Smokey Stover
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Smokey Stover was a comic strip written and drawn by Bill Holman from March 10, 1935 until he retired in 1973. It was distributed through the Chicago Tribune and was the longest lasting of the comic strips of the "screwball comedy" genre.
The strip featured Smokey the firefighter, in his two-wheeled fire truck called "The Foomobile", fire chief Cash U. Nutt, his wife Cookie, with her question-mark pompadour, and his son Earl. Odd bits of philosophy, and recurrent signs carrying bizarre phrases such as "Notary Sojac" and "1506 Nix Nix" were featured in the strip. (Holman described the phrase "Notary Sojac" as Gaelic for "horsecrap" and as Gaelic for "Merry Christmas". [1]) Holman also wrote and drew a companion strip about Smokey's cat, Spooky, who had a perpetually bandaged tail.
"Foo" was one of these recurring nonsense words and was taken up by World War II's "Foo Fighters". Foo may have been inspired by the French word for fire, feu, but Holman never gave a straight answer as to the origin. The "history" section on the Smokey-Stover.com web site (http://www.smokey-stover.com/history.html), however claims that he " ... found this word engraved on the bottom of a jade statue in San Francisco’s China town. The word Foo means Good-Luck." Smokey Stover wore a hat with a hole in its hinged bill. He sometimes used the hole in the bill to hold his (burning) cigar.
While no clear connection has ever been asserted, Holman's term "Smokey Stover" might have been, at least in part, chosen to remind his readers of the nearly ubiquitous stationary engine manufactured by the Stover Manufacturing and Engine Company of Freeport, IL which, between 1895 and 1942, made over 270,000 engines for use on America's farms. Such stationary engines were imprecise machines which often produced substantial exhaust smoke when fueled with kerosene, a common fuel used before catalytic cracking of petroleum became more common in the 1930s.
[edit] Trivia
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- in the town were the Smokey creator lived the fire department is allowed to have Smokey on their apparatus
- At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, one of the delegates cast a vote for Smokey.
- Chris Berman's nickname for Baltimore Ravens kicker Matt Stover is Smokey.
- Smokey Stover was also a featured segment on Filmation's Archie's TV Funnies in 1971, its only turn in animated form.
- Smokey Stover is referenced in "Jumbeliah", an un-released song Bruce Springsteen wrote in his early career: "Built like Marilyn Monroe and she walks just like Smokie Stover..."
