REPORT OF THE OPUS ADDICT

A Washington, D.C., reader, desperate to maintain her OPUS fix, e-mailed the following missive to The Washington Post's Ombudsman, Deborah Howell:

What other cities carry the cartoon strip "Opus" besides the Washington
Post? Are there any others on the East Coast that carry it on Sundays?
I am moving and I would like to know if there are any cities in the
Carolinas [or] Georgia. Thank you.

The ombudsman forwarded the question to Writers Group Comics Editor Amy Lago, who in turn asked the reader which cities in particular she was considering moving to. Her reply included a number of cities in North Carolina (Durham, Raleigh, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem and Savannah, Ga., all of which have papers carrying OPUS. But she added one more city to her list, Huntsville, Ala., where OPUS does not appear.

The grateful reader, who asked that we not reveal her name, was relieved with the list. So it looks like a newspaper in Savannah or one of those Carolina cities is going to gain a subscriber.

As to Huntsville? There's still time.

MOST OF ALL, I WILL REMEMBER HIS LAUGH

Bob Thaves, the cartoonist who drew Frank and Ernest for nearly 35 years, passed away on Tuesday, Aug. 1. I was lucky to be his editor for a number of those years. I also renegotiated more than one contract with him, which, as you would imagine, could get testy, my having to be the "big bad" syndicator, his being the creative force behind a strip that appeared in about 1,200 papers. But despite the testy moments, we always came to a satisfactory agreement, because Bob was the title of his strip: frank and earnest. Sometimes he was more frank than I'd have liked -- and I wound up on the receiving end of at least one tirade -- but in the end, it made hashing though contract details easier. He didn't pussyfoot his way around what he needed and wanted. And being earnest, he could listen to the big bad syndicate's point of view and accept a reasonable compromise. And I could get past the tirade, which I understood was cathartic for him. And once we settled, we'd be laughing again.

Bob was part of the greatest generation. Like many WWII veterans, he never talked much about his war experiences, at least not to me. That's another thing about Bob -- he loved life and preferred to celebrate it rather than focusing on the sadness and pain of it. He was a lover of fine food, fine opera and fine sunsets. He also adored his two children, Tom and Sara, and his wife and boon companion of 52 years, Kate. A number of years ago, he bought a sporty two-seater convertible. Here was this couple in their mid-70s zooming around southern California with the top down, like teenagers on a date, laughing like kids. They were, no doubt, on a date their entire lives together.

Frank and Ernest readers may notice that Bob put his periods under rather than inside his close quotes. Bob always maintained that the AP Stylebook was wrong and that the period should go after the close quote. I always maintained that it looked much nicer inside, and this was the rule, and how much did it matter to him, anyway? The answer was that Bob was also a lover of being right. So he came to a compromise on that point, sticking it under the quotes -- a little bit for him, a little bit for AP style. And the compromise made him laugh, I'm sure. It made me.

Speaking of being right, he detested making typos. So when I'd call him to OK the correction of an obvious error, he'd claim he was just testing me to make sure I was doing my job. I told him that wasn't wise, but I'd sure try to ace every test. It got to be a joke, though an infrequent one because he made so few errors. I'd call him and say "I've told you not to test me because someday I'm going to screw up." And he'd laugh that laugh. One loud infectious guffaw. And then I'd HEAR the twinkle in his eye, me in Manhattan (as in New York) and him in Manhattan Beach (as in California), clear as a bell across the phone lines, while he made some smart-ass comment. One that always made me laugh. And then I'd get a big iambic laugh back -- haHA!

I loved his laugh. He loved making me, and everybody else in the world, laugh. A sweet deal.