© Jeff Wilson 2011
(drawn at age 14/15.)


    There are very few things in life that we do at a moment's notice that will linger in someone's memory for a lifetime, but there are one or two things that do. I have been fortunate to have found one thing that I did, that lives on in people's scrapbooks, their personal files, a basket in their living room and most importantly, in their hearts.
    A personalized cartoon greeting card.
    You may ask, how this could possibly happen. The personalized greeting card is a customized snapshot of life. Maybe something someone was doing, or thinking. Maybe hopes, dreams and plans at a certain finite time of your life. Maybe a situation in your life that changed from that point on and you vowed never to go back there again. Perhaps, the memories are more pleasant than the present and your suffering makes it hard to to go back to that simpler, happier time.
    My first personalized greeting card was one shown below. I drew it for my parent's anniversary. I am guessing I was about 14, or 15 years old. I didn't even know how to do crisp easy-to-reproduce black lines, such as most professional cartoonists do. I obviously was going through a "Don Martin" phase, judging by the drawing.
    Let's not forget how hard it is to draw a card that rivals Hallmark, or Carlton Cards. You need something more personal to wrest back the advantage. And this is precisely why my parents kept this card, over one of the "Today, I had a feeling it should wish you happy anniversary....but then I laid down until the feeling went away" ilk.
     Probably someone else gave them that one that year. 
    The way these cards would come about was surprisingly simple and usually would be last minute "after-thoughts." It was either my Mom, or wife saying "Its so-and-sos birthday tomorrow. I bet they'd love a homemade card. Jeff, can you whip off something?
    So, I'd take about an hour, maybe two and toss one off. It would be quick and often looked rushed. I would incorporate something I knew the person was doing. Whether that was training horses to rollerskate, reading the entire works of Harold Robbins, or coaching minor lawn bowling. It was fodder for that card!
    The funny thing is that most people who received them, still have them. For example, I found out recently that my 30+ year-old nephew still has a card I gave him at age five. I know of at least four, or five other people who kept theirs framed and hanging on the wall. A great many have them in a drawer, or safe box. My mother has hers in a basket in her living room, They often go through them, when feeling nostalgic. When I visit, I often do too, because so many good memories come back.
    I had such aspirations for writing and drawing greeting cards. I created my own homemade lines: "Jeff Wilson CARD-toon Collection" and "The Jeff Wilson Art Service Flatts Farm Collection," when I was creating and submitting that feature to newspaper syndicates. I can even remember contacting Hallmark and sending them ideas, when I heard they paid someone for the ideas. A number of cartoonists whose I read daily worked in greeting cards. However, that wasn't to be my destiny. Somehow,  for me there is adequate satisfaction in the fact that what I did lasted and had staying power, over that which was cranked through power machinery, fuelled by the almighty buck.
    The past is good for us. When it comes right down to it, we all have a past. Its a safe place. Safe, because we have already been there and survived it. I didn't make a lot of money making these cards. You probably won't either. On most of them, I didn't make a cent. However, in your twilight years, see if these little sketchy pieces of paper don't linger like nuggets of gold to someone.
    Maybe even to you, if you were smart enough to do some of them.