popeye was born the son of poopdeck pappy and an unnamed woman in a typhoon in santa monica (with popeye erroneously claiming to have been born at 2 or 3 years of age). shortly after his birth, his father poopdeck left home and was never seen again, and his mother's fate was unknown, leaving the young popeye an "orphink" to be raised by an orphanage keeper who gave him the id number of 185,764. as an infant, popeye already had his signature pipe, presumably given to him by his father before leaving, and would only take it out of his mouth for his morning bottles of malted hardtack. as far as he could remember, little popeye was impressed by early home training and exercised as soon as he was able, but avoided getting into serious fights until he was 4 years of age, where he had finally had enough of his orphanage keeper and let him have it. after this incident, it seemed as though popeye's keeper became impressed with the child and decided to enter him in contests (similar to dog shows) where the young popeye became a prize baby in many shows and always took great pride in his bertillon measurements. eventually, the orphan popeye would fall on hard times upon leaving the orphanage, and was forced to wear flour sacks for clothes, but happily, the luckless lad was taken in by whaler joe at the docks, who even bought the young lad a new pipe and a fascinating straw hat with a radio antenna on it.