Thanks for the Skunks

[Shelley Hanson/KlezmerAllThatJazz]

This is not as off-topic as it may seem at first.

Thanks, Don Markstein, for your remembering Li'l Abner's character "Big
Barnsmell." As I recall there was also a scrawny little fellow with a black
hat that looked like someone (or some animal) had taken several bites out of
the hat brim. Can't remember his name, however.

The late 1930's starting time of Li'l Abner would seem to confirm that
Donald Duck's employment at the "skunk oil factory" was a sly little
Barksian reference to the enormously popular Li'l Abner comic strip. For
those not familiar with the strip, which probably includes anyone born in
about 1965 onward, including North Americans, the strip was so popular that
at least two of its characters have entered the American dialect. "Sadie
Hawkins Day" is the one day of the year on which all of the unmarried men in
Dogpatch (the name of the town where Li'l Abner lives) hide -- because on
that day, any woman who catches and drags an unmarried man back to a finish
line can force him to marry her. (Sadie Hawkins was a character who
originated this custom. "Marryin' Sam" was the minister who performed the
marriages; this name is also sometimes used today to idiomatically refer to
someone who performs a lot of marriages.) This was the basis for a very
popular musical comedy of the 1960's, whose plot revolved around Sadie
Hawkins Day. As a result of the comic strip and musical, EVEN TODAY high
schools in the U.S. often have "Sadie Hawkins" dances, where the girls
invite the boys. Of course most of the students have no idea why they call
them "Sadie Hawkins" dances now.

Now, remember the stories where Daisy is trying to catch Donald to help her
with house-cleaning, and he tries to hide? In one of them, Daisy catches
H,D, and L, and they help her catch Donald. Doesn't this also sound like a
little reference to Sadie Hawkins Day? I always thought that story was a
Sadie Hawkins Day parody, even many, many years ago when I first read it.