John Hood, the artist behind the 'Caution' image of a running family

Which, even if you've never seen it directly, you've seen riffs and/or parodies of, probably most famously in the school crossing sign in South Park where the figures are running in the same style.

There's an article on him in the LA Times today, and it's quite fascinating -- a very American story, in many senses of the word.

A Navajo, he grew up on a reservation in a corner of New Mexico where people lived 7,000 feet above sea level, amid junipers and cedars, mountain lions and coyotes. His parents were illiterate; his home had no electricity or running water, and he slept on a pile of sheepskins.

"My childhood," he said with a smile, "was fulfilled in every dimension."

Hood went to boarding school, but much of his education came at home. His grandmother showed him how to shear their sheep and spin the wool into yarn. His grandfather showed him how to pick medicinal herbs and how to gather bright pollen from the tips of cornstalks to use in traditional ceremonies.

Hood illustrated many pieces of his life, sometimes etching his drawings on the walls of his family's barn.

"I used to watch the animals too," he said. "A horse will be staring away from you, but he can see you with his ears; you can see his ears going back and forth. It sounds weird, but you can learn from that. You can learn to be aware. You can learn to see."

Before he finished high school, he enlisted in the Marines. It was 1968. Within a year, he was in Da Nang. His tour in Vietnam was terrifying and defining. He often volunteered to walk "point" on patrol, and carried C-4 plastic explosives to blow up booby traps. His platoon called him "Chief."

Being an infantryman came naturally to him, or as naturally as it can come. Some of the tricks he used to survive had roots back home -- the way, for instance, that he could often locate the enemy by studying the sunlight filtering through the jungle canopy. He was in, he estimates, at least 20 firefights. Many of his comrades didn't make it.

"I lost a lot of things there," he said. "Friends. Youth."

At the end of his tour, he was sent back to the United States and stationed at Camp Pendleton. He was sure the war had left him with no enduring wounds, but he was wrong. He began having nightmares that a man was chasing him, a man he was helpless against. He went AWOL and got caught. He started drinking. His marriage fell apart.

Through the G.I. Bill, he started taking classes in fine arts at San Diego State. He was a particularly fine graphic artist, with an eye for delicate detail, for the interface of light and shadow. Shortly before he married a second time, he was hired as a graphic artist at the state Department of Transportation.