Herman by Jim Unger for March 01, 2022

GOOGLE IT

Wow. this one must be really old.

I ride the school bus

I thought encyclopedias went the way of rotary phones.

Since when is an encyclopedia a mode of transportation?

Why can’t he do both?

He may have walked to school in his day but some how I don’t think he ever went inside.

He mispronounced the model of car the kid wants. Easy to do. They are all over the place for names.

Kid: What is an encyclopeida?

" What’s an encyclopedia, Grandpa? "

" A set of reference books, I used to sell door-to-door, son. "

" What’s a reference book, Grandpa? "

My childhood encyclopedia was my proudest possession. It was about 1 foot thick and had its own stand. Then came my 3D chess set.

I had this one growing up in the 40’s and 50’s. Loved it! https://www.amazon.com/Book-Knowledge-Childrens-Encyclopedia-Carpet/dp/B000YBK0FA

I get the impression that dad did not get a great education, just a lot of exercise.

Slept all the time at school, huh?

The drawings are 50% of the hilarity for Herman.

I wish we had a proper encyclopedia set when I was growing up. We had a set – literally! from 1919. Sigh.

Aside from the library, a home encyclopedia was the only useful source of information when I was growing up. When the local supermarket began selling the Funk & Wagnall’s set one volume at a time for a dollar each, my mom had the foresight to buy them on her weekly shopping trips. It was a real God-send to a poor family such as ours to be able to retrieve information for our schoolwork or just out of curiosity. It was a much simpler world back then, and it may just have been a better one.

Get the finest, most comprehensive, up-to-date encyclopedia in the world in the morning and something will be out of date by the afternoon.

Find the oldest encyclopedia in the world and some parts will still be pertinent.

Get the internet and you may have it all — as well as all the garbage.

Who needs one when you have wikipedia.

Yeah like back in the 50’s

Thirty years ago the local grocery store had a deal on encyclopedias. Buy a hundred dollars worth of groceries and buy one encyclopedia volume for a buck. I got the entire set of 26 volumes and they are in mint condition on my book shelf next to my 52 year (and counting) collection of National Geographic magazines in their gold embossed pleather book cases.

Uphill both ways, in the snow.

Next, the kid will be asking for a thesaurus!