The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “seed”.

John Chapman was an American pioneer nurseryman. He picked apple seeds from the discarded remains from cider mills in Pennsylvania and travelled across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, planting apple trees. He became an American legend because of his kind and generous ways, his great leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance of apples. He came to be known as “Johnny Appleseed”.

He was also a missionary for the Church of the New Jerusalem, (also known as the Swedenborgian Church), teaching the theological doctrines contained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The Swedenborgian Church counted Walt Whitman, Helen Keller, Andrew Carnegie and Stephen King among its members.

The popular image of Johnny Appleseed had him spreading apple seeds randomly. However, he planted nurseries rather than orchards, built fences around them to protect them from livestock, left the nurseries in the care of a neighbor who sold trees on shares. Appleseed’s “caretakers” were asked to sell trees on credit, if at all possible, but he would accept corn meal, cash or used clothing in barter. Johnny Appleseed dressed in the worst of the used clothing he received, giving away the better clothing he received in barter. He wore no shoes, even in the snowy winter. There was always someone in need he could help out, for he did not have a house to maintain. He spent a good portion of his time traveling from home to home on the frontier. He would tell stories to children, spread the Swedenborgian gospel (“news right fresh from heaven”) to the adults, receiving a floor to sleep on for the night, sometimes supper in return. He would often tear a few pages from one of Swedenborg’s books and leave them with his hosts. He made several trips back east, both to visit his sister and to replenish his supply of Swedenborgian literature. He typically would visit his orchards every year or two and collect his earnings.

Johnny Appleseed’s beliefs made him care deeply about animals. His concern extended even to insects. One cool autumn night, while lying by his campfire in the woods, he observed that the mosquitoes flew into the fire and were burnt. Johnny, who wore a tin pot on his head, which served as both as a hat and a cooking vessel, filled it with water and quenched the fire. He remarked, “God forbid that I should build a fire for my comfort, that should be the means of destroying any of His creatures.”

It has been speculated that Johnny may have had Marfan Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. One of the primary characteristics of Marfan Syndrome is extra-long and slim limbs. All sources seem to agree that Johnny Appleseed was slim, but while other accounts suggest that he was tall, Harper’s Magazine described him as “small and wiry.”

Those who propose the Marfan theory suggest that his compromised health may have made him feel the cold less intensely. His long life, however, suggests he did not have Marfan’s, and while Marfan’s is closely associated with death from cardiovascular complications, Johnny Appleseed died in his sleep, most likely from pneumonia.

Despite his charity, Johnny Appleseed left an estate of over 1,200 acres of valuable nurseries to his sister, worth millions even then, and far more now. He could have left more if he had been diligent in his bookkeeping.

In addition to my illustration, I have included my original inked pencil sketch, before I added color.

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The illustrationfriday.com challenge word this week is “wrinkles”.

Chippewa Indian John Smith, also know as Ga-Be-Nah-Gewn-Wonce (Chippewa Indian for “wrinkle meat”) and commonly called “Old Wrinkle Meat”, lived in the Cass Lake, Minnesota area and is reputed to have died on February 6, 1922 at the age of 137.
The exact age of John Smith at the time of his death has been a subject of controversy. Federal Commissioner of Indian Enrollment, Ransom J. Powell argued that “it was disease and not age that made him look the way he did” and according to records he was only 88 years old. Indian biographer Paul Buffalo who, when a small boy had met John Smith, said he had repeatedly heard the old man state that he was “seven or eight”, “eight or nine” and “ten years old” when the “stars fell”. The “stars falling” refers to the Leonid meteor shower of November 13, 1833. Birthdates of Indians of the 19th Century had generally been determined by the Government in relation to the shower of meteorites that burned through the American skies just before dawn on November 13, 1833. Some thought the meteor shower was the end of the world.

This puts the age of John Smith at just under 100 years old at the time of his death.

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The challenge word this week on illustrationfriday.com is “primitive”.

My mom collected records, a hobby I picked up and, in turn, my son inherited from me. My mom and I shared the same unusual sense of humor, and it was reflected in our similar taste in music. I was introduced to Spike Jones by my mom. Spike Jones was essentially the “Weird Al” of the 1940s. Along with his band, the City Slickers, he performed goofy takes on popular songs of the time. He is most famous for “Cocktails for Two”, the raspberry-laden “Der Fuhrer’s Face” (which Hitler hated, much to Jones’ delight) and “The William Tell Overture” complete with a horserace announcer and his cries of “Feetlebaum!“.

My mom also introduced me to the 1960 one-hit wonder by the Hollywood Argyles – “Alley Oop” written by Dallas Frazier.

Click HERE to listen to the Hollywood Argyles version of the song.

With its “oop-oop” backing vocals, the song told of a caveman allegedly appearing in “the funny papers”. When I was a kid, I read the Sunday comics religiously. I never saw or heard of any character called “Alley Oop”. Much the way I currently obsess over useless trivia, I felt this situation called for some research.

Alley Oop was a syndicated comic strip, created in 1932 by cartoonist Vincent T. Hamlin. Alley Oop, the strip’s namesake and leading character, was a caveman living in the prehistoric kingdom of Moo who rode his pet dinosaur, Dinny, carried a stone war hammer, dressed in nothing but a pair of fur shorts, and obviously would rather fight dinosaurs in the jungle than deal with his fellow countrymen in Moo. In spite of these exotic settings, the stories were mostly satires of American suburban life. Alley Oop’s name derived from the French phrase allez, hop!, (meaning “let’s go!”) used as a cue by French gymnasts and trapeze artists. Hamlin wrote and drew Alley Oop through four decades. When Hamlin retired in 1971, his assistant Dave Graue took over. The last daily by Hamlin appeared December 31, 1972, and his last Sunday was April 1, 1973. Graue wrote and drew the strip through the 1970s and 1980s until Jack Bender took over as illustrator in 1991. Graue continued to write the strip until his August, 2001 retirement; on December 10, 2001, the 75-year-old Graue was killed in Flat Rock, North Carolina when a dump truck hit his car. The current Alley Oop Sunday and daily strips are drawn by Jack Bender and written by his wife Carol Bender.

Alley Oop has been referenced throughout pop culture. A thinly disguised Alley Oop was the central figure in Philip José Farmer’s The Alley Man, a 1959 novella about the last Neanderthal who has survived into the 20th Century. An educated Neanderthal known as Alley Oop is a character in Clifford D. Simak’s science fiction novel The Goblin Reservation (1968). In the 1970s, the song “Alley Oop” was used by the American choreographer Twyla Tharp in her ballet Deuce Coup. Alley Oop was a segment in Filmation’s 1970’s animated series Fabulous Funnies alongside Broom-Hilda, Nancy and Sluggo and The Captain and the Kids. It has even been said that Alley Oop was the inspiration for The Flintstones and Jurassic Park.

And that Hollywood Argyles’ song “Alley Oop” has been covered countless times by such bands as The Bonzo Dog Band, Ray Stevens, Buck Howdy, George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers and The Beach Boys.

Click HERE to listen to the The Beach Boys cover of the song.

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