{"id":239,"date":"2021-05-26T16:21:11","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T16:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/misteroswald.com\/?p=239"},"modified":"2024-12-05T00:26:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T00:26:44","slug":"it-started-with-a-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/misteroswald.com\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"It Started with a Book"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
This very book, in fact:<\/p>\n\n\n
\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
I was antiquing in Galena, Illinois in 1993 when I ran across a used bookstore.\u00a0 Now I had a thing for used bookstores, especially in the pre-and-early internet days.\u00a0 My father was a voracious reader and once a month or so we would head to the Cranbury Bookworm, a wonderful old used bookstore in Cranbury, New Jersey.\u00a0 It was a large three-story establishment, housed in an 1800s white clapboard house.\u00a0 And it had that used bookstore smell.\u00a0 Slightly musty, the air filled with the scent of aging paper.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 Whenever I traveled, I would look for used bookstores, looking for books by some of my favorite authors, Raymond Carver, W.P. Kinsella and B. Traven.\u00a0 I would also make sure to hit the humor section, to see what sort of old cartoon books they had.\u00a0 I grew up reading comic books, which were my gateway drugs into comic strips.\u00a0 I loved looking for old comic strip reprint books, such as the great Cupples & Leon books from the 1920s and 30s.\u00a0 On this day in this small Illinois town, I ran across the book pictured above, Forty Years with Mister Oswald<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 I had been studying old comic strips for over a decade at the time, but never heard of the comic strip or the cartoonist, Russ Johnson.\u00a0 Leafing through the book, I was smitten with the style.\u00a0 Great cartooning from days gone by.\u00a0 I\u2019m also a sucker for cartoons that reflect social history and I loved that the strip revolved around a hardware store.\u00a0 But I was not smitten by the price, which is still marked in pencil on the upper right corner of the front end page: $20.00.\u00a0 I looked through the book again, considered the price, and grudgingly put it back on the shelf.\u00a0 I left the store and made it nearly one block before I turned around, went back to the bookstore and purchased the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mentioned that comic books were my gateway drugs into comic strips. Forty Years with Mister Oswald<\/em><\/strong> is the gateway drug for those who enter the Cult of Mister Oswald<\/em><\/strong>. The comic strip is a time-capsule of life in a small-town retail environment through the Great Depression, through war, and through changing technologies. Russ was a store owner himself (two stores, in fact!), so he knew the trials and tribulations of retail sales firsthand. His monthly feature, drawn for the Hardware Retailing<\/em> magazine, portrayed those trials and tribulations with a wonderful ear for dialogue, terrific cartooning, and great humor. The 1968 book sadly remains the only Mister Oswald<\/em><\/strong> reprint book published, even though Russ drew the strip for another 22 years, retiring in 1990 at the age of 96. I interviewed Russ in July of 1995, two months before he passed away at 101 years old. But that\u2019s a story to be recounted in another blog post. Until then, be well. Thanks for tuning in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This very book, in fact: I was antiquing in Galena, Illinois in 1993 when I ran across a used bookstore.\u00a0 Now I had a thing for used bookstores, especially in the pre-and-early internet days.\u00a0 My father was a voracious reader and once a month or so we would head to the Cranbury Bookworm, a wonderful old used bookstore in Cranbury, New Jersey.\u00a0 It was a large three-story establishment, housed in an 1800s white clapboard house.\u00a0 And it had that used bookstore smell.\u00a0 Slightly musty, the air filled with the scent of aging paper.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 Whenever I traveled, I would look for used bookstores, looking for books by some of my favorite authors, Raymond Carver, W.P. Kinsella and B. Traven.\u00a0 I would also make sure to hit the humor section, to see what sort of old cartoon books they had.\u00a0 I grew up reading comic books, which were my gateway drugs into comic strips.\u00a0 I loved looking for old comic strip reprint books, such as the great Cupples & Leon books from the 1920s and 30s.\u00a0 On this day in this small Illinois town, I ran across the book pictured above, Forty Years with Mister Oswald.\u00a0 I had been studying old comic strips for over a decade at the time, but never heard of the comic strip or the cartoonist, Russ Johnson.\u00a0 Leafing through the book, I was smitten with the style.\u00a0 Great cartooning from days gone by.\u00a0 I\u2019m also a sucker for cartoons that reflect social history and I loved that the strip revolved around a hardware store.\u00a0 But I was not smitten by the price, which is still marked in pencil on the upper right corner of the front end page: $20.00.\u00a0 I looked through the book again, considered the price, and grudgingly put it back on the shelf.\u00a0 I left the store and made it nearly one block before I turned around, went back to the bookstore and purchased the book.\u00a0 I mentioned that comic books were my gateway drugs into comic strips. Forty Years with Mister Oswald is the gateway drug for those who enter the Cult of Mister Oswald. The comic strip is a time-capsule of life in a small-town retail environment through the Great Depression, through war, and through changing technologies. Russ was a store owner himself (two stores, in fact!), so he knew the trials and tribulations of retail sales firsthand. His monthly feature, drawn for the Hardware Retailing magazine, portrayed those trials and tribulations with a wonderful ear for dialogue, terrific cartooning, and great humor. The 1968 book sadly remains the only Mister Oswald reprint book published, even though Russ drew the strip for another 22 years, retiring in 1990 at the age of 96. I interviewed Russ in July of 1995, two months before he passed away at 101 years old. But that\u2019s a story to be recounted in another blog post. Until then, be well. Thanks for tuning in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[10,9,12,8,7,11,6,5,13],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-40-years-with-mister-oswald","tag-forty-years-with-mister-oswald","tag-hardware-cartoons","tag-hardware-retailing","tag-mister-oswald","tag-mr-oswald","tag-russ-johnson","tag-russell-johnson","tag-vintatage-hardware"],"yoast_head":"\n
It Started with a Book - Mister Oswald<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/misteroswald.com\/?p=239\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It Started with a Book - Mister Oswald\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This very book, in fact: I was antiquing in Galena, Illinois in 1993 when I ran across a used bookstore.\u00a0 Now I had a thing for used bookstores, especially in the pre-and-early internet days.\u00a0 My father was a voracious reader and once a month or so we would head to the Cranbury Bookworm, a wonderful old used bookstore in Cranbury, New Jersey.\u00a0 It was a large three-story establishment, housed in an 1800s white clapboard house.\u00a0 And it had that used bookstore smell.\u00a0 Slightly musty, the air filled with the scent of aging paper.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 Whenever I traveled, I would look for used bookstores, looking for books by some of my favorite authors, Raymond Carver, W.P. Kinsella and B. Traven.\u00a0 I would also make sure to hit the humor section, to see what sort of old cartoon books they had.\u00a0 I grew up reading comic books, which were my gateway drugs into comic strips.\u00a0 I loved looking for old comic strip reprint books, such as the great Cupples & Leon books from the 1920s and 30s.\u00a0 On this day in this small Illinois town, I ran across the book pictured above, Forty Years with Mister Oswald.\u00a0 I had been studying old comic strips for over a decade at the time, but never heard of the comic strip or the cartoonist, Russ Johnson.\u00a0 Leafing through the book, I was smitten with the style.\u00a0 Great cartooning from days gone by.\u00a0 I\u2019m also a sucker for cartoons that reflect social history and I loved that the strip revolved around a hardware store.\u00a0 But I was not smitten by the price, which is still marked in pencil on the upper right corner of the front end page: $20.00.\u00a0 I looked through the book again, considered the price, and grudgingly put it back on the shelf.\u00a0 I left the store and made it nearly one block before I turned around, went back to the bookstore and purchased the book.\u00a0 I mentioned that comic books were my gateway drugs into comic strips. Forty Years with Mister Oswald is the gateway drug for those who enter the Cult of Mister Oswald. The comic strip is a time-capsule of life in a small-town retail environment through the Great Depression, through war, and through changing technologies. Russ was a store owner himself (two stores, in fact!), so he knew the trials and tribulations of retail sales firsthand. His monthly feature, drawn for the Hardware Retailing magazine, portrayed those trials and tribulations with a wonderful ear for dialogue, terrific cartooning, and great humor. The 1968 book sadly remains the only Mister Oswald reprint book published, even though Russ drew the strip for another 22 years, retiring in 1990 at the age of 96. I interviewed Russ in July of 1995, two months before he passed away at 101 years old. But that\u2019s a story to be recounted in another blog post. Until then, be well. Thanks for tuning in.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/misteroswald.com\/?p=239\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mister Oswald\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-05-26T16:21:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-12-05T00:26:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/misteroswald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Forty-Years-with-Mister-Oswald-book-cover.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rob Stolzer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rob Stolzer\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/?p=239#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/?p=239\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rob Stolzer\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/92b17621c318c45297da798ef892d6b5\"},\"headline\":\"It Started with a Book\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-05-26T16:21:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-12-05T00:26:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/?p=239\"},\"wordCount\":499,\"commentCount\":2,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/?p=239#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2021\\\/05\\\/Forty-Years-with-Mister-Oswald-book-cover.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"40 Years with Mister Oswald\",\"Forty Years with Mister Oswald\",\"Hardware Cartoons\",\"Hardware Retailing\",\"Mister Oswald\",\"Mr. Oswald\",\"Russ Johnson\",\"Russell Johnson\",\"Vintatage Hardware\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Blog\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/?p=239#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/?p=239\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/?p=239\",\"name\":\"It Started with a Book - 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Stolzer taught art at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for 33 years, where he taught Drawing, Figure Drawing, Graphic Narration, Illustration, and Painting.\u00a0 Stolzer was granted emeritus professor status upon retirement in 2023.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/misteroswald.com\\\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"It Started with a Book - Mister Oswald","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/misteroswald.com\/?p=239","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"It Started with a Book - Mister Oswald","og_description":"This very book, in fact: I was antiquing in Galena, Illinois in 1993 when I ran across a used bookstore.\u00a0 Now I had a thing for used bookstores, especially in the pre-and-early internet days.\u00a0 My father was a voracious reader and once a month or so we would head to the Cranbury Bookworm, a wonderful old used bookstore in Cranbury, New Jersey.\u00a0 It was a large three-story establishment, housed in an 1800s white clapboard house.\u00a0 And it had that used bookstore smell.\u00a0 Slightly musty, the air filled with the scent of aging paper.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 Whenever I traveled, I would look for used bookstores, looking for books by some of my favorite authors, Raymond Carver, W.P. 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Traven.\u00a0 I would also make sure to hit the humor section, to see what sort of old cartoon books they had.\u00a0 I grew up reading comic books, which were my gateway drugs into comic strips.\u00a0 I loved looking for old comic strip reprint books, such as the great Cupples & Leon books from the 1920s and 30s.\u00a0 On this day in this small Illinois town, I ran across the book pictured above, Forty Years with Mister Oswald.\u00a0 I had been studying old comic strips for over a decade at the time, but never heard of the comic strip or the cartoonist, Russ Johnson.\u00a0 Leafing through the book, I was smitten with the style.\u00a0 Great cartooning from days gone by.\u00a0 I\u2019m also a sucker for cartoons that reflect social history and I loved that the strip revolved around a hardware store.\u00a0 But I was not smitten by the price, which is still marked in pencil on the upper right corner of the front end page: $20.00.\u00a0 I looked through the book again, considered the price, and grudgingly put it back on the shelf.\u00a0 I left the store and made it nearly one block before I turned around, went back to the bookstore and purchased the book.\u00a0 I mentioned that comic books were my gateway drugs into comic strips. Forty Years with Mister Oswald is the gateway drug for those who enter the Cult of Mister Oswald. The comic strip is a time-capsule of life in a small-town retail environment through the Great Depression, through war, and through changing technologies. Russ was a store owner himself (two stores, in fact!), so he knew the trials and tribulations of retail sales firsthand. His monthly feature, drawn for the Hardware Retailing magazine, portrayed those trials and tribulations with a wonderful ear for dialogue, terrific cartooning, and great humor. The 1968 book sadly remains the only Mister Oswald reprint book published, even though Russ drew the strip for another 22 years, retiring in 1990 at the age of 96. I interviewed Russ in July of 1995, two months before he passed away at 101 years old. But that\u2019s a story to be recounted in another blog post. Until then, be well. 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