Ted's Toons

It was neither his best nor his worst toon; the latter came during Trump Time when Ted was borderline catatonic, barely able to put pen to paper and when he did, it was with uncommon alacrity, simply to evict the subject and its toon from his mind as quickly as possible. Since then, he’d found a second wind of sorts during Biden Time, when he’d enjoyed parsing the nuances of an administration whose polices, for the most part, he was in concert with. But now with the whole Ukrainian mess, Ted sensed the dark forces once again, agents massing to rob him of his creative spirit. There were days when he felt as if he was a passive observer of his own decline, unable to lend a hand to help this poor soul out of his deep and troubling funk, with not the slightest inkling of how to bridge the yawning chasm that lay between that former cartoonist and its current iteration.

His latest featured Biden strolling arm in arm with Zelensky as a madly grinning Putin, straddling a nuclear tipped missile, careered towards the two statesmen. Ted’s caption:

“The Return of Dr. Strangelove.”

It was a dark toon, as were many of his recent efforts. When he dropped the hard copy off with Perry’s secretary, Ted sighed deeply. The piece had moved him right up to the edge of the abyss. Everything just so bleak, so depressing, so….well, bleak pretty much summed it up, didn’t it? Not a scintilla of what he liked to call “honest humor,” playful, inventive humor of the sort that Ted had always been clever at mining. He followed “Strangelove” with a toon depicting the madcap race to the bottom for all the Republican candidates lacking the initials DJT. And of course there had to be an age-related toon. Ted’s had both Biden and Trump, debilitated-looking, strapped into their respective wheelchairs, racing neck and neck toward a finish line, the ribbon held on one side by a donkey and on the other by an elephant; both animals droopy-eyed, nearly asleep.

Each passing week it was just more and more of the same: Looming trials, malapropisms (from both political camps), general buffoonery (again, both) and on and on. On more than one occasion during this time, Ted had retreated to the rooftop, checked to be sure it was just him and the pigeons, then cut loose with a series of primal screams that sent the birds wheeling skyward in panic.

His work space, normally well organized, neat as a pin, with the tools of his trade— pens, pencils and assorted reams of paper lined up in rows, had degraded to a sloppy amalgamation unbefitting a professional cartoonist. None of this mess was recognizable to the Ted of old. He found he no longer cared, his old self a thready, fraying memory.

The breaking point came one Thursday afternoon after a few hours of staring at a blank page, pencil in hand with not a single line drawn and with no hint of a starting point’s arrival. To his right, the stories of the day shouted for his attention; those Perry thought worth exploring marked in — what else — red.

Perry’s scrawl crawled across the page like an evil snake ready to strike. “This one, Ted! Or maybe this one! Your choice. My desk by 5.”

I should have mentioned this already: Ted was the political cartoonist at the Wilmington News Journal, his toons syndicated in a few hundred other papers, enough so that he earned an above average income for a run-of-the-mill cartoonist for a run-of-the-mill newspaper. His bank account had swelled to a size that easily funded the occasional splurge for hIm and his wife—a Caribbean cruise one year, a road trip to the great western National Parks another. They dined out often, entertained friends with lavish dinner spreads. All in all, a pretty good life for a cartoonist.

Never inclined to self-analysis, as the months ticked toward the looming rematch of all rematches, Ted had begun to question his dedication to his art. And was it really art? He was no longer sure.

“The cartoonist is first and foremost a humorist rather than an artist,” he’d told that high school kid recently, the kid shadowing him on career day. Van Gogh you need not be. “Yes, the captions demand a certain level of word-smithing that I suppose tilts artistic, but to be honest, ‘cartoonist’ is just a another word for a glorified caricaturist who happens to be clever with words.” Even as he said the this, Ted was ashamed at the unabashed blasphemy, demeaning and so out of character for someone who not that long ago hit his mark with every single toon. Why, in some circles, he’d landed mention in the same breath as his two of his role models, Gary Trudeau and Steve Breen.

“You mean caricaturists, like those people down at the Sunday farmers market,” the kid said. “The ones that make the funny drawings of people and animals?”

“Exactly,” Ted agreed, awash in self-pity, having knocked his life’s work in front of some poor kid who probably wished he’d made another choice of mentor instead of this loser.

And now, as Ted tried to mine the thin seam of humor from the political commentary of the day, he found himself blocked beyond hope; where was the humor to be found in the indictments du jour, this trial, that trial, the hot water into which the the Supreme Court had fallen — again?

And so as the afternoon tilted sideways toward deadline, Ted sighed deeply, tapped pencil to paper once more just for old times’ sake, stood up, and not saying a word to anyone in the office, simply walked away. For good.

Days, then weeks of nothingness followed. Ted assured his wife he’d be OK, he’d find another niche and they’d manage, having socked away a good bit of savings over time. Said he was interviewing for several jobs that looked promising, even though he wasn’t and felt terrible in the deceit. Instead much of his time was spent meandering about the countryside, guiding his cherished ’65 Mustang convertible along northern Delaware’s narrow roads, unfocused and simply enjoying the biting chill of the early Spingtime air, his thoughts mirroring the twists and turns of the road. Let’s head down this lane, Ted, turn right on that one. Maybe try this road. Never been on it before. Might be interesting. Could lead to something, Ted. But what?

One day, he drove up to Chadds Ford, visited the Wyeth Museum and for the umpteenth time admired Andrew’s and Jamie’s paintings, but as always, drawn more to the family patriarch’s classics. N. C. Wyeth’s Treasure Island illustrations thrilled him every bit as much now as they had when he was a child, burrowed under his covers late at night, taken on that wild ride with Jim Hawkins, Billy Bones, and Long John Silver. Captivated not so much by the words as by the images, thrilled by how Wyeth brought Stevenson’s words to life through those illustrations. It was the first time he felt the power conveyed by words and image, the two paired to build something wonderful, capable of thrilling the reader in a way not achievable in any other way. On the way back from the museum, Ted’s mind raced, reaching for something— he knew not what — but feeling that it was just around the corner, Wyeth’s images having reignited the same creative spirit of that youthful Ted. He was onto something, but what?

And then it happened. Over the thrumming engine noise, he could still hear them. More so than the usual high overhead honking for this time of year. He shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, it was March, a time of renewal, the natural world edging toward Spring, birds on the move. The air was scented with the earthy smell released as assorted plants pushed apart dirt and composted leaves from the previous autumn. Trees had started leafing out; the willows batting first with their mint green tendrils nearly scratching the ground, followed in the lineup by oaks, maples, tulip poplars and more. Squirrels were playing their deadly games of “chicken,” darting into the road then darting back to safety — usually.

And Canada Geese overhead.

Ted wheeled into a dirt pullout, cut the engine and looked up to take in the astounding sight of half a dozen separate Vs’ worth of the magnificent birds, honking as if in celebration. And then, with alarming speed, each group angled down to the ground, the formations collapsing into themselves, the whole lot of them disappearing behind an old rock wall that had no business being in as good a shape as it was and that obscured Ted’s view.

Curious, he stood on the wall and was amazed to see a pond below, now with Canada Geese cheek to jowl — if the expression even exists for birds. Only a few acres in size, the pond was lined by trees on three sides, yielding to Phragmites grasses in the shallows. For flightless beings the slope below provided the only access down to the water. A few birds nibbled on plants in the shallows, but most simply rested on the surface. They eyed him warily as he slowly made his way to the water’s edge and sat Buddha-style on the grass.

The minutes passed and time settled into itself so that Ted had no idea how long he’d been there — 30 minutes, an hour? The geese no longer seemed to feel threatened. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Ted pulled his sketch pad out. He never went anyplace without it. Some people recorded things with their cell phone. Ted sketched. He’d never been one to draw wildlife, though, finding the lines and inclinations of body and limb much too time-consuming and difficult to replicate. But what the heck, maybe he’d do what he did best and capture one or two geese in the form he knew best, lines that were the stock-in-trade of what he had always done — cartoons. Unfortunately, the birds were too distant for him to do them justice, but he thought if he could just get them to trust him a bit, could get them to come closer, he might be able to do better. And if he was really lucky maybe he could even reset his creative self, discover a nugget of humor that he could work into a cartoon. Just for kicks.

He remembered feeding cracked corn to the ducks on his grandfather’s pond as a child, dipping his hand into the 50-pound sack of the stuff that sat in the garage, broadcasting it for the birds, watching them come ashore to gobble up the feed endlessly entertaining.

So if ducks liked cracked corn, then geese must like the stuff too, right?

And so he returned the next day with the corn, purchased from a local feed shop, hopeful the geese were still there. They were. More days followed; Ted sometimes arrived in the morning, sometimes late afternoon, tossing the feed a few feet from the pond edge, then drifting back up the hill a ways. A few geese began to trust this strange being that brought food. Ted made it a habit to sit there quietly, making rough sketches of those birds that left the pond to warily nibble on his offerings. None ventured very close to him.

Except TC Gander.

TC Gander figured out pretty early that the corn was somehow connected to the man. No man, no corn. Man, corn. And that was all it took from then on for TC to beeline for Ted up there on the slope, where he stopped just a few feet away, tossed his magnificent black and white head back, issuing a very loud HONK! Ted had tossed him some grains, which the bird gobbled up, the goose fixing him with a steady gaze as if to say, “Please sir, may I have some more.”

Geese have a great deal of fidelity to place so long as there is food and shelter. So TC Gander and others that relished the feed stayed at the pond through that Spring and into Summer. Each day, rain or shine, Ted came. At first, TC went to him, ate some corn, then waddled back to the pond. But one day, instead of heading back to the water right away, the bird sank to the ground and just sat there, the two of them silently taking in the view, TC softly honking every now and then as if to say, “Ain’t this grand, Ted?”

When Ted studied TC there, what he saw made him think that there was more to the world than political machinations of the moment.

As the days passed, in thrall of this setting, one as far removed from his old life as he could possibly imagine, Ted felt he’d found an inner peace, one that had been absent for a very long time. He tried imagining what it must be like to be a goose, soaring across the sky, moving across landscapes near and far, looking down on all of us, with all of our foibles bared to the sky. Perhaps, in some goose-like way, puzzled over us and laughing (honking?) at the utter absurdity of it all. And that’s when TC Gander the cartoon was born.

Ted kept the first one light, drawing TC and another goose on the ground staring at a flock above in the shape of a hockey stick rather than a V. It was captioned:

“Do they really need to emphasize the fact we’re Canadians?”

Ted titled the cartoon simply TC Gander and sent it out to several editors he knew. Cartoon editors are always happy to have a new toon pass their way, and already familiar with Ted’s work, they were happy to publish TC Gander weekly. Plenty of silly, goofy toons like that first one followed, but gradually Ted returned to his strong suit and began to draw TC commenting on everything from politics to pollution.

Flying over a landscape dotted with smokestacks spewing black smoke into the sky, TC and his flock wearing gas masks, captioned:

“Can anyone tell which way is north?”

And with time, more and more outlets picked TC up and before he knew it, Ted had an agent and TC was off and running — make that soaring. TC Gander had struck a chord with an audience, precisely because the toon was uncomplicated and took people away from all the darkness that had driven Ted away from his old job. But more than that, for some reason or another that Ted was unable to fathom precisely, people saw themselves reflected in TC, could relate to his feelings, his observations, his well — goofiness. At times, some readers even reported feeling a subtle optimism. And so TC Gander became a household name across the land, syndicated in papers, magazines, and on-line. Now and then, he had an appearance in The New Yorker and there was even a Super Bowl ad in which TC hyped Molson Canadian Beer. There would come to be calendars, coffee cups with TC’s captioned image and of course, TC Gander T-shirts. It was safe to say, TC Gander had become a cultural touchstone for the ages, the cartoonish version of Seinfeld. And that goose made Ted a very wealthy man.

Across all those years that were to come, and without fail, each cartoon came to Ted while he sat there with TC, the two of them connected in some mysterious wild animal to human way. TC mentor to the man, the man a comforting presence for the goose. Both of them up there on that hill, just enjoying each other’s company, softly honking in their private little ways.

With the arrival of climate change, the pond stopped icing up in winter the way it once did and the geese were content to stay year round. Why leave when you had it all? Ted bought the pond and the surrounding acreage, placing it in conservation. And so TC Gander the goose hung on across the years. Ted hung on across the years. And that’s all there is and all there ever was.

Honk.

Image credit: Shutterstock