange than it is now in the 21st century. You could actually buy a modest meal for under a dollar back then. And while the vending machines at Stilwell's cafeteria made change, they weren't equipped to handle paper currency. So it was a major inconvenience if you didn't happen to have coins and wanted something from the machines. The cafeteria management also made attempts to discourage students from lingering in the cafeteria as a social hangout. I felt that the cafeteria people ought to be a little more accommodating. Anyway, here's how I imagined it might go if the crabby lady had discovered the strip.

More Stilwell -- Frog clothes

Continuing the restoration of "Stilwell," the Cleveland State student paper cartoon I drew in 1971, 1972 and 1973... Here are two strips that ran in consecutive weeks in October 1972 in The Cauldron. Reports of exhibitionists on campus inspired the first one. While brainstorming an angle for referencing that, it dawned on me that most of my frog characters in the strip did not wear clothing. That led me to the idea of having the froggie students come to the same realization themselves. The payoff panel, of course, is pure silliness. The following week, I thought of a way to play off of the previous week's comic. Toward the end of its run, "Stilwell" turned more into this sort of self-contained nonsense and away from what I think made it resonate with a lot of people at CSU: its poking fun at real people and situations at the university.

More Stilwell -- Picher of Duke

Another digitally restored "Stilwell" cartoon, from the Cleveland State University run in the student newspaper The Cauldron 40 years ago. This one takes place at The Downunder, a new campus area bar that was downstairs, naturally, in a building on Euclid Avenue. The bar is real, but Sluggo does not represent a real person. The gag is just meant as word play involving the name of one of the more popular beers sold in the Cleveland area. Duquesne (pronounced duke CANE, and nicknamed Duke), was a pilsener brewed at The Duquesne Brewing Company in Pittsburgh, a brewery with a history that dates all the way back to 1899, that went dark during Prohibition and came back strong in 1933 and enjoyed wide regional success until 1972, coincidentally the year this cartoon was published. It helps, of course, to know that actor John Wayne's nickname was "Duke."

More Stilwell -- student government giveaway

Another "Stilwell" comic, digitally restored for posterity, from the strip that ran in The Cauldron, Cleveland State University's student newspaper, in 1971, '72 and '73. Again, CSU was a commuter school, and most of us were just trying to get a degree and move on, not much invested in campus affairs. Student government was off a lot of the student body's radar, and I recall at least an informal sense that the elected body was engaged in a lot of irrelevant issues that failed to resonate with most people. Daycare obviously was an important issue to students who were also parents and needed a convenient place for their kids to stay while they were in class. But many students, like me, were fresh from high school and nowhere near the child-rearing stage of our lives. Memory fails, but apparently the student council did work to get a daycare service started on campus. "Stilwell" visited the snarky "What's the point of student government?" theme a few times. This comic ran Jan. 18, 1972. Fat Glenn's is a reference to a previously referenced campus bar/eatery that opened around that time. And I do recall that we used to refer to the hamburgers served there as "gristleburgers."

Elbow room

More Stilwell frogs -- the Enarson cartoons

The president of Cleveland State University made it into the Stilwell comic strip in the school newspaper, The Cauldron, three times. In his first appearance, published on May 25, 1971, the frogs hanging out in Stilwell cafeteria are discussing a recently released study that showed how low the state of Ohio ranked in fiscal subsidies for its universities. The implication was that Enarson had to take a second job clearing tables in the cafeteria to supplement his executive salary. On Dec. 7 that year, Enarson returned to the strip, in a Christmas gift box given to the crabby cafeteria lady, to deliver a less-than-glowing performance evaluation. Finally, the frogs chimed in on April 18, 1972, after Enarson announced that he was leaving the university he had headed since 1966 and moving on to what became a nine-year stint as president of Ohio State University. Fun fact about Enarson: If you think you have never heard of this guy, think again. According to Wikipedia, Enarson, who died in 2006, is said to have thought that he would most be remembered for firing OSU football coach Woody Hayes. Enarson gave the coaching legend the boot, permanently ending his football career, after Hayes threw a punch at Clemson noseguard Charlie Bauman. Bauman had just intercepted an Ohio State pass in the final minutes of the Gator Bowl on Dec. 29, 1978, the Buckeyes down 17-15. Bauman made the mistake of running into the Ohio State sidelines after the interception, where Hayes clocked him. Ohio State lost the bowl game as well as its coach.