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There are those of us, it would seem, who carry a sizable satchel of myriad memories.
Maybe that applies to many of us; maybe not. What do I know? That said, and admittedly that is an awkward segue to today’s topic.

Which is, one of the most popular rites of Sunday for millions of people in the last century. You know, when TV wasn’t an enveloping, smothering presence.

What I’m referencing here is reading the comics, the funnies, in the newspapers. A time when newspapers were truly ubiquitous.

So. I’ll bet some of you remember those times. Not that there are a lot of us left to remember, however.

Let me just name some of those comic strips.

There was Archie, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Nancy, Peanuts.
And Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates.
Plus, Dick Tracy, Mandrake the Magician, Tarzan, The Lone Ranger, The Phantom.
Dr. Kildaire, Brenda Starr, Popeye, Dennis the Menace, Garfield, the Flintstones, the Katzenjammer Kids.
And Lil’ Abner. Ah, yes, Lil’ Abner. That one may have been the most talked about among readers of the funny pages.

It seems that folks even kept up with the events in many of the characters’ lives. Of all the authors of all those entertaining diversions, Al Capp was probably the best known.

Why, a Broadway play, to be followed by a movie, made Lil’ Abner easily the best known fictitious person in the land.

An event in this comic strip actually became a reality, and was carried out in
many places right here in the good old USA.

What was it, you might ask. Sadie Hawkins Day!
You see, on Sadie Hawkins Day unmarried girls could chase bachelors.
And . . . when the eligible male was apprehended, he then was obliged to marry the one who had caught him.

There was one college nearby, in Wilson, that observed Sadie Hawkins Day,
in part, at least, by naming a coed its Sadie Hawkins.

I just happen to know who Atlantic Christian College’s Sadie Hawkins was one year.
Yes I do.

Editor’s note: The woman the columnist is referring to is Mrs. Sally Houston.