One of the things that I enjoyed about An Open Book was Michael Dirda's look at what the Lorain Journal was like while he was growing up. One of the features that he mentioned was "Tell Me Why!", which was one of my favorites.He describes it like this on pages 50 -51 of his book: "Not least, though, the comics pages also offered A. Leokum's "Why, Daddy" column, later reslugged "Tell Me Why" at about the same time its author's first initial was revealed to stand for the clearly un-American name Arkady. Kids would mail in "scientific" questions such as, "Why does the earth go around the sun?" and Leokum would explain in the simplest possible English. My father, less an actual than a would-be autodidact, judged this feature inordinately fascinating and frequently shared its fascination aloud at the dinner table. "So that's what blue whales eat." As we grew older he urged his inquisitive brood to send in questions, partly for the glory of seeing our names in the paper (if our letters were lucky enough to be chosen), but also for the award of various educational prizes. In due course, the Dirdas received several collegiate dictionaries, an atlas and, eventually, when we'd already outgrown it, a Junior Encyclopedia Britannica."
Another feature that Dirda mentions on the same page of his book is "There Oughta Be a Law", which was another favorite of mine. He points out that it was more of an adult feature, and this example from 1969 proves him right. I wonder – is this strip is still around?
