Agnes by Tony Cochran for November 15, 2020

As my Dad told me when I got to spend the night with his parents, “That mattress was old when I was young.”

Back in the day, Jail/Army Basic training mattrii could be rolled up in 10 seconds!

In Viet Nam, while on guard duty in bunkers at night, they would pass a box of sandwiches down the line. A sandwich consisted of two pieces of dry bread with a slice of spam. Every night. To drink, they passed a large container of coffee. Guys would dip their canteens into it. Prison food starts to sound pretty good, but I like peanut butter better than spam.

When I was a kid, my mattress was a hand-me down so old it was known as the hot-dog roll. You’d get into the middle and the sides would come up around you.

Tough town. Tough town.

Laughin’ out loud (I never LOL) at the idea of Grandma buying the mattress (and God knows what else) at the prison auction.

One has to take pity on people who are living in such depressing conditions …. and I am sure there are many throughout North America. However, somehow Cochran has made the characters loveable and laughable, which is his job as a cartoonist. I often wonder if there is not a food bank or some charity in Anges’ world that could help them out?

What are the odds that it’s Trout’s dad’s old mattress?

There was only creamy peanut butter at the old prison… You know, workin’ on the rock-pile, and all… ⛰ ⚒️ ⛏ ☺

When i was a kid my mattress was so old that you could see permanent imprint of where I curled up to sleep at night, and I had scars from the springs scratching against me in my sleep.

What.. there is no Costco in Trouts town?

How long does peanut butter stay good? Remember, it’s probably as old as the mattress.

This reminds me of touring the prison in Columbia SC, before is was torn down. The main cells were four stories, stone, maybe 6×8, two to a cell, no stairs, a sheer wall. Agnes’ mattress has to be nasty.

“I couldn’t sleep at all last night.” Anybody out there knows what pop song started out with those very words?

When my son was a teenager he took three pb&j sandwiches to school every day. I bought bread at the day-old bread store and would bring it home and double bag it and put it in the freezer till needed. Then I would go to a discount grocery store that sold peanut butter in gallon containers. It was actually pretty good peanut butter, too. For the jelly, which had to be grape jelly, I bought the largest jars I could find. He grew to be 6’4” with a 30” waist when he went off to college at age 18. Sad to say, oof his two sons doesn’t even like peanut butter.

lol thats a Cosco purchase