Kilroy was here

 Remember this guy?  In my early youth he was ubiquitous.  Wherever you found graffiti, and graffiti seemed more benign in those days than the eye smashing stuff you see today, he was there.  I learned to draw him myself, the nose and hands going over the line, the close set eyes.   A clever little drawing I thought.   Sometime before I got to Gage Park High he disappeared and I haven't seen him since.

His name was Kilroy and he had something to do with WW II, often accompanied by Kilroy was here.  He was drawn by WW II GI's who probably had never been out of the small rural county where they were born, and now look, they were in Paris, they were in Berlin, all across the south seas and Tokyo.  They would rather have been at home eating Mom's fried chicken, but at least they were seeing the world.  How could you keep them down on the farm after this?

Wiki, as is its wont, has a lot to say about Kilroy, most of it interesting, but no brass tacks, just speculation as to where and when he originated.  I guess that is for the best because otherwise he would be just one guy, and now he is everyman.  Or was, you don't see him around much anymore.  Pity.

I came up with the Kilroy thing responding to a fb post about graffiti,  Responding to another post, making a joke about how a friend came into a pot of money, I remembered a phrase from one of my favorite songwriters.   fast cars and whiskey long haired girls and fun That led me to another Johnny Cash song that I am going to leave the dawgs with,  This information comes too late to do us any good, but the next time some young buck taps you on the shoulder and asks you for some of that wisdom that us old guys are chock full of you can tell him this:

there ain't no good in an evil hearted woman,
And I ain't cut out to be no Jesse James,
And you don't go writing hot checks down in Mississippi,
And there ain't no good chain gang. 

And good Friday to you.