CHICKIE BABY REVISITED

Blog number 327 **** 04 September 2009

In the Chick Publications book entitled, "The Warning," we are visited in the first panel with a car T-boning a police car. Not just ANY car gets T-boned in a Chick publication. It has to be a POLICE car.

The guy ran a stop sign.

In the next panel we have a little boy asking, "How did that happen, Grandpa?"

Grandpa asks his own question in response. "What do you think CAUSED the accident, Bobby?"

Bobby answers his own question. "That driver ignored the stop sign, didn't he?"

Maybe I'm being picky, but I don't think that CAUSED the accident. Lots of people ignore stop signs without having an accident. If there was a cause of that accident, I would say it was because somebody wasn't paying attention. Probably mostly the car that ran into the police car, but it seems that the cop was a little unaware too. Just a mite?

Anyhow, Grandpa takes this opportunity to give Bobby a lesson in believing in warning signs. He says, "When my father was a little kid, he almost died...because he didn't believe in warning signs." Grandpa then takes apiece of barbed wire from what looks like a dresser drawer and declares that it was this little piece of barbed wire that saved his life.

It seems like it would be kinda hard on any clothes kept in that dresser alongside that barbed wire. Barbed wire gets rusty after a few decades, so not only would Grandpa's clothes be torn, they'd have rust stains all over them. But maybe that drawer contains only trophies that saved Daddy's life? I can't believe it only contained that one piece of a barbed wire fence.

Now two things. First, evidently it was not the obeying of a warning sign that saved his life as the theme of the story might suggest. No, indeed. Turns out it was because his overalls got caught on a barbed wire fence and he couldn't get to the water in time to die with his three friends.

And second, what is it with that father's unborn-at-the-time's son doing with a piece of barbed wire from his daddy's childhood? Who cut the fence in order to have the trophy?. And is it the exact piece that the Daddy got caught on or would any part of that wire fence had been good enough? And was the needle from the hypo that vaccinated the father from getting smallpox and dying from that also saved somewhere in one of the drawers?

The next panel, after we get to see the foot-long length of barbed wire that Grandpa keeps in his dresser drawer, shows us some boys that come over from a neighboring farm. They say that "...someone found a new swimming hole." SOMEONE found a new swimming hole? Wonder who it was? Someone they knew? I hope so.

Bobby asks, "Where?"

One of the boys answers, "It's somewhere behind the old Simpson's place. We're on our way to find it."

Think about that. Three teenage farm boys, obviously entranced with swimming holes, never having heard of one on a neighboring farm.

So the lads go through a corn field, past a barbed wire fence with a "No trespassing" sign on it, through another barbed wire fence with two signs on it, one saying, "Stay Away," the other, "Danger!"

They finally come to the swimming hole, which is rather close to a windmill, which makes it a little more difficult for me to imagine how this swimming hole stayed lost for so many years. And oh, yeah. There's a sign in the water that says, "No Swimming."

So they jump in - all except Grandpa's Dad whom we know got caught on the barbed wire and was thus saved. The other boys died. They didn't drown, surprisingly. No, no. They got bit by snakes which were living in the water. Surprise, surprise.

Seems like Jack T. Chick's theme took a little side trip to look at the world's biggest ball of yarn. We now get five panels of a preacher talking at the funeral of the three boys, about Adam and Eve. We get to learn about the "the worst snake attack in history that took place about 6000 years ago." And, "the sad part was that those victims had also been warned of the terrifying consequences [of not heeding a warning]."

We get to learn about the dangers of ignoring warning signs while at the same time get a review lesson in how bad snakes are, all wrapped up in one Jack T. Chick story. Funny guy.