THETESTIMONIES

Between 1942 and 1966, when Carl Barks wrote his numerous comic book stories, he was able to extract many ideas from his own life. Still, it is not always apparent to the reader exactly when he used experiences from former jobs, hobbies, and family life. This page will show you a few examples - presented in loose chronological order - but there are many more. Nowadays, when Barks' life is commonly known by fans, you may be able to add a number of other examples such as stories about lumberjacking, farming, horseback riding, and cow handling.

The Barks ranch house about 1906

WDCS154

Barks would constantly draw all sorts of different buildings in his panels.

This example from WDCS154 resembles his first home in Oregon.

Memory Sketch by Barks from 1993

WDCS133

Young Carl attended a typical one-classroom school in a small wooden building on skids so that it could be moved from place to place in the area in order to be close to the greatest number of children. It had only one teacher who taught 12 students - small children and teenagers alike. The classroom also contained a small library with novels by Charles Dickens and poems by Henry Longfellow.
Barks' favourite subjects were arithmetic, history, and geography.

Early Twentieth Century Cattle Train

WDCS238

In 1908, when the farm failed, Barks' father got a job at the new railroad station in the neighbouring town of Midland. He realized that there was a future in railroads, and both he and his boys were employed with the cattle transports feeding the livestock in the corrals before moving them down the line for slaughtering.

Typical Plum Orchard

WDCS190

One day in 1911 Barks' father took the whole family and moved from young Carl's ancestral home in Oregon to Santa Rosa in California where they started working in a large plum orchard. Father Barks had had some fruitful years in California before he met his wife, and he was convinced that they would strike it rich.

Unfortunately, those were the worst years within memory of man for harvesting plums, and the small family was forced to return to the farm in Merrill.

1916

WDCS112

Barks never had many hobbies, but in his youth he participated in activities with his friends. Here he is seen skating (X marks the spot) on a nearby lake.
Later on he probably remembered these good times, because he wrote a number of stories about ice skating.

Fire Chief

WDCS086

Especially in the beginning of his comic book story career, the mid 1940s, Barks used a number of gags which he took from some of the animated shorts that he had worked on previously in Disney's Story Department.

Examples are Sea Scouts (WDCS033), Donald's Snow Fight (WDCS043), Fire Chief (WDCS086), and Truant Officer Donald (WDCS100).

Perry Como

WDCS165 Perry Cougar

Barks always liked music but he never listened to it while he was working. He never was especially interested in the latest novelties in the audio market and he only owned a CD player in his last years because some friends bought it for him.

Barks' taste in music tended to be the works of composers like Steven Foster (Oh Susanna) and singers like Perry Como (Catch A Falling Star) and Bing Crosby (White Christmas).

In WDCS165 he incorporated caricatures of Perry Como and pianist/showman Liberace under the names of Perry Cougar and Lizardaze.

The ranch photographed in 1995

WDCS057

Barks was very fond of the art of photography, which was also reflected in a number of stories where Donald Duck was a photographer. In Barks' later years he owned a number of professional cameras that - among other things - were used to take pictures of his paintings at different stages of completion.
In 1995 Barks stopped by his ancestral home in Oregon where he took photographs of the farmhouse and the surroundings from the highway.

Göran Broling*, Garé, and Carl at Elmer's

WDCS264

Barks was not picky when it came to food - he liked all good cooking.

His favourite meal during the daytime was a good old-fashioned country breakfast with pancakes and eggs. This was very important to him and after his wife Garé died in 1993 he would go every Sunday morning to have a wholesome breakfast at Elmer's Pancake House in East Grants Pass.

Sutter's Fort at Sacramento, California

FC0328

In a great number of ten-pagers Barks would draw locales that were very familiar to him because he lived in the same sort of surroundings. And even one adventure story was filled with locales from his own 'backyard' - 0328 In Old California! from 1951.

But it was in 1943 when Barks drew his first example of the mountains outside his windows in San Jacinto in a panel of WDCS036.

Mayan Temple Ruin

U$44 Crown of the Mayas

Barks had his ducks travel to numerous countries. Though he had never really been to these places, he could always count on assistance from the National Geographic Magazine to make the drawings come out realistically.

Barks was increasingly interested in the ancient times. This was reflected in his many comic book stories based upon myths from Greek and Nordic mythology, as well as other ancient lands.

Puget Sound Today

WDCS167

Barks always took his cameras along when he travelled. He often used them to photograph locations that he could use in his stories.
This example is from WDCS167 from 1954 where the ducks visit Puget Sound to fish for salmon. The location - as seen here in Barks' very first half-page splash panel - was drawn from a real site by the same name in Washington State when he visited his older daughter Peggy*.

Modern Salmon Hatchery

WDCS192

Daughter Peggy's husband worked at a salmon hatchery close to Puget Sound, and in 1956 Barks wrote a story in WDCS192 based on casual observations at the site. In the story Donald claims to be a fish culture expert.

In U$37 Deep Down Doings from 1962 Barks hatched yet another story with a salmon hatchery as the same basic motif.

U$18

Barks had strong opinions about the mistreatment of the environment. He mostly campaigned against industrial misuse of the world's ecology in the 1970s. He often commented on the general deterioration of the environment in his Junior Woodchucks stories in the HDL series.
But long before the environmentalists 'took over' Barks was attacking man's destruction of nature. In 1957 he wrote U$18 Land of the Pygmy Indians which made it clear that people mistreated their surroundings by thoughtless pollution of air and water.

In WDCS210 from 1958 Barks paid tribute to his grandchildren by mentioning them in the first panels of the story.
Their names are Bradley, Jackie, Patty, and Teresa Jane.

Goldfield Hotel, Nevada

U$56 Mystery of the Ghost Town Railroad

In 1964 - during a car trip - Barks and Garé drove by a hotel in Nevada which was said to be haunted by a girl and her newborn baby who had both been killed. That was all Barks needed to dream up a story about a ghost infested hotel.

Other examples: A vacation to British Columbia gave scenes to FC0263 Land of the Totem Poles, and a trip to Disneyland triggered FC1025 Mastering the Matterhorn.

WDCS286

'Mountain Laurel Time' by Garé

Barks disliked modern art. This should come as no surprise when one thinks of both his and his wife Garé's enormous output of 'straightforward', realistic paintings. Neither of them ever even attempted to produce any type of modern art.
In WDCS294 Barks satirized the subject by letting Gladstone Gander win first prize for a 'painting' consisting of incidental objects glued to the canvas.