(Herman Hoglebogle, left, cartoonist Tom Johnson, right)
If you lived in Indianapolis in the last half of the 20th century, your favorite cartoon superhero may not have been Wonder Woman, Superman or Batman. Instead, it might have been a little man with a huge nose, unruly hair and a goofy smile.
Tell him about a dangerous street crossing, an axle-busting pothole or a missing street sign, and he would be there faster than a speeding bullet. And don’t even get him started on slipshod snow plowing.
He couldn’t be bought, intimidated or lied to, and he fought for you and me.
He was Herman Hoglebogle. Herman was the creation of a cartoonist named Tom Johnson, who drew the character for years, in The Indianapolis News.
Everyone knew Herman, even small children. Especially small children, thanks to a brilliant marketing strategy that indoctrinated grade school pupils from a very young age.
Local grade schools flew a green Herman pennant under the Stars and Stripes. If a child from that school was injured in a traffic accident, the school had to lower that flag for one month. Nobody wanted to be that kid. If the traffic accident didn’t kill you, the other pupils might.
The children worshipped Herman, and their parents were pretty fond of him, too. Nearly every day there was at least one black and white sketch of Herman in The News, drawn by Tommy on top of a glossy real photo, his face incandescent with rage,
You did not want to piss off Herman Hoglebogle. They said he shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
Or maybe that was Johnny Cash, I’m not sure.
You got a big dose of Herman at school, and you saw his hair-trigger temper in photos in the newspaper, often on the front page. But wait, there’s more!
If you made it all the way to the back page, there he was again, just waiting for you like a spider. Herman’s action line column, answering readers’ complaints about being ignored or short-changed by the system.
Here’s where I’m going with this. There were jobs on newspapers that typically nobody wanted to do. Writing obituaries, rewriting press releases, doing complaint columns, stuff like that. So, cub reporters, who have no seniority, had to do them with a smile.
For a few years in the early 1970s, I wrote the Herman column, despite easily having more than enough seniority to avoid it.
Did my editor find out I sprayed that graffiti on his house? How did I get such a thankless, wheel-spinning job?
I volunteered for it.
Here’s the thing. The News was very, very, very conservative, and I wasn’t.
I disagreed with most of its opinions, every single day. I had grown up trick-or-treating for UNICEF, and every Halloween, the News’ editorial page told readers not to donate. Stuff like that. I routinely wrote signed letters to the editor picking apart editorial positions, but there didn’t seem to be anything else I could do.
But maybe there was a way I could help the average guy! To balance the scales. To speak truth to power. I could use this column, with all its righteous influence, and fight for justice!
I could turn Herman Hoglebogle into a latter-day Tom Joad, from The Grapes of Wrath.
Of course, I had to do some fancy footwork when I volunteered for it. My editors couldn’t know I planned to be a vigilante voice seeking justice, but now, half a century later, I am coming clean.
I willingly wrote Herman’s column for the same reason I trick-or-treated for UNICEF: to help people who needed help.
And, by the way, if you’ve never had a personal cartoonist, I highly recommend it. Tommy was always listening. If I mentioned some casual interest - pandas, James Thurber, blimps, pistachios - they began showing up in his Herman cartoons, like little hidden Easter eggs.
When I passed a kidney stone, a painful experience often compared to childbirth, Herman came through for me.
Being Herman was a real trip. For a while, I borrowed a life-sized promotional cutout and drove it around in my car. “Hey, look, Mommy, there’s Herman Hoglebogle looking out the passenger window of that old yellow Chevy Nova! Say, shouldn’t Herman have a nicer car than that?”
Most people who wrote to Herman signed their letters with initials or a fake name, but that got tedious. So, under my stewardship, letters in the column began featuring signatures like Gregor Samsa - the dude who turned into an insect in that Franz Kafka book - or Levon Helm - the legendary drummer for The Band.
One time, a worried mother found a large cigarette in her son’s drawer, and sent it to Herman, tearfully asking whether it was marijuana.
I took a small portion of it to the police station lab and gave it to them to analyze. When they confirmed that it was weed, I smoked the rest of it. Herman didn’t like for things to go to waste!
All good things some to an end. In 1973, my wife and I got reporting jobs on a newspaper in Upstate New York, and we left Indianapolis. As a farewell token, Tommy drew me one final cartoon.
Herman Hoglebogle, the champion of all that is good and pure, is seen as a hairy legged degenerate. Run that up the flagpole with your Herman pennant!
I’m pretty sure my cartoon is one of a kind…
Oh my God, this can't be more appropriate! A couple of days ago, I got out my childhood jewelry box with the spinning ballerina to see if I had forgotten any treasures, and found two: my McCarthy for president button and my Herman Hoglebogle button!
At last, the REAL truth about Herman and his alter ego, young Bob Basler, a true American hero. At this juncture in life I was in the circulation department answering calls about misdelivered papers or papers left at the end of a driveway instead of right at the front door. I'd say we did our best to keep America strong, wouldn't you? Bravo, Bob.