BACK IN THE '60s, my brother Dave and I took a shine to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth and his cartoon fiend, Rat Fink. They were like badges on our pent-up, rebellious spirits. As Brigham City Mormon kids, we needed an outlet; we longed to bust out of our quiet lives. And Rat Fink was a way. He was Mickey Mouse's evil twin; Wile E. Coyote on peyote. We wanted to be Ed Roth with fast lives and faster cars. We never thought Big Daddy would want to be us.
But we were wrong.Today, "Brother Roth" lives in mild-mannered Manti and helps out with the temple work there. He pitches in during The Pageant, attends singles dances and watches his health. Queen Elizabeth herself couldn't get him to sip tea.
But down in his innards, he's still Big Daddy. The Rat Finks still pour from his pens and onto T-shirts, posters and comic book covers.
That why I'm nominating Ed Roth for the 1995 MUMU Award (the Most Unusual Mormon in Utah).
Ed Roth is an oddball pioneer.
"Back in the early '70s," Roth says, "a bunch of us were disassembling hot bikes and doing drugs in this garage, and there was a 70-year-old guy named Frank Lang who would come over and joke with us. One day I said, `Frank, you're always so happy. What drugs are you on?' He said `I'll bring you some of my drugs.' The next day he showed up with a Book of Mormon. `Here's my drugs,' he said. And he gave me the book. It took me two years to read the thing."
But read it he did. And after reading it, Ed Roth rethought his life and then rethought his future. He became a Mormon.
But that was just the start of his "long, strange trip."
Last year, Roth spoke with Deseret News business editor Max Knudson at the Autorama and told him of the move to Manti. Writes Max:
Roth joined the LDS Church in 1974 in Los Angeles. Then, on a trip, he drove through Manti and was "astounded" by the beauty of the Manti Temple. "It brought tears to my eyes to see such a beautiful building."
Daddy was finally home.
Last week I phoned Roth, and he agreed to chat with me for a while in Provo before he headed to American Fork and a big-band church dance. His date for the evening was Pamela Stewart, a bright and polite young woman from Sanpete County.
Big Daddy was in the mood for Chinese food. And that Chinese restaurant in Provo was a long way from his old California garage, the drugs and those torn-down Harley motorcycles of the '70s. The craziest thing that happened to us in Provo was Pamela betting Big Daddy he couldn't eat the mu-shu pork without getting plum sauce on his shirt.
Ed Roth was living in a brave, new world.
"When I first started drawing Rat Fink," Roth said, "I knew I was getting somewhere when moms at the car shows would tell their kids, `C'mon, you don't want to see that.' I wasn't drawing anything too crazy, just rats with big eyeballs. I still don't know what kids saw in that stuff."
What they saw was what my brother Dave and I saw: A type of art that cried out, "You like this. Your parents hate this. You are not your parents."
"The truth is, I don't think anybody in Manti really knows what I do even now," Roth said. "A woman in the grocery store asked me how I made my money the other day, and I told her I sold T-shirts at car shows. She said she wanted to see a catalog, and I told her if I sold shirts to her, every kid in town would soon be living on my doorstep. And I didn't want that. I remember what that was like."
Before leaving the restauant, I asked Big Daddy if the old "beatnik" inside him ever went to war with "Brother" Roth's traditional values. He thought that over.
"When I first joined I thought I'd stop doing everything," he said. "But then a friend of mine in California named Bruce Thompson said a guy like me could have even more fun after I was baptized. I didn't believe it. With all the drugs out there, I'd been able to select any kind of fun I wanted. But he was right, I've had more fun following the path."
With that, Ed Roth gave me bag stuffed with posters, comics, key-chains and a couple of classic "Mother's Worry" T-shirts.
I plan to share the souvenirs with my brother Dave.
Hey, I may even share a couple with my parents.