Baylor Bear: "Football ain't a matter of life or death. (sob) It's more important than that..."
American cartoonist (1930-1996). Birth name:
Gerald Glynn West. Born in
Littlefield, Texas, his
family moved to nearby
Lubbock before he'd had his first birthday. He eventually attended
Texas Tech, where he
cartooned for the
University Daily, the campus
newspaper. After graduating, he appeared for three years as
Uncle Dirk on a local
children's
television show, but gave it up when his
advertising agency, West Advertising, grew large enough to need all of his
attention.
Raider Red: "Good gracious! I ain't seen nuthin' that ugly since I had a blind date in Muleshoe!"
In the early 1960s, West began contributing
sports cartoons to the
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. He drew two cartoons a week during
football season, with each cartoon appearing in the sports section of the newspaper. The single-
panel cartoons featured the
mascots of the
Southwest Conference standing around and talking -- there wasn't much room for
action or continuing
storylines. Besides, the only storyline anyone cared about was the
football season; who won, who lost, and who could say
funny stuff about the teams' games.
TCU Horned Frog: "Well, I've won one in a row..."
West's cartoons were wildly
popular in Lubbock. He created
Raider Red to represent Tech's
Red Raiders. Red looked like
Yosemite Sam's taller, cuddlier cousin, and readers could count the number of Tech
losses by the
bullet holes in his
cowboy hat. (Red wasn't West's only mascot creation -- he's also credited with creating the
University of Nebraska's
Herbie Husker.) West's other characters included the
Texas A&M Aggie, an A&M
cadet who personified the
Aggie joke and started every sentence with "
Duh"; the
Texas Longhorn, a
bovine whose
arrogance was usually justified by his impressive won-loss record; the
Baylor Bear, a good
Baptist who never seemed to stop
crying; the
Houston Cougar, an
alley cat who lived in and scavenged from a
trash can; the
TCU Horned Frog, a
scrawny and un-toadlike
horny toad; the
Rice Owl, a fairly
nondescript owl; the
SMU Mustang, who usually wore
blinders and tended to pronounce his name as "
Smew"; and the
Arkansas Razorback, a filthy pig. The two non-mascots were a chicken/pigeon/something-or-other called
Boo-Bird and a guy named
Moss, who was always standing facing away from the reader so that no one ever saw his face.
Raider Red: "It's shore hard to concentrate on anything but the Aggie game."
Aggie: "Duh... You think you're havin' trouble, try it with a head that's solid bone!"
Tech's
coaches were also frequently
caricatured in Dirk's cartoons. Coach
Jim Carlin, known to be a bit of a
moralist as well as a fine coach, had a
halo, sometimes attached with a stick and some string.
Steve Sloan carried a
golf club everywhere he went and had a T-shirt labeled "
Kid Coach." And
Rex Dockery was so
short, you rarely saw anything of him but the top of his head.
Aggie: "Duh... A tie is kinda like gradyewatin' from A&M... You'd druther not talk about it..."
Whenever one team was having a good season (or had just
stomped on another team), West usually portrayed them a lot larger and more
dangerous-looking -- the Longhorn and the Razorback, in particular, looked downright
scary when they had a good season. On the other hand, if a team was having a
lousy season, or if they'd been
skunked badly in a game, they tended to
shrink in stature or to look like they'd been on the losing end of an especially
savage beat-down. While West's cartoons were popular with Tech fans, they were much less appreciated by other teams. The Aggies, in particular, took great
offense at the way their mascot was portrayed. West, of course, took their angry letters as a sign of
a job well-done.
Moss: "Dirk is gittin' the Aggies a new Big Chief tablet an' Crayolas so they can write some more letters..."
Even outside of cartooning, West had a great
sense of humor and a quick mind, which led to a love of
practical jokes. Johnny Gamble, a childhood friend of West, tells that he was once at one of Tech's games against A&M. Gamble was carrying a load of
snacks and drinks from the
concession stand back to his seat through a crowd of Aggie fans when he heard someone call out, "Hey, Dirk West!" Gamble turned to see West himself,
grinning wickedly, sitting in the stands above him. The Aggies immediately assumed that Gamble was West and started
pelting him with food.
Baylor Bear: "Oh wow! The way things are goin' is enuff to confuse a one car funeral!"
West entered
politics in the 1970s, serving several years on Lubbock's
Parks and Recreation Board and
city council and being elected
mayor in 1978. By most accounts, he was a good mayor, but he disliked politics so much that he refused to run for a second term. After getting out of the government biz, he returned full-time to cartooning and his advertising agency, which he continued clear up to his death of a sudden
heart attack in 1996.
Boo Bird: "The three shortest books in the world are Aggie Table Manners, Ethics in Recruiting at SMU an' Offensive Plays at Texas Tech..."
Research: Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, July 27, 1996
Some of West's cartoons can be viewed at http://www.redraiders.com/gallery/dirk_west/1.shtml