Foreword Frank’s Two Bits by Frank Lineage, Editor Toad Springs Gazette I’ll never forget the day when I met Barry the Cartoonist. It was late November, 1978, in the middle of a blizzard. And so cold out, local lawyers were going around with their hands in their own pockets! Here at the Toad Springs Gazette, we’d only gone to off-set printing the year before and were putting the paper together on a bright blue, state-of-the-art Compugraphic typesetting machine. Right, we’d been slower than most to switch from throwing hot lead — but then, I’ve never prided myself on snap decisions. Maybe that’s why I recall my meeting with Barry so vividly. No fooling, I did something in a snap! I was just pouring my second cup of java for the morning when this tall, lanky, half-froze fellow came in the front door and began giving me his pitch. He was a cartoonist, he said — or, leastwise, wanted to be one. I invited him to sit down & poured him his own cup. And, with that, he pulled out a packet of his drawings and passed them to me one at a time. He told me that, if 20 newspapers would pay him enough for his cartoons, he’d probably make a career of it, drawing the kind of stuff they couldn’t find anywhere else. 'Real local stuff',he called it. Maybe I simply felt sorry for him, braving the storm and the cold as he was — I mean, a guy’s either got to have tons of nerve or be plumb nuts to drive this country in winter with only a 2 X 4 pick-up and a frayed mackinaw coat for company. Anyhow, since it was a Thursday, with the week’s Gazette already out, I took my time looking over his stuff. Not bad, I thought, these characters look just like the folks in our town. So, I told him I might give them a try — provided the price was right! But, I wouldn't listen to what he was asking for them, before I told him a story about the notorious femme fatale, Mae West. 'You know,' I chuckled, 'that actress with the big set of lungs.' And I began the telling. One night, Mae walked through the stage door of a theater wearing a beautiful new fur coat. 'That’s a swell coat, Mae,’ the stage manager remarked.‘You must’a met a man with a million dollars!’ ‘No,’ she replied — ‘I met a million men with a dollar.’   I could see Barry wince a bit thru his smile when I delivered the punchline. I knew that he now knew it would take him more than a few papers to pay his rent and buy him groceries. With that in mind, he cut me a pretty good deal on the cartoons — about the same per week as coffee and a couple apple fritters at the Hometown Bakery down the block. Yep, and if Barry was right, I’d see some substantial growth in Gazette subscriptions from running his cartoons. His claim, of course, might’ve involved a slight exaggeration. Then again, he was so good natured and sincere, I figured in his case I’d risk becoming living proof of Barnum’s famous line about suckers. Besides, all I’ve ever seen grow from those fritters was my girth! And that’s the first and last time I’ve seen Barry the Cartoonist — although, here it is 40 years later and I’m still buying his cartoons for the Gazette. I suppose he’s simply been too busy with his cartoon service to make it out this way again. Still, I sure do admire a guy who appreciates a good metaphor. #30