Sunday, October 22, 2017

Still smoking


[Hi and Lois, October 22, 2017.]

Oh, wait — they’re birds. I thought there were little flecks of ash around him.

Thirsty Thurston first appeared in Hi and Lois on June 9, 1961. He has been smoking for more than fifty-six years.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[Even Andy Capp gave up cigarettes, in 1983.]

comments: 4

Slywy said...

Did he ever give up drinking?

Michael Leddy said...

Well, this page from the Hi and Lois website says no: “He drinks and smokes. He is everything that Hi is not.” But this page from the website says that “In the beginning, Thirsty was a heavy drinker and a chain smoker, but has cleaned up his act in recent years. His bulbous nose was shaded to indicate his over-indulgence, but in the 1990s the lines were removed to show that he had reformed. Although he smokes a cigar on occasion, he no longer has a cigarette perpetually hanging out of his mouth.”

In 2015, Trixie spied him on his way back from “the brown paper bag store,” which I took to mean that he was bringing home a bottle. When he lounges in his yard, he usually has a can in his hand. And in this strip his nose is red once again. Still drinking and smoking.

Michael Leddy said...

Oh, wait — you commented on that post: http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2015/01/hi-and-lois-watch.html.

Michael Leddy said...

In today’s strip, the nose has lost the red.

(Notice the men-only commute to work.)