CDB Flashback: When the Farmer Needed to Cultivate a New Career

Crain's Detroit Business - May 16, 2005

Farmer Jack supermarkets were a locally owned institution in metro Detroit, evolving from the Food Fair supermarket chain in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Farmer Jack brand - and Farmer Jack himself - first appeared in 1966. In 1989, A&P bought the chain from its local owners and by 1994, all the former metro area A&P stores were rebranded as Farmer Jack - a testiment to the strength of the brand. However, in 2005, A&P put the stores up for sale. Unable to find a buyer for the chain, individual stores were sold off and in 2007, the last Farmer Jack store closed.

In this May 2005 Crain's Detroit Business cartoon, I imagined that the Farmer himself could see the writing on the barn wall and started thinking about cultivating a new career in a different field.

Off the Drawing Board: Over the next weeks, maybe months, I'm taking a look back at 28 years of cartooning for Crain's Detroit Business. None of my cartoons from 1995-2005 were digitized. Back then, I delivered originals to the Crain's offices downtown and picked them up every six weeks or so. Because of that, some of my early looks back may not be in chronological order. They'll be in the order that I stumble upon the originals in my attic, basement or garage!

Thanks for reading!

 

Cartoon of the Week: You Can't Get There From Here

Crain's Detroit Business - January 29

Following the brief region-wide team effort to compose the Amazon HQ2 bid, the metro area's top elected officials are back to sniping and confrontation about key issues including regional transit. Without viable, effective regional transit, Detroit's come-back and sustainable growth in the metro area will be impossible. Certainly, bridge and road infrastructure repairs and updates are needed, but that's only part of the equation. Personal mobility is changing and our thinking about mobility must also change. If not, we're going nowhere.

The future? You can't get there from here.
That's the Point!