My "casting the net" for Broad Ripple memorabilia brought interesting results. One reader came forth with a treasure trove of Broad Ripple history including a 1931 Riparian (the Broad Ripple High School yearbook) that featured an article entitled "'Abe Martin' Speaks" by student Robert McAninch.

This triggered my faint recollections of having heard Kin Hubbard's name on trips to Nashville, but details were rusty so I did some research. For the record, just about everybody who read newspapers between 1904 and 1930 knew Abe Martin as the shrewd, bearded, backwoods Aristotle drawn by cartoonist Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard. Abe Martin appeared in more than 300 papers and was enjoyed by millions.

A Kin Hubbard interview in this nearly 80-year-old Riparian strikes me as a truly impressive coup. What fun it is to read the BRHS reporter's account of his December 8, 1930 interview. He writes, "I should surely have no trouble talking to the pleasant, gray-haired man, who could smile so kindly at my embarrassing questions." He reports that Mr. Hubbard came to Indianapolis in 1891 and began immediately as a caricaturist at The Indianapolis News. He created Abe Martin whose homely sayings expressed public sentiments.

Mr. Hubbard told the inquiring student journalist about his son and daughter, both graduates of Indiana colleges, and about a 1924 round-the-world tour during which he was most impressed with Egypt. Although not a big sports fan, Mr. Hubbard enjoyed boxing. After his long trip, he began drawing pre-match boxing sketches for The News sports page.

The 1931 Riparian also featured a cartoon drawn expressly to accompany this interview. It turned out to be most opportune for Mr. Hubbard died, "having suffered an attack of the heart," on December 26 that year. I can only imagine that Robert McAninch remembered this interview all his life.

Hubbard lives on through many of Abe Martin's wisecracks that remain relevant today:

• It's no d5isgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.
• Th' safest way t' double your money is t' fold it over once an' put it back in your pocket.
• It's what we learn after we think we know it all that counts.
• There's too blamed many new ways to spend money and not enuf new ways to get it.
• When a fellow says it hain't th' money, but the principle of th' thing, it's th' money.
• Nobuddy ever fergits where he buried a hatchet.
• Th' only way to entertain some folks is t' listen 't 'em.
• Distant relatives are the best kind, an' th' further, th' better.