You always dream about living in the future, but may be it isn’t as fun when you are drug to it. Yesterday was the end of a time honered tradition at my house growing up, and one that I have continued with my children. Our Sunday comics tradition is no more.I’m sure there are some people that read the front page of the Sunday paper first; and the morbid few may even flip over to the obituaties to see who died, but not me. I dig through the mound of advertisement flyers until I uncover both sets of the funnies. Four pages of color comics. Large print, mind you. Yes, our paper added color to the daily issues (by mail, never delivered to rural folks) a few years ago, but the larger allotted space of the Sunday edition allows room for so much more expression.
Calvin and Hobbes #comic of the day (Feb. 18): https://t.co/81Y5Ajk0cx#CalvinAndHobbes#BillWatterson
— Calvin and Hobbes (@calvinandhobbes) February 18, 2018
Rarely over the years was our paper delivered by breakfast or before church, so I was a lunchtime reader. I set one section for my wife, and I took the other, each of us laughing and telling the other which strip we just had to read. Usually those ended up being Zits or Baby Blues. That’s one of the interesting things of being a regular reader, in how you identify with one group of characters for a time, and then grow into another. And how many times have I clipped a favorite and hung it up somewhere as inspiration?
Meanwhile, the are kids staring back and forth like fans at a tennis match waiting for their turn to get them. They’ve often taken the habit of rereading last week’s funnies while they waited. Then argue, laugh, and fuss some more about their favorites.
The bad news arrived as a letter with our last paper. Deliveries in our area were being discontinued, but we could always read the paper with an online only subscription. I read ebooks and the paper on the internet occasionally, but duelling tablets/pc’s at Sunday lunch will not be the same.
From the cheaper subscription rate to a forest of trees that won’t have to be harvested for my paper, and the ability to read anytime online, I know there are advantages. I could buy the paper in town, but odds are I’d often forget. Perhaps, as Agent Smith told Neo, this is the sound of inevitability.
As we embrace the future, willingly or not, this is what I will miss: crisp papers folded in half, passed around, and laughter.
Farmer Bright 
My deepest sympathy on your loss. My husband mostly reads the paper on his iPad, but I love the feel of newsprint, of paging through the the sections experiencing pleasure or sadness or outrage. And yes, laughing at the funnies. Not the same online — another tradition lost to technology.
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What we leave behind when we move forward…
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My dad would drive into downtown early for doughnuts and the paper, then he would read Pogo out loud to me every Sunday morning while I devoured a plain glazed doughnut and he ate his bear claw. Then off to Sunday school and church for the family. My sister and brother never got Pogo,they didn’t enjoy the funnies . This our time, between my dad and me. So many good funnies gone, and the newer ones will be just memories as well.
Sorry you will be loosing the funnies and your funnies-time, too.
Terri
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What a vivid description! We will always have the memories. Thanks for sharing.
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