Long Feature for Washington Magazine: My Great Grandma, Scanimate and a Wondrous Drawing
The hand-drawn card from 1949 interrupted, like a surprise party, what was an otherwise mundane day. A page-turn away from being tossed in the trash, it was placemat-sized and tucked within an old parcel map book as big as a cookie pan. The illustration featured a dollhouse-style cross section of a vibrant fraternity house.
I examined it. Each room of the precisely rendered four-level residence was teeming with people and action. Whoever drew it had fit entire stories into panels that captured the thrills of post-WWII college life in America: books, music, sex, cigarettes, TV, antics, senseless fun. A kind of idea explosion on paperboard.
Alumnus Lee Harrison’s holiday card to “Mother Baird,” 1949. (Courtesy Randall Roberts)
Implied noise and motion were everywhere. A jazz trio was rocking on the main floor as a guy bounced on the couch; a St. Bernard was snoring on stairs, above a couple kissing in a cubby. Elsewhere, a dozen-odd awestruck students were huddled around a new mass-market device called the television.
Each of the 17 panels was its own mini-drama. Sword fights. A mock medieval dungeon (in the attic). A mouse string quartet. In the basement, beneath it all, one solitary student sat at a desk with a few open books, his fingers in his ears to drown out the noise. The panel was captioned “Lee Harrison.”
Holding it in the sunlight, I decided it must be a print. It was too well-crafted. But the watercolor blue skies and red brick chimney were hand-painted. The razor-thin lines capturing coeds were in real ink. Each joyous stroke was etched with intent.
Amid the clamor, one area was silent.
Near the bottom in a panel captioned “Mam’s room,” a woman was asleep in a bed. She’d neatly placed her red slippers underneath the bed and seemed blissfully unaware of the chaos surrounding her.
