4 Thursday, June 15, 2000 pil.ifl mi. Hjl|jj]i .■ ~ iMfiii THIS IS A 612 r yARD RAR FIVE. , f I'M GONNA TRV UkJ kJtyS&V WHICH makes WE WONDER 4 WHVTHEV STILL CALL yfftw? them "woods: CfirvjJrvS ' /i/22 1 -I I'LL GET MV HWIUER I A®frn€SETi€ J . I v*M3L>rJS 1 m-z 4T /Jr i ! U s rCdRV. amt f WOW! HOW LONG have vou been WAITING? Jim Shumaker: Inspi This column was originally pub lished in The Charlotte Observer on Sept. 18, 1977. Bv Jim Shumaker This has been a crowded week for me, being an instant celebrity and all. A publisher once told me, in my newspaper days, “You belong on the comic page instead of the editorial page.” And that is where I have finally landed, it seems, after all the years of striving, thinly disguised as Purple Martin Shoemaker. (The publisher, incidentally, now writes his own editorials, and I wish him well.) I owe the instant celebrity to Jeff Mac Nelly, who, it turns out, lacks proper respect for his elders. In our days together on the old Chapel Hill Weekly, when he was doing the editorial page cartoons and I was unwittingly creating the prototype for P. Martin Shoemaker, I had taken Mac Nelly for a regular enough young man, if a trifle loose-jointed. He was the only one I’ve ever seen who appeared to be sprawling all over the place while standing up straight. I still have right much regard for him, even though he won the Pulitzer Prize at the disgusting age of 24. He said at the time that the Pulitzer judges had to be out of their minds and I readily agreed. (This was not said out of envy or any sense of injustice. Having been passed over for 30 years running, 1 know better than most how unstable the Pulitzer panel is.) Anyway, Mac Nelly’s comic strip, entitled “Shoe,” began WiUy.coß f Y 35 YEARS. running last Monday in The Observer and i papers. I had been given plenty of warning l used to be a reporter for The Observer and Editor of the Winston-Salem Journal. Jo’e sei advance copies of the comic strip along.witf you, Shu, it’s you.” I figured Joe had been w and needed a rest. Then, last Monday night, when I gut hon around in the post office, there was a good f the door stoop, clutching the comic page in ed me to autograph the confounded thing. I Mac Nelly, Pulitzer Prize Winner." A former colleague telephoned to ask if I tennis shoes that I always wore to work at th wanted me to have them bronzed, for ciyinj have the tennis shoes. I contributed them to taking a tax deduction, and the Thrift Shop Several stopped me on the street to ask if Martin Shoemaker and I denied it hotly I h; life used a trash can for a desk - orange era no. Then a graduate student at the University Mac Nelly on network television, the Today i identified me as the inspiration for P. Martin her you couldn’t believe anything nowadays in the newspaper. To seal me up tight, an editorial writer for Daily News who, I take it, was having a.terri come up with something fit to print, said I w Martin Shoemaker. I am about halfwaV thro sbf Satin 5a 1 v \ \ This a inc ■ i"--. J ! I a A 1 I 1 .1 a