Liquor shortages do not faze Arpad. New Year's Eve he will get tiddledy-boo drunk again. His nephew, Gabe, will have to pick up the pieces, pack Arpad safely home. It happens every year.
Arpad is the last word in newspaper birds. He cavorts in the New York World-Telegram's weather stories, has become one of the big town's richest chuckles. A happy combination of oaf and genius, he is a blithe and silly little rooster, and the stories in which he appears have a cock eyed quality and an underlying mood of ennui. Samples:
A drawing of Arpad in a wheel chair, holding a blood donor card: "Arpad just looks as if he's worn out from donating his thimbleful of gore to the Red Cross. Actually he's a wreck from having mulled too long over the question of what it is when people say it looks like rain. What looks like rain? People look out a window at Cramholtz & Eder's furniture store and say, 'Oh, it looks like rain.' What does—Cramholtz & Eder's store?. . . Then of course there is the inevitable answer to it looks like rain—i.e., 'You never can tell.' Who never can tell? . . . Don't say WE can't tell. . . . Slightly scattered showers and warmer tonight."
Or this one, with a drawing of Arpad watching Gabe arrange sandbags: "These are, of course, nerve-racking times. . . . Today the Weather Bureau reported: 'This afternoon slowly rising temperatures. No snow or rain. Tonight not so cold. No precipitation.' Who asked them if there would be snow or rain? Who asked about precipitation? No one. They have begun anticipating. . . . Soon they will be sending stories out saying that there will be no sun in Hoboken, or no daylight in Canarsie. . . .
Arpad, something of a neurotic himself, has whipped up a few more bits of weather information. . . . No thunderstorms tomorrow. Also no sleet, hail, eclipses or earthquakes. First showing of the feature picture at 12:31. . . ." Arpad was born in 1937 (for a few weeks he was called "Eggo — the Vane Bird") when the World-Telegram wanted to dress up Rewriteman H. Allen Smith's wacky weather stories (example: "Workers, arise! This would be a nice day to have off!"). Arpad's pen-&-ink father is 46-year-old Bill Pause (real name: Pause-wang), a greying, soft-spoken staff artist. Where Arpad's name originally came from no one knows for sure. A town mentioned in the Bible has the name Arpad. So has a Hungarian national hero.
"Stinker, Chiseler!" At first Arpad was an ordinary rooster, with abundant tail feathers. To give the bird distinction, Pause defeathered him gradually, removing a little more tail each time Arpad appeared (usually only once a week) and adding clothes as he did so. It took six months, but not a reader noticed.
But Arpad's finest trait is his humanness. Pause and bean-lean Rewriteman Mel Heimer, 28, who now writes the Arpad stories, have given their bird a personality as individual as Donald Duck's. Says Heimer: "He's a chiseler, a no-good with the mental ability of a weather vane —one day one thing, the next day another. In short, a stinker!"