Who was the best-known person you ever drew?

I assume you mean someone I sketched in person.  At the moment, the ones that come to mind are Diane Sawyer of CBS, “Famous Amos” of cookie fame–hey, you asked about famous people, right?–Jerry Clower the Grand Ol’ Opry star, and Pastor Adrian Rogers (a longtime friend whom I sketched on a plane once).

What surprises you most about Baptist humor?

Mainly that it is not surprising at all. There is no “Baptist humor.” It’s much like everyone else’s.  We’re all pretty much alike.

Are there any subject matters off limits?

There are, if you want to be published in a Christian paper or magazine!  (smile please)  I learned early on that just because I thought a cartoon was funny did not mean an editor would run it.  Gradually, I learned that Baptist editors had several different constituencies to minister to, to address, and sometimes to placate.  When they did their job well and were criticized for it, they could take it. But no editor was going to knowingly run an offensive cartoon sure to provoke a hostile response.  And who could blame them.

Gradually I learned to rein in my humor.  Much of what I put in a cartoon could be considered teasing, or inspiring in a minor key, or just plain fun.

Do you pray about your cartooning? 

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My interviewees are a cluster of people.  I’ve invited them to pose questions which I will try to answer here.  

What was your very first cartoon? And the first to be published?

Would you believe me if I said I don’t recall?  I’ve always been interested in drawing.  As an eight-year-old, my dad would ask me to draw him as he sat in front of the radio listening to the evening news.  He’d rouse after a bit and say, “Let me see what you’ve got.”  He wasn’t an artist, but had a good eye, and he would say, “You need to move the ear up” or “the eyes are too wide.” Something like that. I’d erase and he’d go back to sleep.

In the fourth grade, the principal recognized my drawing of President Truman.  First cartoon? I honestly don’t know.  In the seventh grade when the teacher had the class go around the room saying what we wanted to be when we grew up, I got a laugh when I said, “Cartoonist.”  Eventually, most of those teachers had my stuff on their walls.

The first to be actually published might have been in seminary. Each day before systematic theology class, I had taken to doing a sketch of the professor in various humorous situations on the blackboard.  As a result the editor of our student weekly (yes, we had one in those days) asked me to give him a drawing each week.  Now, in the rural bayou church I was pastoring, I had been sending the editor of our parish weekly a devotional, so now on a hunch, I sent a cartoon along with it.  He published the two side by side, giving me (free of charge!) a third of a page in each week’s edition.  Interestingly, that editor and I never communicated, never swapped notes, nothing. He published what I sent him.  As a result of that publicity, my little church doubled and tripled in size in less than three years.

How did you learn to cartoon? 

I’m still learning.  When I was 16, I took the correspondence course from Art Instruction Company of Minneapolis.  This was weekly lessons from real artists, rather intimidating for this country boy with no training.  My sister who had just finished high school and become a telephone operator paid the $10/month.  I had thought it was a drawing course specializing in cartooning.  But 18 months into it, once they started teaching me to design draperies, I let it lapse.  But I had learned a great deal, including perspective and lettering, and the use of speedball pens with black India ink.

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