I Bumped Into Myself

Myron Cohen had a famous joke about the guy who was discovered by the husband who came home unexpectedly to find the guy and his wife in the bedroom together with little on but smiles. The guy was caught hiding in the closet and tells the husband as he flings the hiding place door open: "Well, everybody's got to be someplace."

It's an old joke that I still get a kick out of the tag line. Likewise I always remember the Bill Gallo cartoon about the passing of the middleweight boxer Tony Janiro who passed away in 1985.

Bill drew a picture of Tony in heaven with the caption: "They're calling my class," acknowledging the passing of a contemporary of Bill's.

I've been a bit fond of that phrase, just like everybody's got to be some place. So, when I wrote the posting for the passing of George Foreman I again felt close to, "They're calling class," because Foreman was a true contemporary, born the same year as myself, and someone I had watched, read about, and knew of. As George got older, so did I, year by year.

I like to try and place a photo in a blog that relates to the narrative. So, I went looking and hoping against hope that somehow I'd find an image on the Web of Bill Gallo's Tony Janiro cartoon. Talk about being optimistic!

Janiro passed away in 1985. Bill Gallo passed away in 2011. Expecting his entire output of cartoons to be digitized and available via a link would have been too good to be true. But I tried anyway.

Say this about search engines. They can deliver. I got a hit on my query, "Bill Gallo, Tony Janiro cartoon." Top of the heap, a link back to myself when I wrote a posting about the passing of a high school classmate on May 7, 2020.

Imagine my surprise when I was linked back to myself, a posting I had forgotten that made the reference back to the Bill Gallo cartoon. 

I always held onto the sentiment of that Gallo cartoon—the passage of time and the passing of contemporaries.

Since the 2020 posting about the passing of Heyward Dotson, I've heard through the alumni news that one home room classmate and another student I knew of have passed away.

How does something I write get a link on the Web? What algorithm plucks a posting to be found by a search engine?

I went searching under George Foreman, a recent posting, and nothing within a few pages linked back to the posting on March xx, 2025. I queried under  Bill Veeck and Eddie Gaedel, and Willie Nelson, all names I've recently referred to my recent postings.  No links.

So, how does the Internet work when it chooses, or doesn't choose to link to something? I have no idea. I do know that my class is beginning to get called.

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