In case you are wondering, Georgie, the news artist (and later cartoonist) got his first inspiration for the Pinfold and Fluffy comic while undercover, disguised as a Clarky’s shoeshine boy.
“Following his epiphany, Clarky had quit selling newspapers and become a shoeshine boy. There’d been several years of that. Then he rented a storefront with some money he’d saved. Bought shoe wax in quantity and slapped his own label on the tins. Clarky’s — The Paste That’s Remarkably Black. Then he went up to Inwood, where an insane asylum had recently burned down, and purchased three dozen white staffers’ uniforms. He recruited as many teenaged boys, the majority of them N*gr*es and swarthy Arabs, and suddenly Clarky’s Shoeblacks — You’d Have to Be Crazy Not to See the Difference in Our Shine — began showing up at train depots and ferry slips, in city parks and on the streets. And because he’d trained and drilled all his boys in the art of waxing and buffing — The Clarky Method, swift but finicky — their suits were always as spotlessly vanilla at the end of a shift of work as they’d been at the start.
Good morning™, everyone!
In case you are wondering, Georgie, the news artist (and later cartoonist) got his first inspiration for the Pinfold and Fluffy comic while undercover, disguised as a Clarky’s shoeshine boy.
“Following his epiphany, Clarky had quit selling newspapers and become a shoeshine boy. There’d been several years of that. Then he rented a storefront with some money he’d saved. Bought shoe wax in quantity and slapped his own label on the tins. Clarky’s — The Paste That’s Remarkably Black. Then he went up to Inwood, where an insane asylum had recently burned down, and purchased three dozen white staffers’ uniforms. He recruited as many teenaged boys, the majority of them N*gr*es and swarthy Arabs, and suddenly Clarky’s Shoeblacks — You’d Have to Be Crazy Not to See the Difference in Our Shine — began showing up at train depots and ferry slips, in city parks and on the streets. And because he’d trained and drilled all his boys in the art of waxing and buffing — The Clarky Method, swift but finicky — their suits were always as spotlessly vanilla at the end of a shift of work as they’d been at the start.