Here’s another cartooning memory from my brilliant buddy, Randy Enos, see Randy’s archive of editorial cartoons, email Randy Enos –Daryl
Most small town art stores around the country cater to children, hobbyists, crafts people or Sunday painters but not the one I went to for about 55 years in the small town of Westport, Ct.; they catered to all of the above but mainly they served the vast array of professional artists that lived in Westport since the 1950’s. This tiny art store, named Max’s, had a clientele that read like a Who’s Who of American illustration, painting, sculpture, cartooning and graphic art. When they sold drawing tables, portfolios, drawing paper, paint brushes, canvasses and all the other furnishings of an art studio, they sold the high-end professional grade of those products. There was stuff in there that the average civilian had no idea about and they had a small sales staff was well versed in all of it. They also had a tiny frame shop in the back room that was always busy.
It was first called “Fine Arts Stationery” (it was next door to the “Fine Arts Theater”). Then it became “Max’s Art Supplies” and then just “Max’s”. Max’s wasn’t just an art store, it was an oasis for the weary, work laden illustrators and cartoonists who labored in lonely solitude at their boards all day. Every time I went into the store, I would run into fellow cartoonists and illustrators and we’d sometimes talk shop for hours. It truly was a gathering place.
A woman named Shirley came to work at Max’s and ended up marrying Max, who had been a longtime divorced “ladies man.” I did a big linocut caricature of Max as a horned satyr for one of his birthdays and the framed portrait was placed next to the desk in their little cubby hole office in the rear of the store. It stayed there for many years until Max’s closed. During that time Max had grown a moustache so, instead of pulling the picture out of the frame to update it, I merely took a litho crayon and drew the appendage right on the glass. It stayed there and is still there in Shirley’s home.
Whenever Max or Shirley had a birthday, the drawings and home-made cards would flood in from some of the most famous artists in America like Bernie Fuchs, Robert Heindel, Bob Peak, Steven Dohanos, Eric von Schmidt, Chance Browne (Hi and Lois), Stan Drake (Heart of Juliet Jones), Hardie Gramatky (Little Toot), numerous top New Yorker artists and the like. They were hung all over the shop and even in the teensy bathroom which was often a popular stop in the lives of us wandering illustrators in downtown Westport. Over the years, two group photos were taken of all the staff and the artist customers standing in front of the tiny shop. In them the cartoonists, illustrators, graphic designers and animators are standing, some with their wives smiling at the camerawoman perched across the street on top of a truck.
Every month Max’s two front windows would feature the work of one of the artist/customer’s work. I can’t say it was all fun and games … yes, I can … it WAS all fun and games. One day Stan Drake and Dik Browne (Hagar) were in the shop. They had previously heard that Max had ordered a sh*t-load of some kind of artists’ glue by mistake because nobody wanted it and he was stuck with it. Stan and Dik mercilessly taunted poor Max all the time and this day was no exception. As they were leaving the store, Stan said to Dik (within earshot of Max), “Dik, I heard about this fantastic glue, Dave’s Glue and I can’t find the stuff and I really need it!” Max’s ears perked up just as the boys were going out the door and shouted, “Fellas, wait, wait!” The door slammed behind them and off they went to the left down past the sports shop with Max trotting behind yelling, “Fellas, fellas… wait… I got that stuff…” They made him chase them down to the end of the block and around the corner at Colgan’s drugstore.
As the computer age insinuated itself into the artistic community, Shirley, now alone after Max’s demise, was experiencing declining sales. For one thing, the illustrators and cartoonists were moving out of Westport which had turned into a thriving community of rich Wall St. types. I moved away myself to a nearby community and a horse farm. With the advent of computers and Photoshop, a lot of us didn’t require the envelopes, portfolios, drawing paper, and paints and brushes anymore. Shirley kept the business rolling along as best she could, operating at a loss for many years, sustaining herself with other properties she had on the street until finally she closed in a big farewell party which we all tearfully attended.
I just heard yesterday from a friend in Westport that the small building has been torn down and now a small empty lot is all that’s left of what was probably, the most illustrious art store this country has ever seen.
Here’s a link to a story about Max’s closing with some photos
Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:
Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe
The Smallest Cartoon Characters in the World
Brought to You in Living Black and White
Art School Days in the Whorehouse
The Card Trick that Caused a Divorce
8th Grade and Harold von Schmidt
The Funniest Man I’ve Ever Known
Read “I’m Your Bunny, Wanda –Part One”
Read “I’m Your Bunny, Wanda –Part Two”
Famous Artists Visit the Famous Artists School
Randy and the National Lampoon
When you were born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as I was, you grow up in an atmosphere of whaling history. At one time back in the late 1840’s, New Bedford was the richest city in the world. That’s right –not the country but, the world! It all came from a Quaker business, the collection of whale oil. The oil generated by the New Bedford (and earlier the Nantucket) fleets of whaling ships supplied the street lights of the world, the lamps of Italy’s opera houses, buggy whips, canes, perfume enhancers, candles and hundreds and hundreds of other products. The oil from the Sperm whale is the finest machine oil that has ever appeared on this planet.
So, when you’re a kid in New Bedford and you go to the library or you accompany your parent to the bank or you go to a municipal building or go to school, you see all around you, paintings of the whale chase. Whales heeled over snapping whaleboats in their mighty jaws, hapless seamen falling through the air, mighty ships plowing through rampaging seas. Out in front of the New Bedford Public Library is the symbol of New Bedford, a sculpture of a strong whale man in the prow of a whaleboat, with his sharp harpoon in hand, ready to dart it. Now, on the other side of the library, stands a statue of a black harpoon maker named Lewis Temple. There are no existing pictures of Temple so the sculptor used a picture of his son as the model. This man invented a harpoon that revolutionized the whaling industry because it was designed in such a way that once thrust into a whale’s hide it stuck and didn’t pull out which was the problem with the harpoons that preceded it. It’s called the “Temple Toggle.” I own two 1800’s examples of this iron.
As the years went on, I started thinking about my childhood and heritage and I began reading some whaling books. It was startling to me because I found such a connection to it. I was reading books that constantly mentioned New Bedford and mentioned the whalecraft shops that I realized were right in the neighborhood that I had grown up in. In the later days of whaling, the American-Portuguese had, pretty much taken over the business. The captains had Portuguese names that I was familiar with. I started to discover a history that I really never knew existed wherein the whaling industry, playing a big part in the Revolutionary War (that tea-party adventure in Boston was on a whaleship), the Civil War, the Gold Rush and more. History teachers tell me that they too have been unaware of this rich history.
In my extensive readings on whaling lore, I discovered a whale named “Mocha Dick.” He was a white whale who rampaged through the Pacific in the 1800’s eating whaleboats and whale men seemingly seeking vengeance on the enemies of his brethren. He was based around Mocha Island off the southern coast of Chile. Mocha is pronounced with a “cha” sound rather than a “ka” sound because it’s Spanish (but try to tell that to the rest of the folks out there who study whaling lore). All the whale men of the era knew of Mocha, including Melville who later used a version of his name for his great Moby Dick.
An art director friend from The Wall Street Journal, Dan Smith asked if I’d like to do a book with him in his newly formed “Strike Three Press.” Dan loves books and he even likes to “make” books –I mean he binds them, hand stitches them etc. He asked me what I would like to do a book about and I quickly said “Mocha Dick”.
Later, around 2013, the award winning designer, Rita Marshall was at my house and saw a big picture of Mocha Dick that I had made. Months later she told me that she couldn’t get that picture out of her head and also said that they had a manuscript from a writer named Brian Heinz on Mocha Dick. And, so, another Mocha Dick book was crafted for her company Creative Editions. It’s a rather sophisticated children’s book. Thanks to some great starred revues from places like Kirkus and some mentions on important websites like Brainpickings.org and the Atlantic Magazine’s, we got so many advanced purchases on Amazon that we sold out the first edition two weeks before the book was even released. I was blessed to have a great writer on board that trip around.
“The Neil Simon of England,” 
An audience member can see all the plays if they wish and in any order they wish on alternate nights. The theater might perform the first play on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday and the third play on Thursday and on Friday, back to the first play again. It’s all the same plot seen from different locations. For instance, when you’re watching the play that takes place in the sitting room, you can hear action and dialogue in the background from the dining room. When you see the “Table Manners” play, you can see what was going on in that dining room that you only heard at a distance in the other play and so forth. It was a very clever idea. It didn’t matter if you saw just one of the plays or all three, you still got the whole story and the SAME story.
In 2009, I got the job of creating a poster for the show when 
I was flying blind. I decided to make him faceless and I went with the beard.
It turned out to be a great job for me financially because as time went on, they kept asking for more and more drawings for the program: for theater décor, for New York Times ads, and for products. I hadn’t been to a Broadway show for some time and didn’t realize that they sold a lot of products with the logos and poster art on them, like mugs, hats, key fobs and shirts of all types. Ours had normal tee shirts featuring my poster design and they also sold fancy, sequined women’s shirts.
My wife and I ended up seeing all three plays at a special Saturday showing. We saw one play just before noon, had lunch, then saw a second play and then the third in the evening. I saw Spacey and other famous actors in the lobby at the performances, but what knocked me out was seeing my crude linocuts blown up to amazing dimensions. My sloppy hand lettering paraded across the wall over the ticket booths. A giant poster on cloth was hung in their big front window that you could see from inside and outside of the theater.
They were just plain ol’ bluish pajamas.
My first favorite comic strip was 
When you went to the movies in those days (25 cents), you were treated to a short feature, a newsreel and then the full length feature. The 
In 1955, just as I was starting art school there was the great Martin and Lewis movie 
In 1997, the movie 
After I had been an illustrator and cartoonist for many years, the Westport illustrator, 
