Oliver K. Zipp - Drawings for Islip Bowl
October 9, 2022This article extends what I featured of the artwork of my uncle Oliver in an earlier blog entry, the Big Islip Bowl Bowling Alley Pencil. My source for this is mainly a set of large photocopies that my father made and sent to me in the late 1990s. He was Oliver’s partner in the bowling alley, and Ol’s best friend since they were little kids. Most of them are caricatures or other illustrations made for some of the bowling teams that played in our weekly league matches. These were typically displayed on the wall around the cash desk or elsewhere nearby for all our patrons to see. Certainly they inspired bragging by the teams featured and good-natured ribbing on the part of the other teams. The Islip Bowl was a Mom-and-Pop place (of a sort that scarcely existed soon after), where people all knew one another. Although league team standings were posted on a display board, the competition was invariably friendly. People bowled to enjoy themselves and spend time together. Hardly anyone took the game too seriously. (I remember one who did, and he was a very good bowler, but I’m sure he didn’t have a tenth of the fun of the others who lost to him all the time. But that was his nature; he was in it for the zen.)
A few others are promotional illustrations Oliver made for our the bowling leagues and other activities and special offers, whether at Islip Bowl or at Centereach Lanes (our sister operation, managed by Lefty Thomas, another partner in the business). My father was in the building business - mostly single-family homes in Islip and nearby - from the end of the war until 1956, when he built the Islip Bowl and began to operate this new business. A few years later, he built Centereach Lanes and opened that too. Of course he didn’t personally build it, occupied as he already was by Islip Bowl, but he knew all about construction (his own father had been a builder), and he designed all the houses he built, in all the details, including the house that was our family home from 1952 until 2001. He was not a certified architect, so he had an architect approve the plans. (I still have a roll of blueprints of some of his projects.) My brother and I saw him at work at one or two of his building sites when we were very small, and we thought of him as a carpenter, perfectly handy with hammer and saw, and we absorbed a great deal from him. He wasn’t just there to supervise - he was involved in the job itself, with sawdusty pants and t-shirt. He was in his element; I believe he was never happier than in those days. But I’m straying from my subject, as usual!
Besides Oliver’s work, there’s one drawing by his brother Bill Zipp, someone I never knew, but a man with obvious talent. It’s an excellent cartoon of a man about to dig into his big steak dinner. What I love about it - besides the humor - are the caricatures of the Italian headwaiter and his troop of serving waiters, all individualized despite their stereotyping. The diner, who looks like a heavyweight boxer, avid for his steaks (four of them), incisors showing, fork and knife already in hand - not the most refined of table manners. I hope this carnivore got a few veggies on the side. It seems my cousin Judy, Bill’s niece, has this drawing, and I hope she may find more.
A new item that has turned up is Oliver’s character Centereach Sadie, mentioned but not shown in my earlier piece, in all her cross-eyed manic (or maniac) glory. She and Gutterball Gus would make a great couple. There is also Oliver’s Doctor Gutzerbawl rendered in color - before I had only a black-and-white line drawing. The two versions are very similar, but apparently made separately, as a few details are slightly different. The good doctor has a cherry-red nose here (redder than Bill Clinton’s or W.C. Fields’s or the famous Rudolf’s), frequently a sign of imbibing, but at this professional moment he seems to be as sober as a judge (as long as it’s not Justice Kavanaugh).
Another item, a one-off promotional drawing on the theme of inflation-fighting, recalls the many editorial drawings of boxing matches which were once ubiquitous in the sports pages of the old newspapers, and certainly familiar to Oliver’s generation. To me, the curious thing about the drawing is that the figure representing Islip Bowl, “socking it to” the figure of Inflation with his bare-knuckle left hook, bears a strong resemblance to my father Maynard Schill. Except Pop practically never wore a tie. And never, ever, ever a pair of red shoes.
Another drawing that deserves special mention is the one of the big cop overlooking the brat about to fire at something with his slingshot - likely a window, judging by the angle. One would like to see what happens next. Besides the amusing forbearance of the policeman (out of place here, given the imminent danger), what I notice is the boy’s resemblance to Popeye the Sailor. Same jowl and squint. Maybe Oliver intended it to be Popeye as a boy, before he lost an eye, possibly due to another kid’s slingshot. Note also Ol’s great monogram signature, the letters of OKZ combined into one graphic, like Albrecht Dürer’s famous AD monogram (which I adapted for my own initials AS), or the calligraphic stamps Japanese artists used to sign their works. Oliver was certainly acquainted with the work of Dürer, and it’s conceivable that Dürer’s monogram suggested his own.
The promotional drawing with Gutterball Gus (see above) can dated firmly to 1956 (note my art-historical rigor here), as it was in August of that year (when my brother and I turned five) that the Islip Bowl first opened for business. I like to think of the “home-made” aspect of everything Pop and Oliver did in operating the bowling alley. They didn’t engage an ad agency to take care of their publicity - they did it all themselves. They cut out the middle man, and “we pass the savings on to you!”
A couple of the bits of art used for these promos were obviously not Oliver’s work: the line drawing of the senior couple must have been clipped from somewhere, the lines copied or traced by Oliver. It’s clearly not his hand, as the art historians would say. Likewise the illustration of the smiling boy holding the bowling ball. However, observe the hand supporting the ball - this is doubtlessly Oliver’s work, pasted over the boy. Compare it to the hands of Gus or Sadie, their fingers “defined” by a long continuous squiggle. (Ol’s thumbs were always prehensile, however, and the fingers jointed where appropriate.) The girl in the black dress is also by Oliver - with her skinny limbs she resembles a young Olive Oyl. But with those curly locks she could be the daughter of the overstuffed Centereach Sadie.
I had presumed that the lettering in these promos was by Oliver - and in part it is, in particular the stylized lettering, bulbous, with a sort of 3D effect, such as “Centereach Lanes” in the middle of the starburst. But the rest I’m sure is my father’s hand-lettering, and it seems so clear to me now that I don’t know why I ever supposed otherwise. I know Pop’s handwriting very well from the many letters he composed, of which I have either originals or photocopies. (They will be the subject of another blog article I plan to write, which will be very interesting.) He wrote exclusively in capital letters, as if small-case didn’t even exist. I also believe he used a bowling alley pencil, as often as not, as his chosen implement, or a Bic. We had a couple of old typewriters in our house, but he preferred to write by hand.
The bowling team “tribute” drawings - for the Blue Jays, the Cast Offs, The Bumble Bees, Arf ’n Arf, the Buccaneers, Trader Horn, Starfish Marine, Hammer’s Auto Body, and Duck’s Cesspool Service - are just a handful of probably many more that Oliver made on behalf of the teams that participated in our many bowling leagues. Some had a connection with a local business - you can tell by the names - while others were just groups of friends who formed a team and gave themselves a name. It’s quite possible that Oliver worked on these drawings at the desk during league play, when he just had to keep one eye on things.
The drawing for the Cast Offs (with the man sitting on the desert island) you might expect ought to say the Castaways. But that wasn’t the name of the team. Instead, the name suggests things thrown away or rejected, like old clothing or junk, and I suppose that’s what the team had in mind. The Buccaneers were the Islip High School varsity bowling team (my brother and I were members); we were a strong team, and won the New York State championship in 1967 (not that anyone at school much cared or noticed except for us, as our football and basketball teams were not so good). Arf ’n Arf (punning on half ’n half) was a team - perhaps a couple in a couples’ league - who (I guess from the drawing) had a powerful thing going on between them. Or perhaps they were dog breeders, and depended on dogs’ natural libido for their livelihood.
I indicate two drawings - for the Buccaneers and for Trader Horn - for their caricatural distortions of the face, especially of the mouth and teeth. They suggest the influence of the noted illustrator Basil Wolverton, whose work I used to see in Mad Magazine in the early days. (Wolverton’s work is technically quite good - extremely precise pen-and-ink drawing - but most of it is also quite grotesque and off-putting, misogynistic and misanthropic at the same time. Borderline obscene. His sense of humor, also, falls completely flat for me, all the more because Wolverton seems to have thought he was very funny.)
Duck’s Cesspool Service deserves a special mention. Francis X. Duck worked with my father in his building business during the early 1950s, and when Pop opened the Islip Bowl, Francis started his own business, a cesspool cleaning service. He had a little help from my father, who co-signed a loan, knowing that he could count on Francis, so that Francis could acquire his first truck. He was a good businessman, and over the years expanded his business considerably. He was a regular at the bowling alley, where he bowled and sponsored a team. He was black, in a community with very few black people, and he was the first black person I ever knew. (I remember vaguely, from when I was small, a raucous all-day beach party at Fire Island, with our family, Duck and his, and all sorts of people my father knew.) He was a very friendly, warm, funny, and jovial man, well-liked by everyone. If some of them had racist notions (and I don’t doubt that some did), apparently they made an exception for Francis. I can’t help but think that, given the social conditions of the time and place, the cesspool business was one of the few possibilities open for a man like Francis Duck.
Allen Schill
Torino, Italy, October 9, 2022
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