American newspaper comic strips created by cartoonists influenced the culture across the United States and were part of day-to-day life when daily newspapers were a primary source of news.
During steamboat days, the Baltimore Sun newspaper came daily to shores of the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula via steamboat and a favorite read were comic strips. People had favorite comic characters and personified those characters by using names of favorite cartoon characters in a variety of different ways.
Phillips Packing Company of Baltimore owned several large wooden Chesapeake Bay buyboats and named the boats after cartoon characters. Mutt and Jeff were two of the boats named after national known cartoon characters.
Mutt and Jeff was a long-running and widely popular American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Bud Fisher in 1907 about “two mismatched tinhorns.”
Phillips had two other boats — one named Andy for cartoon character Andy Capp and Popeye for Popeye the sailor man who gained his strength from eating spinach. These boats were used as a platform to buy fish, crabs and oysters here in local waters.
Cartoon character names were not just used for boat names. On a gravestone on Red Hill in Urbanna a tombstone reads, “Our dog Skeezix, June 20, 1931, 12 years old.”
The dog Skeezix belonged to the Fitzhugh girls of Urbanna, Mildred and Marion, and is buried in the family’s private plot. The girls named their dog after their favorite cartoon character. Skeezix was a character in the comic strip “Gasoline Alley.” The strip debuted on Nov. 24, 1918 and was created by Frank King during his tenure as a cartoonist at the Chicago Tribune. It was named Gasoline Alley because it dealt with a group of automobile enthusiasts who met in an alley.
Skeezix was the son of Walt, a main character in the strip. Walt took several days just to get the neighborhood’s approval of the name he had chosen for his infant boy. His first choice was Skeezix, a slang term of endearment for a small child — akin to squirt or tyke.
The family of Captain Billy Fitzhugh loved their dog and shortly after Skeezix died a child was born to an extended family member. It was a boy and Mildred and Marion suggested that he be named Skeezix after their dog. The relative passed on the notion but thanked the girls for the recommendation.
It Happened Here in Rivah Country!
