[Tric Y Trake, El Mundo newspaper, Buenos Aires, 6 June 1944. Click to see larger image.]
A minor side benefit of my research into the El Mundo "Dance Guides" of the 40s was that I got to read Tric Y Trake, a cartoon strip that appeared daily on El Mundo's radio page (which was the page where most of the dance ads appeared, until 1944). They're not wildly funny, and they sometimes resort to crude slapstick, but they're well drawn and, taken as a whole, they reveal a lot about the times. At the same time, they're universal; comic strips today deal with the same themes.
In this strip, from 6 June 1944, one of the boys, the short, runty one, runs for the streetcar. (I still don't know which one it Tric and which one is Trake...) In the second frame, he looks very uncomfortable as he's buffeted by a crowd of much taller male riders. Third frame, he's startled to find an empty seat. "Oh! what do I see? A seat!" he cries. In the last frame, he lies unconscious in a hospital bed as an orderly tells his buddy, the tall, skinny one, "Yes, he's getting better now -- he got so emotional that he passed out."
We might run some other Tric Y Trake strips from time to time, just to give you the flavor of the times. Unless anyone objects....
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