To Abe Martin, politics was "just one five-cent cigar after another."
Just about everybody who read newspapers between the years 1904 and 1930 knew Abe Martin, the shrewd, lanky, bearded backwoods Aristotle drawn by cartoonist Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard. Abe Martin appeared in more than 300 papers, and was enjoyed by millions.
Through the years, while scanning old newspapers, I have seen lots of Hubbard’s little pen-and-ink drawings, usually accompanied by two short, unrelated sentences — supposedly the wise observations of Abe Martin.
But I never knew much about Hubbard until last weekend, when Laurie, our two daughters and I visited Brown County State Park, near Nashville, Ind. We stayed in the Abe Martin Lodge, which is one of the few state park lodging faciltiies named after a cartoon character. There’s a larger-than-life wooden sculpture of Abe Martin in the lobby, and a display case full of original Hubbard cartoons, artifacts and history.
Most of the park sits atop the Kin Hubbard Ridge. The lodge is surrounded by beautiful family cabins named after some of Hubbard’s beloved characters.
But back in 1904, when Abe Martin first appeared, Brown County was a miniature Appalachia — backward, eroded, inaccessible ... a place of log cabins, illiteracy, poverty, and colorful rustics. The hardwood timber had all been cut, leaving washed-out hillsides, hog pens and hard-scrabble garden patches.
Abe Martin appeared first in the Indianapolis News, then became syndicated. He was one of the most popular cracker-barrel pundits and philosophers ever, and he spawned the imaginary community of Bloom Center. Like Andy Taylor’s imaginary Mayberry, N.C., it was peopled by loveable eccentrics with names such as Fawn Lippincut, Mame Moon, Miss Taney Apple, Constable Newt Plum, and Editor Cale Fluhart, owner and proprietor of The Bloom Center Weekly Sliphorn.
The cartoons, sayings, and weekly "Short Furrows" essays were collected into books, almanacs and compilations, most now long out of print.
Some of the "Furrows" pieces are especially good. I really liked this one, in which Mrs. Em Moots describes the lowly holly-hock:
"Perhaps th’ fact that th’ hollyhock throws forth no fragrance accounts fer its unpopularity among th’ highbrows, but how about th’ other garden flowers, th’ marigolds, that are cultivated an’ bugged an’ watered an’ coddled? They smell fierce. We love th’ hollyhock. We admire its independence an’ its friendliness an’ its disposition t’ make the’ best o’ things."
Seventy-eight years after Hubbard’s death, many of Abe Martin’s wisecracks remain as tangy as a gourdful of Brown County cider. Here are a few examples:
-- It’s no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.
-- Th’ safest way t’ double your money is t’ fold it over once an’ put it back in your pocket.
-- Cantaloupes are jest like women — we kin thump ‘em an’ lift ‘em an squeeze ‘em but we can’t tell a blamed thing about ‘em, till it’s too late.
-- It’s what we learn after we think we know it all that counts.
-- Enlisting in the United States Navy to see the world is like going to the workhouse to learn broommaking.
-- Next t’ worrin’ about th’ home life o’ English sparrows, th’ silliest waste o’ time is concernin’ ourselves with th’ domestic af-fairs o’ movie people.
-- The way most people would run a newspaper has been tried thousands o’ times.
-- Workin’ never hurt nobody. It’s what we do after the whistle blows that puts us on the hummer.
-- There’s too blamed many new ways to spend money and not enuf new ways to get it.
-- You can take a voter to the polls, but you can’t make him think.
-- Mr. and Mrs. Lettie Plum, married in June, couldn’t git their car out ‘o the garage last evenin’, so they had to go to bed hungry.
-- When a fellow says it hain’t th’ money, but the principle of th’ thing, it’s th’ money.
-- Nobuddy ever fergits where he buried a hatchet.
-- The feller that puts off marryin’ til he kin support a wife hain’t much in love.
-- Lots o’ fellers get credit fer bein’ self-made when they merely used ther wives’ judgment.
-- Th’ only way to entertain some folks is t’ listen ‘t ‘em.
-- If th’ meek ever do inherit th’ earth some one’ll get it away from ‘em before they have it an hour.
-- Th’ feller that agrees with ever’thing you say is either a fool er he is gittin’ ready t’ skin you.
-- Classic music is th’ kind that we keep thinkin’ll turn into a tune.
-- All th’ world loves a good loser.
-- You’re never successful till you’re happy.
-- A friend thet hain’t in need is a friend indeed.
-- There ain’t nothin’ as cheap as a good doctor.
-- Distant relatives are the best kind, an’ th’ further, th’ better.
-- Some folks are jest like trained seals — you’ve got t’ keep handin’ ‘em somethin’.
When Hubbard died unexpectedly of a heart attack, humorist Will Rogers wrote this for The New York Times:
"Kin Hubbard is dead. To us folks that attempt to write a little humor his death is just like Edison’s would be to the world of invention. No man in our generation was within a mile of him, and I am so glad that I didn’t wait for him to go to send flowers. I have said it from the stage and in print for 20 years. Just think — only two lines a day, yet he expressed more original philosophy in ‘em than all the rest of the paper combined. What a kick Twain and all that gang will get out of Kin."
Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.
