Husband
by Philip Schultz
The
Train to Ghent
by A. H. Wald
Coltrane’s
Sound
by Keith Raether
Mick
on the Make: Notes
on an Unusual Name
by Dinty W. Moore
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Mick on the Make: Notes on an Unusual Name
Dinty
W. Moore
There’s this comic strip, Bringing Up Father, created
in 1913, but if you ask your grandparents, they’ll remember
it as “Maggie and Jiggs.” That’s what everyone
called it, because Maggie and Jiggs were fairly unforgettable.
George McManus’s daily comic
follows the working-class couple’s ups and downs after
winning the Irish sweepstakes. Jiggs, a stonemason by trade,
doesn’t take well to the pampered world of chauffeurs
and afternoon tea, longing instead for his old pals, familiar
foods, and impromptu poker games at the corner saloon. Maggie
wants status, stability, and a reliably sober companion.
Much of the humor derives from the
tension between these competing desires. The final panel of
the strip often depicts Maggie, rolling pin in hand, waiting
silently behind the front door of their sparkling new mansion.
Jiggs, inevitably, is sneaking home drunk, dress shoes in
hand, reeking of corned beef and cabbage.
McManus’s comic was an instant
and enduring hit because it worked on twin levels. The jokes
were good, the characters well drawn, the situation—instant
prosperity—wrought with comic possibility. But underneath
the jokes, the strip was sociologically brilliant, capturing
precisely the passionate dreams and fears of the new immigrant
working classes.
For many Irish, the primary reason
for coming to America was to move forward in life, but to
move forward often meant moving beyond your own people, leaving
behind what was familiar and comfortable. Songs, vaudeville
acts, and other forms of popular humor poking fun at “mick
on the make” were rampant at the time, popular because
they struck a deep chord.
Continued in volume 43, issue 3, summer 2007
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