Cartoonists are by nature creative individuals. Several have been able to fi x their names to moe

than one comic strip. owever, few, if any, have been as prolifi c as eorge er-riman 1 0 1944 , whose body of work included 24 comic strips, not to mention several single panel cartoons which he drew for various magazines early in his career. Some sources indicate he au-thored as many as 27 strips.

erriman is remembered for the comic strip razy at,” which was not a

popular cartoon with the general public, but was admired by the upper crust and the art world of

merican soci-ety.

Most of the strips originated by erriman ran for less than one year, with a few lasting only a few weeks.

efer to Mu-sical Mose” and

ariat ete,” to name ust two

examples, in the accompanying table. hose who are regular readers of these

columns may remember in the early days of comic strips they were not organized onto a single page or section as they are today. hey were used as fi ller on the sports pages or elsewhere in the news-papers until the late 1900s to 1910 time-frame when daily serial comics gained acceptance from the cartoon audience.

ccording to on Markstein’s oonope-dia.com when a cartoonist grew tired of a character or a strip he simply dropped it and moved on to something else

But this column is not about razy at.” I’ve already written about that

strip. his article is about three of erri-man’s more popular strips, he ingbat

amily” aka he amily pstairs” , Baron Bean” and Stumble Inn.”

he ingbat amily” was about a family which attempted to en oy life in an apartment located in a low rent district of ew ork City. he only problem is their apartment is directly beneath rowdy neighbors, according to toonopedia.com.

he ma or characters are E. luribus ingbat, the man of the domicile. e is

a short, balding, very irritable sort who apparently suffers from Short erson Syndrome.” e works as a clerk in a nondescript business, and is married to a woman larger than he, named Minnie. t times he refers to her as Mrs. . hey have a college age daughter, Imogene, a young son, Cicero, a baby named Baby and a pet cat named at. Seems strange to name the cat but not the infant. hey live together except for the daughter who is off at school and drops in occasion-ally in the Sooptareen rms apartment building.

he strip began as a typical domes-tic comedy with the storylines offering disputes between the husband and wife, however the family upstairs uickly edged out the domestic comedy angle by becoming the enemy” upstairs. s a re-sult the name of the strip was changed to

he amily pstairs” barely six weeks into its run.

s an aside ccording to the online rban ictionary, the word dingbat’

originally referred to a character or sym-bol used in typesetting which gave an instruction to the printer. hese would normally be removed before the text was published, but were occasionally left in by mistake. he character made no sense to non-typesetters and the association of dingbat” with nonsense” and forget-

fulness” carried over to describe people. ing, bat” was supposedly the sound a

inotype machine made in producing a printed sheet, according to the oonope-dia web site. ll of this together was used by erriman to describe a certain type of

person that is one about as smart, with about as much personality, as a small lump of un-living lead.”

he space given erriman for his strip

was a bit large for his drawings. o fi ll what he referred to as the waste space” he began running a secondary strip below the main section. his second section, about the relationship between at and a mouse companion that shared the apart-ment with the ingbat family, soon became a prominent part of the strip. By 1913 at and the mouse companion had evolved to the point that a new strip was war-ranted, and razy at” was born.

Page 8 Berthoud Weekly Surveyor April 2, 2015

By Heidi Kerr-SchlaeferThe Surveyor

ot so long ago people wanted to get off the farm, but today it seems that everyone wants to be back on the farm, if only for a weekend. he word for this type of travel is agritourism and it’s a growing trend across the country, including here in Colorado.

hat is agritourism It’s a rel-atively new term that describes where agriculture and tourism intersect. If you’ve ever visited a working farm to buy eggs or tour their vegetable patch, or if you’ve taken your children to a corn maze or on a hay ride, you’ve par-ticipated in agritourism.

gritourism covers a broad range of activities and includes educational, cultural and culinary events. It often involves hands-on experiences.

hile most people see Colo-rado as a ski and adventure des-tination, our state was built on agriculture and it’s still a thriv-ing industry. oday, tourism is

a big piece of the state’s economy, in fact it’s the second largest sector therefore, bringing agriculture and tourism together makes a lot of sense.

growing trend within agritourism is the farm stay. here are all kinds to choose from you can indulge in a 1,300night luxury stay on a farm near Boston, Mass. or en oy a more authentic experi-ence where your hands get blisters and your boots get dirty.

t the orse en you can get your hands dirty, or you can simply relax.

he orse en is a working farm in ayden, Colo., ust west of Steamboat

Springs. yan and achel attles are fi fth-generation-owners of the farm, and they hope to impart knowledge of their family’s way of life to the people who stay with them.

hile staying on the farm, guests can help gather eggs, tend to the pigs and goats, garden, bird watch or ust kick back on the farmhouse porch with a good book.

nother area of Colorado where folks can participate vigorously in agritourism is elta County. he area includes elta,

otchkiss, aonia and Crawford, and it is a cornucopia of farms, orchards, vine-

yards and cideries, all with their doors wide open to visitors.

eritage plays a big part in agritour-ism, and in fact the Colorado ourism

rganization C has paired the two together in their active eritage gri-tourism rogram. he program celebrates Colorado’s agricultural roots and rich cul-tural heritage.

ccording to the C website, his innovative concept creates uni ue and authentic opportunities for visitors to step off the beaten path and engage in a myriad of culinary, heritage and agricul-tural offerings.”

he C isn’t ust giving lip service to

agritourism, they are getting their hands dirty. heir Cultural, eritage gritour-ism Mentor rogram, or C M , was founded to help stimulate the develop-ment of high- uality cultural, heritage and agricultural tourism experiences for travelers to Colorado. It’s a peer-assis-tance and training program for farms and ranches, businesses, museums, attrac-tions and organizations that want to im-prove or expand their cultural, heritage tourism or agritourism attractions.

or more information on agritourism in Colorado go to http: industry.colorado.com overview hag-committee.

What goes around: Farms are chic again

Photo by Heidi Kerr-SchlaeferA kid on the Conradson Goat Farm in Loveland.

See you in the funny papers — George Herriman

Surveyor Columnist

RudyHemmann

HERRIMAN cont. on page 10