The Family Circus and the Olympics

My maternal grandmother introduced me to "The Family Circus" during the late 1970s.

Tacked to a metal kitchen cabinet, wedged between family photos, magazine-clipped recipes and other ephemera attached to the door with magnets, was a Bil Keane cartoon showing a little girl standing on a tennis court, holding up a can of Pringles potato chips mistaken for a can of new tennis balls. The brother-sister pair in the illustration resembled my sister and I.

Though I don't recall the caption on that cartoon, I do recall several of the clipped Olympic-themed editions of "The Family Circus" cut from the funny pages and mailed with letters to college or my new home in Atlanta (some turned up online tonight, now included with this post). It was always fun to read these enclosures and other Keane creations over the years.

Sorry to read this family-friendly cartoonist's obituary this evening, and of the death of Olympic champion Joe Frazier earlier this week.

Cartoons located across the Web are copyright Bil Keane Inc. and distributed by King Features Syndicate or www.familycircus.com