And Sometimes We Really Wonder How That Happened ...

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Klyde Morris cartoon strip’s first appearance on Aero-News. To help mark the occasion we contacted Wes Oleszewski, who draws the cartoon, by phone in his high-tech, heavily wired, storm reinforced, EMP protected tree house located somewhere near Washington DC and we asked him some questions that we thought our readers may want him to answer.

ANN: Hello Wes, this is Aero…
WES: How’d you get my number?! Don’t you know that I’m on the Federal do-not-call list?! You’re violating Federal law! I’m sending a message to the FTC and…

ANN: Hold it! Hold it! This is ANN calling!
WES: Oh… are ya’ sure?

ANN: Yes, yes, we sent you an e-mail and said we’d be calling today.
WES: Oh, okay… sorry, the only e-mails I usually open are the ones with the subject line that say I’ve won the lottery from a third world nation.
ANN: Well we know that and we put that in the subject line, it’s says you won the lotto in Zambia.
WES: There we go… now I remember reading that, yeah, let’s do the interview.

ANN: Great Wes, glad were finally communicating. We have some questions that we figured our readers may want to hear you answer. First off, why an Ant?
WES: That’s it? Ten years I’ve been doing cartoons for you guys and that’s the best you can do for a lead question?

ANN: Well… yes … would you rather we’d have asked “Why a duck?”
WES: Okay… I just wanted to know for sure what level we’d be working on. I guess later you’ll ask what kind of tree I’d like to be, or something. Anyhow, when I was a kid I used fly model rockets with ants aboard. Whenever I’d have a crash, which was quite often, I’d draw a cartoon spoofing my disaster. Then in High School I started drawing a cartoon about a small submarine full of ants that had strange adventures. I drew tons of cartoons and the ants often got killed in odd, gross ways. When I got to college, I drew cartoons to decorate the walls of my dorm room at Embry-Riddle- the characters were all ants, because that was what I liked to draw.

ANN: How did you get the idea for Klyde?
WES: The tree question is coming I can just feel it.

ANN: Seriously, how did you get the idea for Klyde?
WES: The guy who lived in the dorm room next to mine, Dan the Man, was on the staff of the university’s student newspaper, The Avion. He saw my cartoons and suggested that a when I came back from Christmas break, I should bring my portfolio of cartoons and take them up to the newspaper. I did that and they gave me a spot in the paper for three weekly strips. Of course I drew the main character as an ant, but I didn’t have a name for him. Then as I was on the bus riding to campus to turn in the first strips, we turned onto Clyde Morris Blvd. which runs past the university. Looking at the name it just clicked. I changed the “C” to a “K” and Klyde Morris was born. The cartoon ran for 10 years in the Avion.

ANN: So the cartoon ran for a decade in the Avion and your web site says that adds up to a little over 1,200 cartoons. Now you’ve been on ANN for full decade. How many cartoons is that?
WES: It said in your e-mail that there would be no math in this interview.

ANN: Whoops- sorry, we know that is a sore spot with you.
WES: So what if it took me five tries to get through college algebra, So what! You wanna smear that all over ANN or something?

ANN: I think you just did that Wes.
WES: Next question… what’s the next question?

ANN: What is Klyde’s fascination with Falcon Jets?
WES: There’s no algebra involved in Falcon Jets, that’s what! I flew Falcon Jets for years and no one ever tapped on my cockpit window and asked me to factor a trinomial! OKAY!

ANN: Oooookay… let’s move on to another subject here…
WES: I can’t dance either. I was born without the rhythm gene, just ask my wife.

ANN: *ahhemm*Do you write the line boy poetry, or have they been contributed by actual lineboys?
WES: Those are submitted by actual current and former lineboys. My brother was a lineboy. I, however, went from hangar rat to Falcon Jet mechanic and somehow skipped lineboy.

ANN: What was the inspiration for the poetry?
WES: It was a slow news day in aviation.

ANN: Seriously…
WES: Seriously, it was inspired by Senator Harry Reid’s pleading for federal funds for Nevada’s Cowboy Poetry festival to not be discontinued. The nation is 16 trillion dollars in debt and the king of pocket vetoes is on the Senate floor urging funds for that nonsense. So I came up with equal nonsense.

ANN: Great, looks as if we’re back on track here…
WES: Track? None of the lineboy poems were about track.

ANN: Let’s stay focused Wes…You write often about NASA and the space program. Will Klyde ever get to go to space?
WES: Klyde has been in space! The first time was thanks to ANN. A Klyde doll rode into space aboard SpaceShipOne on the second leg of its flights to capture the X-Prize. Jim Campbell, who set it all up, along with Hognose and me were the team of three that got the most exclusive press credentials for covering that event. Our credentials were so “inside” that after the final flight, when the media was trying to crowd into the meeting room for the presser, the X-Prize folks were stopping people at the door and saying that only press with a gold star on their badges could get in. When the three of us from ANN just walked in someone yelled, “Hey! They don’t have gold stars!” and the guard at the door replied, “THEY don’t need gold stars.”

ANN: Where’s that Klyde doll now?
WES: I keep him in a specially designed, hermetically sealed, stainless steel vault.

ANN: Seriously…
WES: Okay, he sits right here next to my desk.

ANN: You said that was Klyde’s “first” trip into space. What was the second?
WES: No comment.

ANN: I noticed that you were attending the first orbital launch of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft… any connection there?
WES: No comment.

ANN: The “no comment” thing sounds a bit suspect to me and…
WES: Do you have another question, or what?

ANN: How would you define being a cartoonist?
WES: The best definition of a cartoonist that I ever heard came from an editor at The New Yorker magazine. He said that the cartoonist is the guy who sits in sixth grade and draws a cartoon of the teacher that cracks up the kid next to him. Then when the teacher asks “Would you like to share that with all of us?” the cartoonist gleefully answers “Yes!”

ANN: Okay, next. Who do you admire as a cartoonist?
WES: Sam Adams, he was one of the first here in the United States. I suppose the “tree question” will be next.

ANN: If you were a tree, what kind of a tree would you be?
WES: *click*….

ANN: Hello?... hellooo?...

FMI: www.klydemorris.com