BARRY MCWILLIAMS: CARTOONIST

When I quit teaching English at Browning High School on the Blackfeet rez in 1965 because I was going to marry Bob Scriver, the new teacher hired to take my classes was Barry McWilliams, a tall, red-headed, resourceful guy who drew cartoons even back then. Since then we’ve both put on a lot of mileage in a lot of ways. Barry is now a famous cartoonist whose J.P. Doodles strips appear in 400 community newspapers. http://www.barryscartoons.com/

Barry, being male, went looking for a war to draw, while I, being female, managed to avoid all wars so as to write about, well, “daily life,” which is sometimes hard to tell from war. Same probs keep surfacing, which is what makes Barry’s cartoons so universally appealing.

from "This is the Enemy?"

The sergeant was on another boring mission in an endless string of boring missions ferrying men and supplies to the front -- when, suddenly, out of nowhere, 21 Iraqi soldiers charged onto the road ahead.

Their hands were raised and they were waving white sheets and towels. Even their undershorts -- which after the saturation bombings weren't all that white.

The driver ground the big rig to a halt, grabbed the M -16 carbine off the seat, and jumped out. Checking the Iraqis closely for weapons and being satisfied they were unarmed and quite sincere about surrendering, the sergeant directed them up into the bed of the 2 1/2-ton rig, tossing
them bottled water and MREs as they boarded.

Then the driver took off her helmet, shook her hair loose, and climbed back into the cab of the truck. All at once a chorus of wails rose from the prisoners. "Woman! Woman!" they cried, realizing to their horror that they had just given up to a female. And one by one they dismounted and began hoofing it down the road, apparently to find some American male to capture them.

For the rest of this story, buy the book! Or if you’re broke, go to the website. Or if you live close to Butte, I hear that these days Barry hangs out in a coffee shop there, which is an excellent way to collect cartoon material about geezers. Actually, on the website you can find a LOT of cartoons to give you ideas for your own doodles or maybe a little spice for your local newspaper.

But Barry has never broken off his connection with youngsters. In fact, the way I re-connected with him was that he was featured in the Conrad local paper because he did a cartoon workshop with the schools there. He shows them to begin your cartoonist career, all you need is a Flair pen, paper and a maniacal sense of humor. (Kids come equipped with that last.) Later you can work up to fancier stuff, like a computer.

Soon Barry’s book for kids who want to draw cartoons will be out. If I were still teaching, I’d keep a copy in my classroom for those smart and smart-mouthed kids who finish everything early. By the end of the year, you could get the best of the lot printed and make a book to sell -- then have a class picnic! In Montana a good day for a picnic sometimes comes along during the summer vacation but maybe not. Anyway, it’s pretty important to keep eating every day and selling cartoons might make the difference. If you look at the photos of Barry on his website, you’ll see that times can get a little lean, but even more in Alaska than in Montana. He seems a more solid citizen these days.

J.P. Doodles is not much like Rick O’Shay, Stan Lynde’s beloved principal character who also got his start in wartime. Stan’s a little older than Barry but younger than the grand old cartoonists of J.R. Williams' COWBOYS OUT OUR WAY and Ace Reid's COWPOKES. Stan writes novels now as well as cartooning. Check out http://www.oldmontana.com/ Stan grew up on the Crow rez. Here on the Blackfeet rez we have a long and rich heritage of cartoonists including the Tailfeathers brothers and Al Racine. I reckon we can claim Barry.

J.P. Doodles is a kind of timeless character, a geezer with a crushed straw hat, a runaway beard, bib overalls and a comfy little pot belly. He tells it like it is, both old and new, remarking on the difficulties of small town mayors and the dudes who immigrate to instruct us we’ve been doing everything wrong for the last hundred years. We like our enlightenment a little more internal, pictorial, and amusing. Barry is prepared to deliver.

I don’t know whether the two of us were so much in love with teaching on a reservation because of our own eccentricities or whether we got that way by teaching around here, but we both have an abiding love of the local situations -- the drama, the pathos, and the absurdity. A person shaped by this country is a perfect observer for war, which is an armed bureaucracy as opposed to the pencil-wielding bureaucracy that interferes with life on the rez. Humor, after all, is a survival skill.

Barry’s Gulf War books are pretty, um, earthy, since such situations bring a person up against problems like how to eat strange things and then how to deal with the inevitable but possibly uncomfortable consequences, which can range from impaction due to eating overly dense MRE’s to unfinished processing due to adrenaline as a laxative. The Gulf War was a tech war so that one could launch a missile from a ship and twenty minutes later on CNN see it hit Iraq, while the flinching on-air correspondents wondered how the bombers could fly so high and fast that they were never seen. Then there are the constant culture wars -- as much between the American genders as with the local camel-drivers. Or maybe between the wearers of those famous boots on the ground and the chart-wielding officers. Or maybe enlisted versus journalists wearing the gear that the enlisted was supposed to have been issued. Somehow a cartoonist can walk through the gap in mentalities and shed a little light, which is something we sorely need today, when we seem to be at war with peace.