Score!

When I was 10 years old I started to get into politics. I read the Detroit Free Press every day and I also leafed through Time, Newsweek, and any other publication I could get my grubby little hands on. I loved learning about the political process and all the other current events as well. I remember that around that time, 1972, loving political cartoons and that there weren't a lot of political cartoonists like there are today. The one name in political and editorial cartooning that stands out from that time was a Herblock.

Herblock was a contraction of the name Herbert Block. Herblock's political cartoons were everywhere in those days. They were used on editorial pages in the newspapers and in most all of the big time national magazines. On my journey through the papers and magazines I would look for Herblock's cartoons first and then I'd go back and read whatever caught my young eye. I vividly remember that during the gas crisis of the early '70's I cut out all the Herblock cartoons I could find and I glued them into an old catalog. I made my very own Herblock anthology.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was in a local thrift store, one I frequent quite a bit because they have lots of old paperbacks and cast off kid's books from local school libraries, and I saw this book on the shelf:Holy shit you should have seen how fast I grabbed it. I marched to the register and I plunked down my $1.50 and I walked out with it.

It's not only full of political cartoons from the late 50's to the mid 60's, it's also a first edition. And not only is it a first edition, it has been autographed by Herblock himself:I have no idea who George W. Kelley is but his loss is my gain. I usually tear out the pictures and scan the illustrations in books like these but I can't bring myself to do it to this one. I may scan a few of the cartoons but I'm going to keep this book intact.

How cool is it that I got a autographed copy of a book by one of the guys who was a boyhood idol of mine? (How big a nerd am I to admit that a political cartoonist was a boyhood idol of mine?) It's very cool, that's how cool it is.