DCML digest #548

[Don Rosa]

> From: "Olaf Solstrand" <harryklein at hotmail.com>
> The story "last sled to Dawson" shows that the pickax was on the sled
with
> other memories from Scrooge's past. Yet, in Lo$ part 12, Donald finds the
> same pickax in the chest on Scrooge's store room! We KNOW that "Life of
> Scrooge part 12" (1947) happened long before "Last sled to Dawson"
(1954),
> so what's the explanation?
> One possible explanation is that this was two different pickaxes,

I know that would be hard to believe, but maybe that's the answer! TWO
different picks! It baffles science!!!

The pick you see in "Lo$" part 12 was in $crooge's steamer trunk, the one I
use as his "memory trunk" in the new "Lo$" chapters. He did not have that
trunk with him in the Yukon -- did you see it on his sled in "Last Sled to
Dawson" when he had *all* of his Klondike possessions with him? No -- he
must have left that big trunk somewhere else when he rushed to the Yukon --
you didn't see him carrying it when he hopped off the freighter from
Australia in chapter 8, eh? So, the pick he had used in Arizona and
Australia and Africa and other places that began with 'A' was the one in
the trunk. He regained his Yukon pick in "Last Sled to Dawson", so now he
probably has *two* picks in his memory trunk (which, as you'll see if I
manage to do these stories for as long as I hope I can, contains more items
than its physical dimensions allow, working on the same principle as the
information contained in the tiny Woodchuck Manual).

I don't dislike wrestling with friendly readers about the possibility of
errors in my continuity. It's actually FUN, for the same reason that my
attention to details is fun for me in the first place. And I sometimes
certainly do make whopper goofs, like that one that someone just spotted
where, as careful as I was being (!), I had the same prison number on two
Beagles in one panel in my new story! And other times it's just fun to try
to create an explanation for an oversight. When I wrote "Last Sled to
Dawson, I never knew what I would write years later in a "Life of $crooge"
series. It's fun for me to try to wrestle my own past stories into
submission in agreement with what I want to put into a new story for new
reasons.
But asking me about something like this pick which is so easily
explained -- I'm glad you at least suspected that there *might* be TWO
picks. Another matter that several readers have mentioned over the years
that they think is an error is the fact that I show $crooge's horse
Hortense walking off in a huff in "Lo$" chapter 4 thinking "I quit" or
such, but then I show "Hortense" back in later chapters. They ask "How can
this be?! It's an error!" And I say, hey, you're right!!! Unless.....
Hortense turned around and came back 5 minutes later. Impossible, but TRUE!
Stranger than fiction!