Donald Duck really oughta give up the hammock bit!
No, for once this post is NOT about the infamous "Bird Bothered Hero"! I promise!
...Or, as a LANDING SPOT, as in CHIP 'N' DALE # 50 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: January, 1978)!
Gotta love those RED SKIES and PURPLE TREES!
At the very least, he should have sought advice from PORKY PIG, who wisely incorporates the woodland creatures INTO his hammock resting!
Th-th-th-that's all folks!
No, wait... Just one more question!
I've been around a long time, and I've seen many tranquil suburban back yards over those years... AND I HAVE NEVER SEEN A REAL HUMAN BEING SLEEPING IN A HAMMOCK!
Now, I figure that "sleeping in a hammock" either IS or ONCE WAS a "thing", due to its many depictions in comics and animation... But, have you ever seen it for real? Just curious!
It looks as if it would be difficult to get in or out of, yet too easy to fall out of! (Much less be intruded upon from above!) What say you?
Just GIVE IT UP, Donald!
10 comments:
I have seen many people enjoying a rest (or trying to) in a hammock. Invariably, if I am with a group of friends hanging out in somebody's back yard that has a hammock, someone or other is lounging in it. I have seen adults in hammocks, but my most vivid memories are of kids in hammocks. When kids play in a yard, one of them is bound to take refuge there. Sometimes for a fleeting couple of minutes, but usually the person in the hammock will lengthen rather than shorten their time spent in relaxing in that manner.
So Fred Flintstone, Donald Duck, and other cartoon characters are not so far removed from reality when they are dozing in a piece of stretched out canvas between two trees.
At least, that's my experience!
Oh, I totally believe you, Scarecrow! In fact, if there were a hammock in my back yard when I was a kid, I’d have been all over it… not to “catch any winks” – not 40, 30, 20, 10, 5, or even the “odd wink here and there”, mind you – but more for bounding on, over, or about it, probably falling out of it and injuring myself in the process! …Yes, where I grew up, even the GROUND was tough!
But I never got to do any of that blissful bounding, because no back yard I’ve ever been in – or even seen, for that matter – ever had a hammock in it! From Queens to the west and the tip of Long Island’s North Fork to the east, as my many years of back-yarding expeditions have taken me, no hammocks. …Maybe they were all located on the more-posh, Hamptons-y South Fork for the idle rich to idle-away their days.
In my youngest days, I actually thought that a hammock was just something you’d see on TV or in comics… like family vacations… or safe schools (alas, the rest of the country has since caught up with my “1911-cornerstone-laid-elementary-school” on that score) An anachronistic anomaly more along the lines of a character contentedly lounging while wearing a fez and a smoking jacket ! …Can’t say I ever saw THAT in real life either!
Also, considering that the character I saw most often in a hammock was Fred Flintstone, perhaps this item of stretched cloth or animal hide and suspended between two trees (with no modern accessories or trappings whatsoever) was some relic of the stone age that somehow weakly hung-in-there until the 20th century – during which time it existed only to be interpreted by the imaginations of artists and animators.
…Or, maybe it just wasn’t – and isn’t – a New York thing! And, considering all the great and wonderful “New York things” we DO have, I guess never having seen a back yard hammock is a sacrifice I can live with.
…And, hey… It makes good Blog-fodder!
Do you realize this is the first time we've communicated in MONTHS? Great to have you back, Joe!!!
Indeed it is… and totally my fault too!
The past month and a half has taken its toll on many things – especially my personal communications! But, I’ve got all of 2024 to try and make that right.
Donald's hammock, and his love of getting the perfect nap in it (which almost never seems to happen), is popular enough as a plot element to have been featured for decades in stories from Egmont and Italy, even though fairly few have been published here. There have even been stories where Donald encouraged Scrooge to search for valuable famous hammocks of history...
David:
…So, I guess all those stories that have yet to appear in the USA simply ADD to the notion of my never having actually seen a hammock – separated by at least “one level of reality”, of course! :-)
Maybe the “Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge Search for Historical Hammocks” saga could make a good Fantagraphics collection?
Great idea, Deb!
I’d certainly like to “translate and dialogue” it!
…You, reading this, David? After all, you opened this “can of hammocks – and the globe-trotting Ducks who seek them”! …Whaddya say?
I would love it if Fantagraphics published a facsimile edition reprint of the comic that features "Bird Bothered Hero"..
Why would you want something like THAT, Rehab?!
…Do you want to see Fantagraphics go out of business?
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