Climb on into the Foomobile, because this week, we’re going to pal around with one of the wackiest firemen ever. We’re talking about Smokey Stover, Bill Holman’s lanky goofball that kept audiences cracking up from 1935 until 1973. With bizarre, made up words and phrases, Smokey’s brand of humor was utterly unique and especially appealing to audiences who could appreciate a good pun.

From the head of the firehouse Chief Cash U. Nutt (a goofball-and-a-half with a desk shaped like a foot) to the firehouse cat (a scrawny little thing with a be-ribboned tail) to Smokey’s wife Cookie and son Earl, the Smokey Stover cast was a hodgepodge of hilarity and misadventure. But not only was the cast a riot, so were the settings in which they were placed. Mismatched furniture, flying heads, singing light bulbs (under which Holman wrote the caption “Light Opera”), two blades of grass greeting each other (“Lawn time no see”), a man placing fish on a table (“Laying his cods on a table”)... you get the idea.

Puns and zany characters were only the beginning of Holman’s genius, however. He got a kick out of making words up and either leaving them undefined or creating many different conflicting definitions for them. The phrase “Notary Sojac,” for example. Holman described it as Gaelic for “horsecrap.” He also described it as Gaelic for Merry Christmas.

Perhaps his most famous contribution to the modern lexicon, however, is the word “Foo.” Smokey considered himself a “Foo fighter,” his fire truck was a Foomobile, and he was often heard saying, “Where there’s Foo, there’s fire.” This word caught on, and the term “Foo Fighters” became popular army slang, referring to mysterious balls of light that reportedly appeared beside aircraft during WWII. Now, the term is still popular in UFO circles, and it’s even the name of a popular band.

His wacky words and screwball storylines made for a style that was individual only to Holman. It could not, as was proved when he retired and the strip ended in 1973, be replicated by anyone else. Be on the lookout, however, for original Smokey Stover strip art, comic books, Big Little Books and other memorabilia - and help spread the word to newer collectors about this wild, crazy, and altogether pun-derful character.