Smokey Stover was a comic strip written and drawn by Bill Holman from March 10, 1935 until he retired in 1973. It was distributed through the Chicago Tribune. This article is about the comic strip, the sequential art form as published in newspapers and on the Internet. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... March 10 is the 69th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (70th in Leap years). ... 1935 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1973 was a common year starting on Monday. ... The Chicago Tribune, formerly self-styled as the Worlds Greatest Newspaper, remains the leading daily newspaper of the Midwestern United States. ...

The strip featured Smokey the firefighter, in his two-wheel firetruck called "The Foomobile", and his wife Cookie, with her questionmark pompadour. Odd bits of philosophy, and recurrent signs carrying bizarre phrases such as "Notary Sojac" and "1506 Nix Nix" were featured in the strip. (Holman described the phrase "Notary Sojac" as Gaelic for "horsecrap" and as Gaelic for "Merry Christmas".[1]) Firefighter in full turn out gear with a pickhead axe. ... Philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. ... Gaelic as an adjective means pertaining to the Gaels, whether to their language or their culture. ...

"Foo" was one of these recurring nonsense words and was taken up by World War II's "Foo Fighters". Smokey Stover wore a completely non-functional hat with a hole in the bill--probably a punning reference to Bill Holman. A metasyntactic variable is a placeholder name, or a kind of alias term, commonly used to denote the subject matter under discussion, or a random member of a class of things under discussion. ... World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons like the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was by far the bloodiest, most expensive, and most significant war in... This article is about the aerial phenomenon. ... A pun (also known as paronomasia) is a figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. ...

Smokey's truck is similar to the recent Segway scooters, but predates them by some decades. Inventor Dean Kamen demonstrates the Segway HT at the U.S. Department of Commerce on February 14, 2002. ...

External links

• Toonopedia: Smokey Stover
• A brief homage to Smokey Stover.
• The Straight Dope: "What's the origin of 'notary sojac'?