Bob Schultz needs help solving a mystery.
About 30 years ago Schultz and his wife, Silvia, inherited seven small carved statues that were handmade by Silvia’s grandfather, Ralph Dowe, an Oakland man who worked on the railroads. He would carve or paint when he had free time.Schultz, 72, estimates the carvings were made about 1925.“We kept them wrapped in plastic in a box until recently,” he says.When Schultz took the carvings out of the box to show friends, who became very excited about the small figures, it made Schultz curious. Now he wants to know as much as he can about the characters that are depicted.“The may or may not be worth something. I would just like to know all I can about them,” Schultz says.A couple of the figures, which stand under 6-inches tall, are recognizable as the spinach-eating Popeye and The Little King, both popular comic strip characters from the ’20s and ’30s.Popeye appeared in the Thimble Theatre comic strip in 1929. Two of the other carvings could be of Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oyl and his hamburger-eating buddy Wimpy.The Little King figure suggests the carvings could have been made later than 1925. The comic strip created by Otto Soglow, first appeared in 1931 in The New Yorker.Anyone with a guess on the identity of the dolls should contact Schultz at chubbabob2@wildblue.net.