I can’t stop thinking of those pictures of a slumping, sleeping Donald Trump at the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial ceremony. I remarked to friends at the time how he looked so woefully out of place at this important national occasion.

His demeanor and body language were more fitting for a patient in a nursing home.

Suddenly I remembered an old pen and ink drawing I did when I was about eleven depicting an “Old Age Home” filled with an assortment of aging tropes of oldsters. Sorting through my flat files I found it among the hundreds of childhood drawings I had saved.

Original drawing by Sally Edelstein 1967 with a modern day twist. Re-purposed art.

I decided to update it to include a doddering Donnie nodding off. He seems to fit right in, snoozing in the common room of the Old Folks Home and not at a solemn ceremony as our commander in chief.

Capt. Though Donnie was drawn with a felt tip pen, the original was drawn with a nib and India ink Donlad would be drawn with a Tombow Mono drawing pen, no ink bottle involved

Cartooning The Head & Figure by Jack Hamm 1967

As a child in the 1960s, I spent hours and hours hunched over on my bed drawing story after story, with visions of becoming a cartoonist when I grew up. Though I may have learned to draw bowls of fruit with Jon Neghy, I learned cartooning from a variety of cartoon instructional sources. Along with sampling the styles of legends like Mort Drucker or Jack Davis in Mad Magazine, Mort Walker from the funnies, and the folks from Harvey comic books, I devoured cartooning How-To books

My favorite was entitled “Cartooning the Head and Figure.” It was an instructional book from 1967 that provided tried and proven methods that explain step-by-step procedures in the art of cartooning.”

I carefully studied the art techniques from this soft-bound book.

No modern Flair pens for me- I used a nib and India ink to draw.  The wildly popular felt-tip pen with its vibrant, quick-drying ink had debuted in 1966 and changed writing forever.

But never for drawing for me. The ritual was part of the skill. Selecting the proper size metal nib, you inserted it using the small metal notches in the center of the nib holder, dipping it in the bottle of Higgins India Ink, always so careful not to spill any ink on my chenille bedspread.

Cartooning The Head & Figure by Jack Hamm 1967

I knew I still had the book stashed at home in my bookcase, so I pulled out the familiar, well-worn copy. Flipping through the different chapters, I was particularly interested in their section on drawing old folks

Not surprisingly, it was chock full of typical yet disturbing old age stereotypes.

Cartooning The Head & Figure by Jack Hamm 1967

Older women were skewered. Next to ditzy female drivers and meddling battle-axe mothers-in-law, the older woman was a favorite of cartoonists and comics. The instruction page was filled with wrinkled, hunched-over men and women sporting canes.

“Whereas it’s true that just a beard will put years on a cartoon figure, there are other characteristics which will help in the process. There are curvature of the spine tottering stance use of a cane, slumped sitting. Oldsters may be sprightly generally, pooped or palsied and shaky,” was the advice the cartooning book offered.

Seems like Trump fit the stereotype to a T.