Charlatan Days
That troublemaker Marty Jourard has been hanging around Gainesville for the past week, haunting the libraries to scavenge material for his upcoming rock and roll book, so naturally it was Marty who unearthed the old Florida Alligator photo published above. Plus much attendant news on the running battle between The Forces Of Darkness (us) and the Minions Of Virtue (them).
Before we get into all that, however, we’d like to advise our vast Gainesville audience that Marty and I will probably be showing up at your doorstep someday soon dragging a Radio Flyer wagon full of Marty’s books. Man cannot live by Art alone so we have to sell a few of the buggers to keep our pal in business. If we catch a few or you a little short, Marty would like everybody to know he will consider the occasional trade for certain drugs, used musical instruments (playable) or, in a pinch, altered brownies. Cash, as usual, is preferred.
Getting back to the Charlatan days, it occurred to us that most of you probably don’t know a whole lot about college humor magazines, of which there are currently few. We didn’t know much about them either when we encountered mention of a publication called the Aggievator, which had been discontinued at Oklahoma State University just prior to my arrival there in 1958 (they must have known something). Aggievator derives from the University’s previous incarnation, Oklahoma A & M. All agricultural and mechanical schools (A&Ms) are called “Aggies,” thus the classily named Aggievator. Anyway, the Aggievator was pretty much a jokebook, whereas I envisioned a broader scope of offerings, mainly satirical criticism of the University. College humor magazines varied greatly in their editorial content in those days. The Yale Record and the famous Harvard Lampoon published more sophisticated content (at least they thought so), but their monthly magazines were very thin on material. The Lampoon staff mainly enjoyed hanging out at their nice little triangular castle in Cambridge and working on their annual satire of one of the major national magazines like Time or Sports Illustrated—(“Sports Illustated” to them)—which were sold throughout the country and were very well done. The magazines who were subjected to these annual satires were so honored to be chosen that they often participated in the preparation of the eventual product.
Other college humor magazines played to their strengths. The California Pelican at Berkeley had a fabulous cartoonist named Joel Beck, so his stuff took precedence. The Florida Orange Peel had its own cartoonist, Don Addis, eventually an editor of the publication, who was very prolific, but the Orange Peel, well supported by advertising, contained a lot of diverse material. Both of these magazines and many of their brethren might occasionally tweak their respective universities but were careful not to bite the hand that fed them.
This was not at all the case for the very best of the college magazines, the University of Texas Ranger, which delighted in sneaking dubious material past its unenlightened censor at UT, Publications Director Loyd Edmonds, whose name the editors would mention freely in the editorial content. Under editor Bill Helmer, the Ranger’s running battle with Edmonds took on the métier of the old Roadrunner vs. Wile E. Coyote cartoons, with the Roadrunner almost always winning. Unlike the cartoons, however, Helmer’s Wile E. Coyote (Edmonds) had ultimate control of the publication so the editor had to perform a clever dance to keep things in balance. Helmer’s position was enhanced by his ability to produce a superior magazine filled with excellent writing and illustrations which sold like gangbusters to the UT students. And more important—from Edmonds standpoint, at least—to generate tons of advertising revenue for the Publications Department coffers.
Life In Stillwater
Yeah, it sounds like a scary sentence. Anyway, midway through my freshman year at Oklahoma State, I naively took my plan to revive the Aggievator before the OSU Board Of Publications, which had probably been eager to get rid of it in the first place. See, college administrators enjoy, above all else, maintaining serenity on campus and these little magazines seem to attract the sort of scoundrels who like to, well, raise hell. When conservative stuffed-shirt alumni notice this sort of thing and begin complaining that their alma mater is being sullied, administrators get visions of contributions being withheld and scramble to plug the hole in the dike—which often means get rid of the magazines. Which is probably one of the reasons you don’t see too many of them around any more.
Undaunted by the Board’s decision to reject my request, I decided I would start my own magazine. My friends all told me this was a ludicrous idea. “What do you know about starting a magazine?” was the usual query. Not much, as it turns out. But it’s kind of like typing class. One day you sit there in front of the big confusing typewriter, thinking you’ll never get this mess figured out (“What—I can’t even LOOK at the letters?”)—next thing you know you’re typing out ten-page essays.
I gathered up a collection of ne’er-do-wells and got to work on the State Charlatan. It had alliteration, right? And I found a printer who allowed me to pay half the cost of the job down and the rest after I collected my advertising revenue. The cost of the whole job was about $600. The biggest problem, of course, was how were we going to sell the thing? The University would not let us sell it on campus, of course, and the city would not give us a license to sell it on the streets. We solved the problem by sending a crew of salespeople through the dormitories at night. The students didn’t know what we were selling but if it was illegal they were buying it. The challenge became greater as time went on and resident assistants became aware of the illicit activity, but, fortunately for us, there were far more salespeople than resident assistants. Eventually, the University realized the futility of its fight and tried to coopt us by allowing sales in the Student Union. As luck would have it, that turned out to be our “University Is Going To Hell” issue, the cover featuring the OSU Administration Building swaddled in flames. It goes without saying that would be the last issue of Charlatan to sell at the Student Union. Worse even, I was given an ultimatum to stop publishing material which cast the University in a bad light or be booted out of school. I left of my own volition.
Back In Business
The Charlatan lay dormant for awhile as I trooped around the country looking for something to do. I did put out one issue of the magazine while back home in Massachusetts but that was largely a collection of old material gleaned from previous publications. For a brief interlude, I worked as editor of Bruce Johnson’s advertising-heavy Chaff Magazine in Champagne-Urbana, but Bruce was disinclined to offend his advertisers so that wasn’t much fun. I emigrated to Austin to help Gilbert Shelton put out the Ranger in 1962, a seminal season, and, while there, took note of the flourishing Orange Peel in Gainesville. A couple of years later, I made my way back to Florida with my new wife, Marilyn Todd, and we cranked up the magazine again.
Gainesville was always the objective. When we got there, however, there were already two magazines vying for business, the independent Old Orange Peel, edited by Jack Horan, and the University’s New Orange Peel, thus named because the publication had been shelved for a short period and then returned after Horan came out with his magazine. We temporarily retreated to Tallahassee, 150 miles away, the home of Florida State University and started there. When we finished Tallahassee sales, we took what magazines were left and meandered down to Gainesville to gain a little traction there. Since we were more outrageous than the other two, the students were responsive. Gradually, the other magazines faded and we were the last man standing. We happily moved further south.
The Gainesville days were great. Over time, we had polished up our talents and the quality of the magazine improved. We were also able to get material from ex-Ranger staffers like Lieuen Adkins (who lived with us awhile in Tallahassee) and Shelton, who was becoming a famous comic-book star in San Francisco. We were mainly popular, however, because we challenged authority, not a regular phenomenon in the South. We confronted the tyrannical Dean of Students, Lester Hale, with a gigantic Dump Dean Hale! Campaign, which even included photos of Pamme Brewer carrying a sign advocating this in front of the White House. At the same time, the Alligator, then the University’s student newspaper (it is now independent), was heavily censored by Lester Hale’s henchman, King White, No matter what the competent and courageous staff would try to insert editorially, King could snip it out at the last minute. We revealed all this in an issue of Charlatan, which also contained a raft of old jokes starring King White. He sued in Gainesville court and won, mostly because I represented myself in court and you know what they say about people who do that. He was awarded $80,000 by the jury, the foreman of which was an utter right-wing fanatic, even though his lawyers only asked for $40,000. I thought this was a funny joke, having maybe $800, until a few years later when his minions seized my nice new car and some acreage I owned equity in out on Newberry Road. Which is, by the way, now worth about a kazillion dollars. The things we do for love.
The lawsuit pretty much ended the magazine called Charlatan, though I certainly could have started another one if I wasn’t saddled with the day-to-day management of the Subterranean Circus, an enormously successful enterprise from Day One, but one requiring a lot of attention. By this time, I was 27 years old, most of those years spent broke or close to it so the Advent of Minor Wealth had its charms. Still, I would always miss the magazine days, the adventures they engendered, the companions they unearthed, the challenges they presented. And at the end of the day, you had a product you could look at and admire and constantly strive to better. You could unendingly work at your craft. You could influence people and even politics. Ah yes, we’ll never forget them—the days of wine and roses. And hair.
Oh-oh!
Last Saturday started out like any other Saturday. We got up, fed the horses, returned to the house to eat breakfast. Nothing untoward. Then, I noticed our yearling colt, Puck, lying down. He got up quick enough but this was abnormal. He laid down again. Damn it. Colic. I got Siobhan, we put him in the barn and gave him a shot of banamine. This almost always works in minor colic cases and Puck went back to eating his hay, a clear sign he felt better. Siobhan and I went off to Barry Eisaman’s training center to watch Pogo work.
Returning, I noticed Puck walking around with the other horses and momentarily felt better. Before long, however, he was laying down again. Not rolling, but obviously still uncomfortable. We gave him a small dose of rompun, which usually keeps mildly colicky horses standing. He laid down again.
Fortunately for us, our neighbor Jennie Hollis has a nice horse trailer and was home at the time. We loaded him up and headed for the Peterson & Smith Clinic, a half-hour away. Puck travelled well and, when we unloaded, looked pretty good. We thought he might get through this episode with medical management, no surgery. By evening, however, Puck was worse, visibly filling up with gas. Like a previous horse of ours, Hurrican Zip, Puck’s colic involved nephrosplenic ligament entrapment, although, unlike Zip, it was not caused by a conformation defect which caused Zip’s problem to recur twice.
One thing about the Peterson & Smith Clinic. The surgeons there have plenty of experience with these things. You won’t get any rookies operating on your horse. Dr. Carol Clark operated on Puck and all went swimmingly. Unlike Zip, who was troubled for days, Puck looked good the next morning. We brought him home a couple of days later and he is spending his next three weeks in a large stall just behind the house with his mini-mule pal Mary Margaret, who has become very experienced at these baby-sitting ventures.
Dr. Clark advised us that a low-starch feed might be in order. On farms where they have had an unusual number of colics, low starch feeds have reduced the numbers significantly, she said. Who woulda thunk it? Dr. Atkins diet is right again.
That’s all, folks….
