From the Smokey Stover
comics, do you know the source (other than the creator of the comic strip)
or the meaning of "Notary Sojac" and "Scram Gravy Ain't Wavy?"
"Notary Sojac" was cartoonist Bill Holman's spelling of "Nodlaig Soghach,"
which is Gaelic for "Merry Christmas." I don't know where "Scram Gravy
Ain't Wavy" came from, but if I had to speculate, I'd guess that it refers
to the "gravy" a horse leaves behind when it "scrams," a scatological
reference. For the record, Holman's other catch phrases included "Foo"
(which Holman said was a Chinese expression for "Good Luck"), "1506 Nix
Nix" (which was a warning to single women to stay away from the hotel
room in which a fellow cartoonist with a lecherous reputation was known
to stay), and the inscrutable "Old roats are jake with goats."
Could you please tell me the years that the comic strip Smokey Stover
ran?
I am looking for an old cartoon for a friend. It was by Smokey Stover
about a Notary Public named "Notary Sojac." Any information you have as
to where to look would be most welcome. I'm sorry but I don't even know
what year(s) it was done in. Hence one of the problems locating any information.
I know it is an oldie.
Something got lost in the translation. "Notary Sojac" had nothing to
do with Notary Publics. It was a nonsense phrase that cartoonist Bill
Holman used to sneak into the background of the "Smokey Stover" comic
strip he drew from 1935 to 1973. It would sometimes appear as a newspaper
headline, or grafitti on a wall, or a signature on a painting.
When pressed for an explanation, Holman claimed that "Notary Sojac" was
Gaelic for "Merry Christmas." Close, but no cigar. The Gaelic phrase for
"Merry Christmas" is "Nodlaig Soghach." He was probably trying to spell
it phonetically.
For a look back at this great old strip, visit
this page.
Did not the phrase "Nov Schmov Kapop" come from the wondrous Smokey
Stover cartoon page?
You mentioned four recurring catch phrases in Smokey Stover, but you
left out a big one spoken by that bearded furriner guy: "Nov shnoz kpop."
A small figure at the bottom of which strip would say: "NOV SCHMOZ KA
POP?"
That was the Little Hitchhiker, a character in Gene Ahearn's Sunday
strip, "The Squirrel Cage." The phrase was sometimes spelled "Nov Shmoz
Kapop" or "Nov Shmoz Ka Pop," but no one ever knew what it meant.
"The Squirrel Cage" was a short strip that ran on Sundays as a "topper"
to Gene Ahern's larger strip, "Room and Board." Ahern was better known
for "Our Boarding House" featuring Major Hoople, but when he changed syndicates,
the old syndicate kept the rights to "Our Boarding House" and assigned
a different cartoonist to it, while Ahern created "Room and Board" for
his new employer. (The image on the right is from the R.
Crumb Museum website. The sample Squirrel Cage strip below
is from Brian Walker's book, The
Comics Before 1945. )
I recall another character that always seemed to be at roadside (hitchhiking?).
This character never spoke, but always had on a bullet-shaped meteorite
shelter--perhaps the first ever paranoid character in comics. Did he have
a name?
The Little Hitchhiker did have a beard, but I don't recall any meteorite
shield. I could be wrong, though.
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