A12
East Oregonian
PEANUTS
Thursday, August 12, 2021
COFFEE BREAK
DEAR ABBY
BY CHARLES M . SCHULZ
‘New’ father insists baby girl be kept a secret
FOR BETTER OR WORSE
BY LYNN JOHNSTON
B.C.
BY JOHNNY HART
PICKLES
BY BRIAN CRANE
of our child? — Can’t Figure It Out
Dear Abby: My fiance, “Nathan,” and I
met in college 12 years ago. At the time, he
Dear Can’t: I don’t think Nathan is
was helping to raise a child he thought was his.
ashamed of his daughter. He may be being
He was crazy about his son, “Joey.”
overly careful about news of his
Everywhere we went, he would show
baby girl because he was so badly
him off, post pictures of them together
burned. He went overboard posting
on social media and talk about Joey
pictures and talking nonstop about
nonstop.
his “son”; this time he has gone over-
When Joey turned 9, Joey’s mother
board in the opposite direction. Could
finally told Nathan that Joey was not
this have anything to do with a fear
his son. When a DNA test proved it
that Nathan’s ex will find out he has
was true, the stuff hit the fan. Not
another child? You won’t know unless
Jeanne
only had the mom known from the
you ask him. Between you and me,
Phillips
beginning that Joey wasn’t Nathan’s,
unless you’re willing to go along with
ADVICE
this secrecy business — which I don’t
it turned out so did his family and all
his friends. It took a while for Nathan
think is healthy — your fiance should
to overcome the shock. Once he did,
be urged to consult a licensed psycho-
he decided he wanted to start a family. He
therapist who can help him regain his balance.
proposed to me, and we welcomed our baby
Dear Abby: My husband and I have been
girl. (I never cheated on him, but to avoid any
married for 13 years. He is a kind of opti-
doubts he might have, once she arrived, we
mist. After a night of arguing and distancing,
did a DNA test.) Nathan has her spoiled rotten.
the next day he acts as though nothing has
The problem is, he acts very peculiar where
happened. He texts me from work, “Hey Babe!
she is concerned. Before she was born, he
Good morning. I love you.” Our arguments
wanted few people to know we were expect-
are not screaming matches but little spats that
ing. He said it was because he didn’t want to get
bother me a lot. Am I just a nagging wife? —
everybody’s hopes up in case anything went
Fighting Mad in New York
wrong, which was understandable. Now our
Dear Fighting Mad: Not necessarily. Your
baby is 3 months old, and he’s still keeping
husband may get past these fights faster and
her a secret.
more completely than you do. However, if
He doesn’t want to take family pictures and
his way of dealing with unresolved issues is
doesn’t post her on social media like he did
to pretend they don’t exist, I can understand
with Joey. He has asked his family and friends
your frustration. If this happens often, a text
and even me not to tell anyone about the baby,
the next morning isn’t going to improve the
situation. Your communication problem won’t
and he gets mad if we do. When I asked why
he’s acting this way, he said it’s because our
improve until you both agree to talk about this
child is “nobody’s business.” I love Nathan,
with a marriage and family therapist. If he is
and I understand that he was hurt once, but
not willing to do that, you might find a few
I’m starting to wonder. Is my fiance ashamed
sessions for yourself helpful.
DAYS GONE BY FROM THE EAST OREGONIAN
BEETLE BAILEY
GARFIELD
BLONDIE
BY MORT WALKER
BY JIM DAVIS
BY DEAN YOUNG AND STAN DRAKE
100 Years Ago
Aug. 12, 1921
Charles A. Weatherford is in the hospital
with a bullet in his back as a result of a shoot-
ing fray last night in which he is said to have
attempted to shoot his former wife, Mrs. Osla
Weatherford, and then turned the gun on
himself. Mrs. Weatherford was not injured
beyond the burns inflicted on her neck by
powder, and the condition of Weatherford is
not at all serious, it is thought. Weatherford
came here from his home in Washington, and
Henry Keys, owner of the house where Mrs.
Weatherford and her four children are living,
declared this morning that Weatherford has
attempted to get Mrs. Weatherford to forget
their past difficulties. She was granted a divorce
about a month ago.
50 Years Ago
Aug. 12, 1971
You’d think college athletic recruiters would
flock around Dean Fouquette like photogra-
phers around Raquel Welch in a bikini. Satur-
day, he will become the only person ever to
play in all three Oregon prep all-star games:
football, basketball and baseball. Yet when
Fouquette enrolls next month at Oregon State
University, he’ll be paying his own way for lack
of a scholarship, all because of heredity. Dean
is the son of a 4-foot-11 mother and a 5-5 father.
By modern athletic standards, he’s a midget at
5-7 and 140 pounds. That is, Fouquette says
he’s 5-7 and 140. His high school coach, Don
Requa, thinks his little quarterback exagger-
ates. “When he says 5-7, he’s including his
fluffy hairdo,” Requa said. “And he seemed to
disappear every time we tried to get him on the
scales. I’d say he’s closer to 125 pounds.”
25 Years Ago
Aug. 12, 1996
A helicopter built over the past year and
a half by a Hermiston air hobbyist fell to the
ground during testing Friday, slightly injuring
the man. Steve Jonas, who had put 275 hours
into the 1989 Rotorway Homebuilt, walked
away from the wreck with cuts and bruises but
was nonetheless transported to Good Shepherd
Community Hospital for observation. “I’m
depressed, disappointed and broke,” Jonas said
after the wreck. “But alive,” added Glen Phil-
lips, a paramedic who responded to the scene.
Having completed it only six weeks ago, Jonas
was testing the craft’s turning and hovering
ability at a height of between 10 and 15 feet
above a field west of the Hermiston Munici-
pal Airport when the helicopter fell. The rear
rotor, essential to keeping the craft stable, is
suspected to have failed.
TODAY IN HISTORY
DILBERT
THE WIZARD OF ID
LUANN
ZITS
BY SCOTT ADAMS
BY BRANT PARKER AND JOHNNY HART
BY GREG EVANS
BY JERRY SCOTT AND JIM BORGMAN
On August 12, 1985, the
world’s worst single-aircraft
disaster occurred as a crippled
Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on a
domestic flight crashed into a
mountain, killing 520 people.
(Four people survived.)
In 1867, President Andrew
Johnson sparked a move to
impeach him as he defied
Congress by suspending Secre-
tary of War Edwin M. Stanton,
with whom he had clashed
over Reconstruction policies.
(Johnson was acquitted by the
Senate.)
In 1902, International
Harvester Co. was formed by a
merger of McCormick Harvest-
ing Machine Co., Deering
Harvester Co. and several other
manufacturers.
In 1909, the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway, home to the
Indianapolis 500, first opened.
In 1939, the MGM movie
musical “The Wizard of Oz,”
starring Judy Garland, had its
world premiere at the Strand
Theater in Oconomowoc,
Wisconsin, three days before
opening in Hollywood.
In 1953, the Soviet Union
conducted a secret test of its
first hydrogen bomb.
In 1960, the first balloon
communications satellite —
the Echo 1 — was launched by
the United States from Cape
Canaveral.
In 1964, author Ian Flem-
ing, 56, the creator of James
Bond, died in Canterbury,
Kent, England.
In 1981, IBM introduced
its first personal computer, the
model 5150, at a press confer-
ence in New York.
In 1994, in baseball’s eighth
work stoppage since 1972, play-
ers went on strike rather than
allow team owners to limit their
salaries. (The strike ended in
April 1995.)
In 2000, the Russian nuclear
submarine Kursk and its
118-man crew were lost during
naval exercises in the Barents
Sea.
In 2013, James “Whitey”
Bulger, the feared Boston mob
boss who became one of the
nation’s most-wanted fugitives,
was convicted in a string of 11
killings and dozens of other
gangland crimes, many of
them committed while he was
said to be an FBI informant.
(Bulger was sentenced to life;
he was fatally beaten at a West
Virginia prison in 2018, hours
after being transferred from a
facility in Florida.)
In 2017, a car plowed into
a crowd of people peacefully
protesting a white nationalist
rally in the Virginia college
town of Charlottesville, kill-
ing 32-year-old Heather Heyer
and hurting more than a dozen
others. (The attacker, James
Alex Fields, was sentenced to
life in prison on 29 federal hate
crime charges, and life plus
419 years on state charges.)
President Donald Trump
condemned what he called an
“egregious display of hatred,
bigotry and violence on many
sides.”
PHOEBE AND HER UNICORN
BY DANA SIMPSON
BIG NATE
BY LINCOLN PEIRCE