If you need me, I’m being held at pun-point.
ducks and runs
Seriously, I think the answer needs to be something like that. Even if it’s that lame, it needs to be, I dunno, recognizable.
Nobody. We’re saying it needs to be at least a failed attempt at being funny. “The morgue” isn’t funny on any level. What’s even remotely amusing about the sheriff guessing that the embalathon is at the morgue? It’s not even a bad joke.
The joke probably has something to do with “insomnia in toe taggers,” otherwise, why mention it?
It’s probably significant that toward the end of the cartoon, the original cartoonist no longer drew it, and it was farmed out to, among other people, Jim Davis.
Jim Davis? The guy who drew Garfield?
Got news for you: My own cat is a thousand times funnier than Garfield, and he doesn’t even try.
IMHO, everyone (a) is way overanalyzing this silly cartoon and (b) has expectations that are far too high.
Take my advice and give it a rest!
I believe this is the correct interpretation.
Claude Clay viewed the world from the warped and solipsistic perspective of a cartoon undertaker. It is in character for him to describe the mass execution and burial of murderous outlaws–that is, metaphorical “toe taggers”–as an “embalmathon” to cure “insomnia” among the victims. The insomnia will be cured by putting them to eternal sleep.
The sheriff, familiar with Claude’s odd locutions and ways of thought, sees the reality behind the euphemism. He “can guess” what is really happening.
The joke fails in more than one way. First, it would be better to remove the words “raise funds for”; the embalmathon will cure insomnia more directly. Second, the emphasis on where the embalmathon will take place, rather than what it represents, is misplaced. Because where will it take place? Right under the hangman’s noose? At the morgue? What’s funny about an embalming at the morgue? That’s where embalming normally takes place.
But the joke, weak as it is, is that Claude describes his participation at a mass execution in such stilted terms, but that the sheriff divines his real meaning.
Speaking as a former newspaper editor in Dodge City, other than the idea of just too much information regarding the subject, it was not one of his best. If I were asked, I would have moved the gathering to Arizona…that way it could be held in Tombstone and information about the convention could be posted to the city’s newspaper, the Epitaph (one of the great newspaper names in the Old West). Granted, Dodge did have the most famous Boot Hill in the west.
Gotcha! Thank you for that.
Ryan actually gave permission to several tribal groups to use his certain of his Indian characters as logos for their newspapers, etc. Many have said they enjoy the Poohawks’ low-key calm and insouciance in the face of absurdity.
The strip dipped horribly in quality, when the words first started being type-set instead of lettered. But that problem, as well as the overall drop in humor, was soon repaired, and if it is due to a staff of guest/ghost writers, well…that’s good enough for us fans!
It’s also fun to note the amazing size of the cast! Tumbleweeds has hundreds of named, recurring characters! I used to think that Pogo had a huge cast, but Tumblyweeds is even bigger!
Gosh, I wonder how many named, recurring characters* L’il Abner* had? that one was huge too.
When were you there? I grew up there until I went to college in1986. Worked summers at Boot Hill and everything!
I wish our paper still carried Tumbleweeds. 
Claude Clay was one of my favorite characters. I loved the sign at his shop.
“You plug 'em, we plant 'em”
Oh give me a spot
A wee, picturesque plot
Where the lichen and bryophyte spawn
On the hilltop’s brown crown
Overlooking the town
I will see what I’ll miss when I’m gone.
Tombstone was the first thing that came to my mind, too. Taking the conversation as is it just seems the most natural answer.
We over lapped a bit. I left in '88 after about five years there. I liked Dodge…still do, but it had begun to fade with the closing of St. Mary of the Plains College.
My guess is that the Sheriff wants Claude to stop being so gruesomely enthusiastic.
Think about what “embalmathon” means: there’s going to be a convention of morticians competing against each other to embalm as many corpses as possible until the last one remains standing. This concept is counterproductive to the intention of helping morticians (toetaggers) sleep better, as the most sturdy of competitors is going to resist falling asleep as long as possible.
Think about a dance marathon, but instead of couples dancing, it’s a convention hall full of morticians fondling dead bodies.
It’s not an immediate-laugh gag. It’s one that requires some thinking, and the more one imagines what takes place during an embalmathon, the more grotesque it gets. It’s not so much the location that’s the punchline; it’s what’s being done there.
OK, I can’t remember the last time I heard anything about Dodge City or Tombstone (and my grandfather had the crime beat for the Wichita Eagle for decades), and I don’t know if I ever knew enough to make the connection, but I definitely don’t now. However, I am not the sort of person who reads Tumbleweeds on a regular basis. If I were, that probably would have come to my mind right away.
I think that’s what we’re meant to jump to.
It also makes sense in context, because I don’t know whether undertakers of the time actually spent time in morgues. Morgues, IIRC, were where bodies of crime victims were kept if they needed to be pending a coroner’s inquest, and rudimentary autopsies were done, but burials took place ASAP, and unclaimed bodies were kept by the police. If someone in your family was missing, you could check out the morgue. I’m not even sure when the word “undertaker” came to mean a funeral director. An “undertaker” was the head of a plantation in the 1700s. In the UK, an undertaker was someone who worked for the English crown and took over forfeited properties in Ireland.
Embalming started during the civil war, when people wanted bodies back. So undertakers maybe were a little crazy, because they dealt with a lot of arsenic.
Was Tumbleweeds set in a specific year, or was it explicitly before or after the civil war?
I really can’t handle that second cup of coffee.
I think that’s the best answer.
The problem I have with this interpretation is that the logical response from the Sheriff, then, should have been “I get it, I get it!” rather than saying he can guess. The actual response still suggests to me that the reader ought to be able to fill in the blank on the location.
Yup. Mellowed out with some antihistamines, and it’s all better now.
This Tumbleweeds…it is deep…
How about someone post the ones before and after? I saw one of them for sale at some site. It looked like from the same week.
On what do you base that? Embalming has been happening to important people since ancient Egypt. Are you saying embalming only started being done to average Joe’s during the Civil War?
I guess the cartoon just means we should know it’s Boot Hill, since that’s the obvious place there would be a fast-food level throughput of bodies needing a mortician’s services.
And cure for insomnia because…hey! Print strips are written by addled old fuckers! Stop asking questions!
Har har!
No specific year, just “The Old West.”
If you wanted to play Sherlock Holmes games, you could… There are references to Abraham Lincoln’s death, so it’s after the Civil War. There was one reference to Custer and Little Big Horn, as the news was being spread as an early rumor, so that nails the date down.