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January 31, 2009

kidnapping fish & dogs with the hardvard lampoon

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[“Mis­ta­kenly”, one of my all-time favo­rite car­toons, is appea­ring in my upco­ming book etc.]
A few days ago, during my “Ten Ques­tions With Mark O’Donnell”, we men­tio­ned briefly his stint back at college, wor­king at the great college humor paper, The Har­vard Lam­poon.
Soon after, my mother sent me the follo­wing email:

Don’t for­get that your grand­father was also a mem­ber of the Har­vard Lam­poon in the ‘30s.
Their humor was pro­bably a little dif­fe­rent– it was an inno­cent time.
One pro­ject which Grampa and his friends carried off with aplomb — in order to write about it later in the Lam­poon — was to ‘kid­nap’ the Sac­red Cod of Mas­sachu­setts- still there, by the way. They smug­gled it out of the Mass. State House in a cof­fin, well-covered in lilies. In the days of Mayor Cur­ley, no poli­ce­man would have done anything but bow his head with a reve­ren­tial mur­mur. It also tells you something about the reign of Mayor Cur­ley, that he set a ran­som of a pint of beer and paid up to get the fish back.
As I said, it still hangs there today.
2nd after din­ner story: To sell papers — it was the depres­sion, remem­ber — they kid­nap­ped (the “K” word again?) — the Yale Bull­dog — yes — a live dog — and took it home to Cam­bridge where they kept it (him) happy on a diet of ham­bur­ger and French fries. Before they gave it back in time for the 1933 Harvard-Yale game, they put his din­ner on the foot of John Harvard’s sta­tue– still there, in Har­vard Yard — and pho­to­graphed the good dog lic­king the foot of John Har­vard. Need­less to say, the pic­tu­res of the dog’s din­ner gree­ted the Yalies when they arri­ved for the game. Sold a fair few Lam­poons, too.
Love from your mother

Heh. I remem­ber hea­ring those sto­ries about Grandpa, gro­wing up. I’d for­got­ten he was was with The Lam­poon when he did it, though… Thanks, Mom! Rock on.

2 Responses to “kidnapping fish & dogs with the hardvard lampoon”

1. Bruce Lynn says:

   February 1, 2009 at 6:08 AM

   Top tenuous links to Hugh — When I was 13 years old, I was a volun­teer tour guide at the Mas­sachu­setts State House and told the story of the great Sac­red Cod heist regu­larly (and I lived across the street from the Lam­poon Castle).
2. CT Moore says:

   February 2, 2009 at 12:18 PM

   Your dra­wing are star­ting to remind of Ralph Stedman’s for some reason…