Saturday, December 31, 2022

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My mother had a few Pogo books, published in the 50s. I suspect my father got them for her, but I could be wrong. At any rate, she stopped after four [The Pogo Party, The Jack Acid Society Black Book (both about politics), Uncle Pogo So-So Stories, and The Pogo Stepmother Goose (more or less pure entertinment)], but when I read them I was hooked. Nothing can equal the thrill of finding Potluck Pogo, new, in the bookstore when I had the money to buy it. I don't remember how much it cost, but I do know that the first Pogo books cost $1 when they came out. Anyway I soon realized that the comic strip was published in our newspaper, Charlottesville's Daily Progress. The comics page was all I read, and I usually saved Pogo for last. At one point I started cutting them out of the paper, I think mainly the Sunday strips, which were in color, and I still have these, stapled together. It was difficult to find used Pogo books at used book stores, partly because it was hard to find good used book stores. When I was in college, and had a little money, the internet did not yet exist. Vendors would come to science fiction conventions and say oh, I had two Pogo books at home, but I didn't bring them. At some point I discovered that there were Pogo comics. I bought a few of them. They cost more than the books, and they were basically drafts of strips that were run again in the early books, where they were better drawn and funnier. so I didn't collect any more of those. The Pogo Puce Stamp Catalog came, when it was new, with a page of trading stamps. The copies, when I was looking for them, that had the stamps in them cost several times as much as the copies without the stamps. The idea of the stamps was funnier than the actual stamps, and I was really interested in reading the comics, so I bought one without the stamps. I know what they look like, because there are pictures of them in the book. but I would have to be much wealthier than I am now, perhaps several orders of magnitude, before I'd buy one. I have all the books now, which is sad, but I still reread them, which is fun! Sadly, neither of my kids, nor anyone else in the family, is interested. What is wrong with them?!

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