SHORELINES

19 Shor e l i n e S | 2014 Vol :1 hometown and settled on an 80-acre retreat with his wife and daughter. Here he would write the comic strips and mail sketches to Bill Zaboly of King Features Syndicate, who drew the characters. Sims admitted to being a daydreamer, and kept a dog named Popeye, along with a pet crow, mule and cat. He even grew spinach, the sailor's secret source for strength. Sims said he found inspiration in rural Alabama, working local residents and observations into the scripts. A 1979 article in the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune quotes Sims' wife, who recalled how her husband once saw a cow tied to a tree and a few weeks later it appeared in the comic as a live lawnmower. On one visit to the Coosa, Sims saw a puddle with tadpoles, which led him to develop a story line in which Wimpy creates tadpole pills to feed mermaids so they will grow legs and come home with him. Sims' father's steamship was an unlikely inspiration, too. The Coosa River Iron Co. of Gadsden built the vessel, originally called the Annie M., to push barges of wood, which was used to make charcoal. In 1913, it was sold to the Army Corps of Engineers, which changed its name to Leota and used the ship to build locks and dams and dredge the river. That's when Sims' father served as captain, and his son soaked up the nautical atmosphere. Later, the vessel had several private owners, who at times used it as an excursion boat, private club, restaurant and a gambling house, according to Reynolds' book. The Leota spent its final days as a houseboat. The Rome newspaper article quoted the last owner and resident, Mrs. H.B. Vineyard, a published poet, who recalled a visit from Sims in 1944, the year before a tornado sunk the vessel. "Tom told me how as a young boy he listened to the stories that the dock-rats and sailors on the Coosa had told. He admitted to drawing stick figures on the Leota," she said. The two laughed about a ghost they believed lived aboard the ship, and recalled how the crew once patched a hole in the vessel with salted pork. She told the Rome reporter that eventually she asked Sims why he didn't take more credit for Popeye's popularity. His one-word answer: "Why?" Maybe Sims, who died in 1972 and is buried in Ohatchee, had begun to identify with his character, a wisecracking underdog, who could be a dockside philosopher at times. "I yam what I yam," Popeye said more than once, "and that's all what I yam." — L AR RY BLEIBERG Above: Popeye's writer actually grew spinach, the iconic character's well-known source of strength.

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