Ernestly ?!Ernestly ?!By ERNIE NEUFELD, Weyburn Review Associate Publisher
Were you ever worried sick about the opinion of the boys at the Skonk Works?
If the answer is "No," then you are obviously so young - or so lacking in your early education - that someone had better address the matter. And who more fit for the task than this scribbler, as columnists have loved to refer to themselves for decades?
There was a time when to ask anyone if they were familiar with the Li'l Abner comic and its divers constituents was about as inappropriate as asking if they were familiar with Noah and the great flood. (Gee, come to think about it, the odds may be similar nowadays.) But in fairness to myself - and Al Capp - Li'l Abner has been out of print for a decade or more, while the Book of Genesis can still be found by frequenting the right places. (Please don't expect a prize if you are able to identify the places.)
Those of you, then, to whom Li'l Abner is unknown, or just a name overhead in adult conversation, he was the protagonist (okay: hero) in a comic strip thus named, and created by the skillful hands and fertile mind of Al Capp, referred to parenthetically in the open paragraphs.
Now Li'l Abner Yokum, who remained 19 years old through the four decades or so of the strip's existence, lived with his parents, Pappy and Mammy. Yokum, in Dogpatch, a tiny hamlet that might best be described as a rural slum in the hill country of New York state.
Mammy - to a point - was the quintessential hillbilly family matriarch. I say "to a point" because she was a diminutive creature whose size belied her many strengths. She always wore the same simple dark dress and ragged black bonnet, and was never without the corncob pipe sticking out of the corner of her mouth. She was all sinew, muscle, determination, toughness, fiercely possessive affection for her brood, and often a touch of cussedness. When she issued a command, the family came to attention, and that included Pappy, Li'l Abner and his little pet pig Salome, an outstanding example of the rare but near-perfect species, Hamus Alabamus.
That is, her every command was obeyed without question, save for the rare occasion when she stepped beyond certain bounds. These limits were reached when discretion failed her, and she requested something which Li'l Abner felt obliged to reject out of hand, his jaw set defiantly, with a rhetorical question which brooked no frivolous (or sensible) reply: "What would the boys at the Skonk Works say?"
You may wonder what in the world might be a Skonk (or skunk) Works.
There is not, to my knowledge, an enterprise anywhere - in city, town, hamlet or croft - which might reasonably be identified as a Skonk works. Its use in the strip is a metaphor for what cartoonist Capp himself surely a former village denizen - recognized as an institution which enjoyed eminent domain, so to speak, over conduct of the supposedly young and carefree. Its judgments were capricious and quick, and covered conduct beyond the acknowledged scope of civil authorities, the church, polite society or the family. (I mention church, but come to think of it, I don't remember a single scene in all the years showing the folks of Dogpatch in church. The closest thing was Marryin' Sam, who performed various standards of wedding services on the spot for a modest payment of cash on the barrelhead.)
But I digress, so back to the Skonk Works. Every town in village in North America once had its informal gathering place where the jocks, loafers and chronically unemployed, gathered daily and at all hours, to toss around baseballs and horseshoes, swap stories, lies and gossip, exchange learned opinions on the local team's prospects in the seasonal sport, smoke roll-your-own cigarettes, chew tobacco and toss for Cokes. Above all, it rendered judgment on the appearance, deportment, family background, antecedents, future prospects, purity and the company being kept by any female, child or male not enjoying the tacit imprimatur of the group.
This meeting place might be a pool hall, hotel, beer parlor, general store, or any other place that offered benches between the building and the public sidewalk, and provided space between the walk and the street proper, for throwing balls or pitching horseshoes.
As anyone will ever attest who has ever been exposed and subject to the usually unkind judgments, the snickers and snide remarks of the constituents of such a hangout, the experience was never pleasant, its locale was approached with quaking hearts and the process of passing it - minutes which seemed like hours - endured with burning ears and nervous stomachs. Whatever the nature of the establishments that sheltered these self-appointed juries from one community to the next, Al Capp defined them generically as "the Skonk Works." There could be no more fitting sobriquet for one of the less lovable characteristics of rural America.
Truth be told, the Skonk Works is alive and well. It flourishes wherever and whenever you allow yourself and your right to forming your own opinions and standards to be challenged by the controllers, bigmouths, politicians, bigots and manipulators posing as friends, kinfolk, benefactors and guardians of your conscience. But be different: ignore them! Walk by them with dignity and stick to your guns.
My address (also listed on the Review's Website) is ernestly@pathcom.com.
Box 400, 904 East Avenue
Weyburn, SK
S4H 2K4
Phone: (306) 842-7487
Fax: (306) 842-0282
E-mail: production@weyburnreview.com
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Review (1987) Ltd.
