Everett True deals with his landlord (October 22, 1918)
Everett True deals with his landlord (October 22, 1918)
Printed 106 years ago today in The Pensacola Journal. Image cleaned up, see the original.
Found on the Library of Congress site.
It's so weird for me to react, and want to tell the creator that is an unreasonable request, and nobody relates to your character.
So I WANT to post something to that effect here.
Then I remember the comic is from 1918, and everybody involved with the original run of this comic is dead.
Nobody relates, eh? We have a hose tap on the front of our place, but none in the back and we are in a row house that isn't on the end so it's not like we can just run it around the side. We 100% relate to True in this one. In fact, I think I'll send this to our landlord.
Yeah, the best of these comics are an amusingly excessive reaction to a relatable annoyance. I find this reaction amusing in a slapstick kind of way, but the annoyance somewhat unrelatable: is it really that big a deal not to have an outdoor faucet? What if the landlord legitimately can't afford it? (maybe he has bills because of family illness or something.)
I think Everett's saying that he has to run a hose from indoors every time he needs water outdoors. An outdoor faucet might be a luxury these days (and I'm no fan of modern lawns), but back when more people had horses and even small livestock like chickens, and when people were growing victory gardens for the Great War, an outdoor faucet seems like less of a luxury. Also, to people reading in 1918, I think the landlord's reaction is supposed to stand in for all the things that unscrupulous landlords did before city codes and inspections started being put in place - note that the landlord seems well-dressed and at-ease, so I think readers back then would see him as a stock character. So another thing I like about these comics is that they force me to try to think of what life was like back in those days.
1918: shoves landlord through wall for his refusal to install indoor plumbing
2024: "indoor plumbing is an unreasonable request"
Normally I support Everett but I don't understand the request. Is he asking for plumbing to be done but demands the landlord pays for it?
It's the landlord's property. Why should Everett have to pay for something that is someone else's property? It's not like he could take it with him when he moves out. And while it makes Everett's living situation better, It also adds to the property's value so the landlord actually benefits from the installation. But like all landlords, he's too stupid to see that actually investing the money in keeping a place nice with decent amenities to make tenants happy and comfortable will make him more money in the long run.
No wonder we're at where we're at.
Why should Everett pay for this?
Follow up question: How much do you tip your landlord?
He is, but you also need to understand the context is that, as a landlord, he's fucking lying about the affordability.
That's my takeaway.