Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Happy Thanksgiving from Jimmie Acorn

JH

Happy Thanksgiving to my readers! Here’s a couple of Jimmie Acorn stories from Children’s Activities magazine in 1954. The February story I call “Jimmie’s Groundhog Day”, featuring a groundhog named (what else?) Groundhog! This story has a very clear explanation of the significance of the Groundhog’s shadow in predicting the end of winter. The May story should be named, “Jimmie Acorn, Ornithologist”, as the little guy meets a Red-Eyed Vireo, an Ovenbird, and a Whippoorwill. Each bird is described by it’s plumage and it’s nesting methods. The most surprising is the Whippoorwill, which just lays it’s eggs on the ground among the dry leaves. “Poor Will” indeed. I’ll bet there were a lot fewer young whippoorwills that survived their nestling stage, mainly because they HAD no nests! I hope you will take time to read these stories between bites of stuffing and cranberry sauce. They are a basic course in natural history crossed with the fantasy of the little home-made toy named Jimmie Acorn. This Thanksgiving there will be an empty chair at our table. Our dear brother and brother-in-law Roger Hill has passed away. He was 84. Here’s an obituary to which my wife, and a few other people contributed, including me: 

November 11th, 2025
Roger C. Hill of Altadena, Ca. passed away November 5th, 2025 at age 84. He was born and raised in Pasadena, Ca., and achieved a Ph. D. in physics at California Institute of Technology in 1969.He was a Professor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, from 1970-2010. Roger was a mathematician who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on “Relativistic Quark Models and the Current Algebra”, and also wrote a textbook on the subject of quantum mechanics. He was a research Associate and Lecturer at Northwestern University from 1968-1970. At retirement, he was named an Emeritus Professor at SIUE. Roger was an expert and a historian of Hewlett-Packard hand held calculators and participated annually in the Hewlett-Packard Calculator Conference. He studied astronomy, was an accomplished photographer, a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, an expert on 3-D movies and 3-D imaging, loved Medieval Renaissance music, Tuva throat singing and folk dancing with a University City group. He had an almost savant-like ability to pick up almost any instrument and play it, especially wind; recorders, flutes and a Bulgarian Bagpipe made from a complete lamb skin. He was also a linguist and was able to communicate in several languages: Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Hungarian to name a few. He had several international friends and was able to speak with them in their own language. Roger was also a dedicated model railroader, working on a Los Angeles trolley car HO layout for years, he contributed to the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, CA., working on their website, organizing their collections of historic photos and doing painting, clean-up and maintenance on the Museum’s collection of rolling stock street cars, interurbans, steam trains and diesel engines.
Roger studied frogs and toads, their natural and humorous aspects. He also was amused by the ludicrous mis-spellings and placement of old road signs, which he encountered on his travels. He dubbed them “Road Thingies”. He also was a Star Trek and especially a Doctor Who fan.
Roger was a gentle soul who appreciated people and making friends with them as he grew older. Even casual acquaintances such as waitresses and rental car dispatchers formed friendships with him. In January 2025, Roger’s family home in Altadena was completely destroyed by wildfire. He lived his last ten months at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Arcadia, where he made even more friends around the breakfast table. He started working on a new model railroad layout, that was meant to go into a condo in Sierra Madre where he was preparing to move, but that was not to be. Like Will Rogers, Roger “never met a man he didn’t like”, at least most of the time.
We’ll miss his habit of being chronically late for dinner, and his wonderful annual Holiday Slide Shows. Donations to the Southern California Railway Museum on behalf of Roger Hill, would be gratefully accepted. (socalrailway.org) He is survived by his sister Catherine, brother-in-law Mark Kausler and many good friends.

Here’s a little photo of Roger, playing his sheep skin bagpipe: 

We’ll miss him. 

Jimmie Acorn Celebrates Fall

C

Childhood Nostalgia Edition # One.   Just for a change of content, here is an upload of material from my collection of vintage children’s magazine features that I enjoyed as a child in the late 1940s and early 1950s. “Jimmie Acorn” was a feature in “Children’s Activities” magazine, which was an “activity” magazine directed to children, full of things to make, puzzles and many charming stories. My favorite was Jimmie Acorn, a feature that encouraged wildlife studies and imbued the child reader with a love of the natural world. Jimmie was just a home made toy made of acorns that got left behind in the forest by the child that made him. Rather than falling apart, Jimmie came to life and made friends with diverse wildlife. In this story, which I call “Snapper the Turtle”, from April 1953, Jimmie Acorn helps Snapper catch flies for his meal. He also meets a Redwing Blackbird, a Kingfisher and old Grandpa Turtle. These stories were created by two women, Edith Forbush did the writing, and Ruth Van Tellingen made the drawings. I’ve also included a feature from the October, 1953 edition of “Children’s Activities” which shows how a Jimmie Acorn doll might be constructed. The crude crayon drawing at the top of the post was drawn by me with crayons on construction paper that is slowly chipping away. But my memories of Jimmie Acorn aren’t crumbling in to the woods, I still remember his sweet outgoing nature, and how all of the forest animals and birds befriended him. Features like this created a lifelong love of animals, I used to visit the Missouri Conservation Commission to see their small collection of animals, such as a red fox kept in a pen, lizards and snakes and of course a skunk! I had a subscription to “Missouri Conservationist” magazine, which was filled with wildlife photos and lore and featured their cartoon mascot: “Consy Coon”. Enjoy this cherished memory of a long-ago Missouri childhood. I’ll post more Jimmie stories soon.