Chas Kuhn....In His Own Words

I was born March 20, 1892 in Prairie City, Illinois. I later attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. But long before that, I quit high school in my second year so that I could take a job in the local tank works. Then came jobs in a plow factory, and of all things the Canadian harvest fields. I was in the First World War and spent two years on a battleship as a fireman. After my discharge, I went to work in the art department of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. At the end of three years I was offered the job of editorial cartoonist  on the Indianapolis News. I stayed there for twenty-six years. About that time I thought up the idea for Grandma. I quit the News and worked full time on my comic strip. King Features Syndicate has been syndicating the strip for the past sixteen years. Grandma now appears in some 300 papers around the world. I married the former Lois Stevens, of Denver, 'way back in 1922. We have lived on the same five acres of briers and weeds for the past twenty-seven years, and I don't mind telling you that I'm getting tired of cutting grass. My assistant and I both carry our lunch to work, and during our lunch hour we sit around and "brainstorm." The Grandma  ideas as so easy to think up we once came up with fifty during one lunch period. We toss ideas around, and then I block out the four panels on a rough sheet of paper. Once the wording is okay, we go directly to work and put the strip on cardboard.