Personal History: Cape May’s “Pink House”
On this humid morning I decided to pinch a fan from my wife’s studio. I don’t think she’ll mind as she’s twenty-eight hundred miles away in Cal-i-forn-i-a.
Heading out of her studio, fan in hand, I took a detour into a narrow adjacent room which is home to some of our New Yorker odds & ends: some framed pieces, old worksheets, and piles of New Yorkers. I couldn’t resist poking around.
The March 25th ’74 New Yorker you see here immediately caught my eye — it’s always meant a little something extra to me because of the cover art (by Laura Jean Allen) showing “The Pink House,” an historic home in Cape May, New Jersey.
From 1971 through 1976, I spent my summers in Cape May, working in kitchens (I made a lot of “Ocean Burgers” at Kahn’s Ugly Mug) and eventually, as a bartender. In my first summer there I rented a room in a boarding house just a block away from “The Pink House.” (Ms. Allen has exercised some artistic license with her take on the place — the Atlantic Ocean is not behind the house — the ocean is east of it, down the block). In my first year in Cape May, I’d see the Pink House every single day — how could I miss it! It’s a lovely house, and a relocated house — it originally stood a few blocks away.
In March of ’74, when this cover appeared, I was already well on my way to having hundreds, if not a thousand drawings rejected by The New Yorker. My Thurbermania had kicked in big-time by then; thoughts of The New Yorker occupied much of my non-kitchen work time. This issue tied a knot, connecting one of my worlds — the summertime world of Cape May, to a world I wanted to enter.
Looking through this issue now, in 2022, knowing my 21 year old self had closely studied it, it’s interesting to note how many high bar cartoons are within (but really, would I expect anything less?). What you see is solid funny work, beautifully drawn. Among the work is a classic George Booth drawing (“The men feel there is an evil spirit in your clutch housing. We’ve called a priest.”) one of his many car repair shop drawings. The variety of styles, not unusual for the magazine then, is a thing of wonder. I’ve said it before — and I know I’ll say it again: that variety is the strength of the magazine’s art.
Here’s the line-up from that issue:
I’m not surprised that the line-up is comprised entirely of white males. Nurit Karlin, the first woman cartoonist brought into the magazine since Mary Gauerke in 1956, had made her debut in the issue just before the Pink House issue (Gauerke’s last drawing — of three published — appeared in October of 1965). One footnote: the illustrator Tom Funk, listed among the cartoonists as was the custom, was married to the fab New Yorker cover artist, Edne Eicke.The photo below appeared in Life magazine June 16, 1947.
It took about three years from the time the Pink House issue appeared until I got my foot in The New Yorker’s door. I’ve no idea how many drawings were submitted in that time. As I was already submitting three years prior to the issue, a good guess would be…plenty. Getting into the magazine back then often felt like mission impossible. The Pink House issue is a good reminder of my state of mind in those days, expressed by Paul Simon’s “the nearer your destination, the more you slip-slidin’ away.”
Here’s a Cape May flavored drawing of mine — one of a handful inspired by my time there. It was published in The New Yorker June 30, 1986:
