I have always enjoyed newspapers. As a very young kid, the radio and the newspaper were the two things that provided daily news to everyone. They also provided entertainment for families. I remember sitting with my father and reading the “funnies” each afternoon. He would point to and read the comic strips that would cause us to laugh. I remember Blondie and Dagwood very well.
The Indianapolis News was our daily newspaper. It was an afternoon paper. We also received The Indianapolis Star on Sunday mornings. It was so special to receive the comic pages in color each Sunday.
The Indianapolis News carried a daily running of stories from an author named Howard R. Garis. Uncle Wiggily Longears was the main character in a series of books that he had written. These stories were in the afternoon paper each day. I loved sitting with my dad and him reading Uncle Wiggily stories to me.
Several years ago, I purchased one of the Uncle Wiggily books. I remember reading some of those stories to our three grandsons. I also took that book along with Stuart and we read stories to young students in their classrooms. We had so much fun doing those reading sessions.
I still enjoy reading the comic strips in The Star on a daily basis. One of my favorite strips is called “Crankshaft”. A fellow named Crankshaft is the main character in the strip. Ed Crankshaft was a school bus driver. You seldom know with Ed Crankshaft’s character in the strip how he will react. He can be mad, grumpy, upset, confused or very happy.
I have a feeling that over the years many school bus drivers have used this comic strip to have fun with their student riders and maybe see themselves and working on a positive change.
Last Monday I started reading the paper and when I got to the Crankshaft strip, Ed was sitting with a group of friends in the coffee shop, and he was telling them that he needed to leave early because he had an appointment with his dermatologist. He said that once upon a time he had one doctor and now he has a doctor for each part of his body.
The next day he was in the examination room and the nurse told him to put on that goofy gown. Later the doctor came into the room and told him he had it on backwards. A couple of strips later the dermatologist was freezing several growths off of his back.
In the last one, the dermatologist prescribed a lotion to apply daily. Eventually, he found it in the back of his medicine cabinet and had no clue what it was.
Now let me explain the connections that I seem to have with Crankshaft’s visit to his dermatologist. Ed’s doctor is a smart efficient female. Ed is a retired school bus driver. Ed’s eyes get very big when the doctor was freezing those spots on his back. Ed is probably not very good at applying daily medicine.
I am a retired school bus driver. My dermatologist is also a very smart, efficient female. Her name is Emily C. Keller, MD, FAAD. I have experienced the coldness of freezing bumps off of my body. I also just found a tube of something that she prescribed a few years ago.
I cut out the six Crankshaft comic strips from last week and will deliver them to Dr. Keller in a few days.
What are the odds of connecting so many times to Ed Crankshaft in this story? I bet they are very high. We did it! I still can’t win $3 playing the lottery.
Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools. He can be reached through email at fdshonk@aol.com.