JIM HEFFERNAN'S BLOG

The life and times of Bomba the Jungle Boy...

2026-03-07T12:47:00.002-06:00

Bomba the Jungle Boy,1949 movie/source: Wikipedia

Written By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/3-7-26

When actor Johnny Weissmuller, the first sound-movie Tarzan, got too old and corpulent to continue playing the loincloth-wearing Lord of the Jungle, the studio cast the boy who played his son “Boy” (the boy’s name was Boy) in the lead role in a new jungle-based film franchise called “Bomba the Jungle Boy.”

That was where the Boys were.

Boy was portrayed by young actor Johnny Sheffield, who grew up in the film jungle with Tarzan and wife Jane, and who added the chimp Cheeta to the family for chump change. But by the late 1940s-early ‘50s Boy was a strapping youth who could handle jungle evil doers and swing from trees, swim with crocodiles and befriend elephants and chimpanzees, just like Tarzan had done. Welcome to the world of Bomba, his new name.

I guess there were half a dozen or so Bomba the Jungle Boy movies, and I was watching one of them on a hospital maternity ward TV when my daughter was born. This was in the ‘70s just before the era when prospective fathers were allowed in the delivery room to accompany their wives as they laboriously produced their child.

So, after spending several hours before the big birthing moment with my wife as she endured the pains of impending delivery known as “labor,” when the water had broken and the child was about to come, the hospital staff wheeled her into the delivery room and shunted me off to wait in the TV room with a couple of other expectant fathers and Bomba the Jungle Boy on the TV screen.

This is a pretty nervous time for the expectant father but a lot easier than the role of the expectant mother. So, I leaned back in a TV room chair and watched the redoubtable Bomba do his stuff to fight jungle evils in darkest Africa or maybe on a Hollywood studio back lot — most likely the latter.

Then suddenly there was an interruption. “You are the father of a baby girl,” a smiling nurse said as she beckoned me into a nearby room where the new mother and our newborn daughter, wrapped in swaddling cloths, were waiting. I won’t go into describing that wonderful, touching moment. So many have been through it. It’s true love at first sight.

But what about Bomba the Jungle Boy? Not that I cared, but the baby’s arrival interrupted my watching it in the fathers’ TV room and despite the passage of time (try five decades) I never forgot what I was doing when I found out I was a father.

Segue now to the present, to the middle of a recent night. Sleepless around 4 a.m. (it happens), I rolled out of bed and made my way to the living room television, tuned it into Turner Classic Movies and there, at long last, was Bomba the Jungle Boy, the first time I’d seen him since the birth of our daughter.

I can’t be sure it was the same movie (there were several Bomba movies), but it brought back the memory of that day so long ago. Over the years I have often told this story — that I remember watching a Bomba the Jungle Boy movie when I first became a father. It impressed no one.

But I find it fun to revive Bomba this way. We’re a couple of generations beyond Bomba and Tarzan and that whole era when Hollywood shoveled superficial nonsense adventure into the theaters of pre-TV America, films to be picked up decades later and shown on TV in the middle of the night.

I’m not sure my daughter, the girl born to us that day, is aware of this tale. She’ll be able to read it now. She got a brother almost three years later (they still weren’t inviting fathers into the delivery room) so I repaired to the maternity ward TV room again. His arrival was less dramatic— no Bomba the Jungle Boy, no lions or tigers or bears. (What? There are no bears in Africa? Oh my.)

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

From Don du Lac to Miller Trump Highway, this isn't dreamy...

2026-02-27T15:53:00.015-06:00

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/2-27-26

I had a crazy dream the other night. Come to think of it, they’re all crazy. I usually forget my dreams shortly after I wake up, but I remembered this one because…well, because…oh, you’ll see.

The dream was set in Duluth’s near future, around 2029 I’d guess. In it I was driving my car around Duluth, no particular destination involved. It used to be called “a ride.” I was out for a plain old ride.

But being in the future, it revealed a different Duluth. Many Duluth scenes had somehow changed. Like Canal Park and the Aerial Lift Bridge. A sign said Canal Park had been renamed Trump Lakeside Park and the lift bridge was now the Donald J. Trump Aerial Lift Bridge.

Hmmm.

Continuing my drive, I made my way along Duluth’s main drag, Superior Street, but noticed all the signs designating the street said it was now called Donald J. Trump Superior Way. Boy, that was a surprise. It’s been called Superior Street for 150X years.

Driving along the newly named street (or “Way”) I noticed what had always been called the NorShor Theater looked different. I’ll say. The marquee now proclaimed it was the — need I write it out? — The Donald J, Trump NorShor Theater. Nearby was the brightly lit Don du Luth Casino.

I began seeing a Trump trend in this dream-world look at the future.

Proceeding along Donald J. Trump Superior Way, I glanced at the complex we call the DECC — Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. No longer. It was now called the DTECC — the Donald Trump Entertainment Convention Center. The complex included the Trump Symphony Hall and the DJTAA — you guessed it: the Donald J. Trump Amsoil Arena.

Stirring in my sleep, I began to sense a pattern here.

Continuing my dreamy drive, I curved with the road around the Point of Rocks (surprisingly they were still called that) and found myself entering what was once known as the West End, but became Lincoln Park a few years ago. No more. It was now called Trump Park, switching American presidents. Lincoln is so old hat, my dream indicated.

A little farther along, there was the entertainment/restaurant/sports complex known as Clyde Iron. Not any more. It will come as no surprise to readers of this that in my dream it was called “Trump Iron.” Who cares? Might as well name it after a president instead of this Clyde guy, whose full name was Clyde Kadiddlehopper, brother of Clem, right? It’s already got a Giuliani Hall, just add Trump buddy Rudy’s name. Dreams take strange turns.

Continuing on my westward drive I encountered the ski resort once known as Sprit Mountain. Its sign now proclaimed it was the Spirit of Donald Trump Mountain. “That has a ring to it,” my dream observed. It’s located on far western Grand Trump Avenue.

Glancing around in my dream, I could see atop the Duluth hill the imposing structure once and forever known as Enger Tower. No longer. The tower was now called Trump Tower at Donald J. Trump Park. Picknickers welcome.

I was beginning to feel restless as morning drew near but kept right on dreaming (no snoring, though). My journey was inexplicably jumping around. Suddenly I was way out in Don du Lac and the next thing I knew I was driving along U.S. Highway 53 (Miller Trunk), now known as the Miller Trump.

Then suddenly I was headed up another rural road, Rice Lake, passing the city’s landfill, now called the Trump Dump, which has a ring to it, don’t-cha-think?

Before I awakened, my dream suddenly changed seasons and I was again driving along Donald J. Trump Superior Way, Christmas decorations adorning the empty skywalks and nearby Bayfront Festival Park with the tallest Christmas tree in the history of the planet. In my dream I recognized it as Bentlyville, but it was no longer called that. It was now called Donnyville, in homage to Donald J. Trump our last president (remember this dream takes place in 2029 right after he’d have left office).

Finally I jolted awake around don…er…dawn, unsure if I had had a dream or a nightmare.

We’ll see.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

A brief history of cursing in the media...

2026-02-07T13:01:00.000-06:00

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/2-7-26

In the author's many, many years of toiling in the vineyards of newspaper journalism, there was one hard and fast rule: No bad words in print.

Whew! F-bombs, bird flips, other vulgarities are rampant. What in the world is our world — America is our world, Minnesota too — coming to? In my many, many years of toiling in the vineyards of newspaper journalism, there was one hard and fast rule: No bad words in print.

Of course, many of us have been brought up on these vulgarities, which have more and more made it into the media. They were inescapable if you were born and raised in America in the last century or so. Maybe before that; I wasn’t there.

So last month when President Trump flipped a bird to a Detroit factory worker who’d loudly addressed him about the Epstein imbroglio, it marked the first time in American presidential history that it was employed at that level, on TV, for all the world to see.

Then when Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis loudly told ICE (we all know what ICE stands for now, and you don’t skate on it or drop it in cocktails) saying, “Get the” f-bomb “out of Minneapolis,” also on TV, it crossed another line in public discourse.

I have a long history with F-bombs and bird flipping. I am not unique. Every boy of my generation is/was intimately familiar with them, some employing them regularly, others following their Sunday School admonitions and holding back.

As a youth, I didn’t think girls even knew about such things, so it was only among male friends that I would engage in a bit of cursing in spite of what I’d been told in church. Never at home though. We weren’t a cursing family.

Still, if you have that kind of churchy background, you can’t help but feel it is a sin to swear. There’s a commandment that addresses it. It’s a chance most boys chose to take, although I have known a few who wouldn’t ever utter a cuss word. They are undoubtedly now in heaven or headed up that way.

I actually, and vividly, remember the day I learned the F-word. I was quite young, probably early elementary school age, when a neighbor kid (I could name him) and I were discussing swearing — you know the hells and damns and the S-word (still can’t use that one in print) — when my friend asked if I knew the worst swear word of all. I guess I admitted I didn’t, and he told me it was the F- word, using it. I was so young I didn’t even know what it meant, birds- and bees-wise

Followed by the perfectly acceptable word “you,” it was the standard remonstrance to someone insulting or threatening you. Some reports have said Trump also uttered that at the belligerent Ford factory worker. Of course he knows it; he’s almost 80 years old. No kid of that generation (earliest baby boomer), and those that followed, could escape it. Lamentably, I am of the late Silent Generation, just a tad older. We know it too. We’re not THAT silent…or old.

Moving on to the ubiquitous bird flipping throughout the same period of American life, I had a middle finger flipped at me just the other day while driving when another driver wrongly believed I didn’t properly take my turn at a four-way stop. Oh, well. He was too far away to see me stick out my tongue, so I didn’t bother. Childish.

An American boy was introduced to “giving the finger,” as it was often called, around the same time as he would pick up on the aforementioned swear words. It was rampant among boys when I was in junior high, although in winter it was thwarted by the wearing of mittens.

As Trump has shown, the flipped bird is still alive and well. But what seems to have disappeared is a gestured response, which was ubiquitous when I was a teen or thereabouts.

Some other kid would flip you a bird and, in response, you would signal a “same to you” sign involving raising the index and little fingers above a closed fist. Everybody knew it meant “same to you.” What happened after that would depend on how aggressive each kid was. Someone could get a bloody nose. I can write bloody here, but in merry old England it’s a pejorative comparable, but not equal to, our F bomb.

In my years of active journalism in Duluth, we considered this a “family newspaper.” It still is, but the family has changed, with a lot of help from the president and others, along with the Internet.

There was a time when the column I hope you just read wouldn’t be acceptable in a family newspaper. I’m a little uncomfortable reading it myself.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.