Joan Gordon

October 7, 2000

Dear DP,

Struggling my WeightWatchers way to sylphdom a half-pound-a-week I suddenly remembered your eminently though obviously temporary success with a diet exclusively of ratatouille. Why did it go sour or rancid, as the case may be?

Benjamin Rose, The Mad Li

October 7, 2000

Dear Sir:

As of Friday I leave Alaska and move onward and Downward and then a bit sideways to the heat of Texas. I will be working with young adults in Houston. I am also once again writing. You have inspired me much in my life and I wish to give you a token of my appreciation. In one month I have turned on 76 children and 52 adults to books written by you and/or the Mrs and/or both. Of these people all but two have returned and thanked me heartily. They have all desired to read more of your tomes and at one point all but 2 were off the shelves. I felt you would like to know this.

Yours sincerely,

The Mad Librarian

Don Atkinson

October 5, 2000

Dear DP:

Love hearing you on NPR reviewing children’s books. I find myself going to Bookstores and Libraries checking out the books you recommend – and I have no children or other youngsters to buy those books for. My area of the country – the Eastern Shore of Maryland – does not receive your radio program. A sign, I believe, of our “hickness”. We do get the Car Guys and I’ve heard your discussions with them.

Now that I’ve buttered you up, the real purpose of this missive is to ask you about your theme, “The Day I Read A Book “, sung by Jimmy Durante. I’ve consulted some online lyric services but I cannot find it. Do you know where I can find that record or the sheet music? I’m in amateur theatre and would love to use the song as an audition piece – when you cannot really sing you have to hit them with comedy.

P.S. To add to your vast storehouse of wisdom, my favorite children’s book Was “Wind in the Willows”. After childhood, I discovered Roald Dahl and I love “The Enormous Crocodile”, which I have read to several elementary school classes do different voices for each animal.

Russell Hamel

October 3, 2000

I have always been intrigued by the Chicken Man who appears in many of your novels, and was delighted to find out that he was an actual person after I read “Fish Whistle”. I did a webpage search on him, and the only other things that I could find that wasn’t Pinkwater-related was this website www.openair.org/maxwell/pjustin.html which mentioned that his name was Casey Jones. I live in Fort Worth, Texas, and while we don’t have a Chicken Man, we do have “Crazy Bicycle Preacher Man”, who stops traffic on heavy streets on his ten speed and begins exalting to God, waving his hands wildly in the air like a white Deion Sanders or something. I’ve seen him almost exclusively in the Hulen St/McCart street area, twice just after I had mentioned his name and was describing him to someone who wasn’t in the know. I’ve even seen him pedaling his bike down I-20 against interstate traffic with cop cars following in O.J.-style slow speed pursuit. Anyway, the above isn’t related to you in any way but I thought you might find it interesting. Are you going to post your picture of the Chicken Man on this webpage?

I had written to you long ago when I was in college about how hard it is to find your out-of-print books. You sent me two postcards, one telling me you could symphasize with me, and that publishers were inept, and the other from a Mexican Restaurant in NY, with the short message, “This Place Sucks!” on it.

Thanks to the internet, I have now found the books I was searching for. Anyway, keep up the good work! Please send me the info on how to obtain your autograph, and/or a picture of your esteemed self.

Russ in Fort Worth

David Locke

October 2, 2000

Dear DP:

I am in need of either a recording (much preferred) or a script (lacking the intonation, resonance, and most important things but still retaining the words) of a piece you did on NPR lo several years ago.

Please note that I say “need” as distinct from merely “want.”

Of this piece I have a recollection which is more powerful than detailed. But its essence places it among the very few true side-splitting pieces the world has been privileged to enjoy. It ranks, in my memory, in the stratospheric pantheon ( I mix metaphors; my need bursts the bounds of conventional speech) with only a half-dozen or so other classics, including the impossible-to-find video clip of Tim Conway and Harvey Corman doing the wordless “Dentist” skit on the Carol Burnett Show.

Like all such brilliance, your piece was (oh that I might say: “is”) self-effacing, characterized by a kind of nonchalance, a purity of focus and absence of self-awareness. It’s often a signature quality of your best pieces that they do not attempt to be funny: they tell stories which are funny, and therein lies a difference that distinguishes real art from mere pretence.

The subject of this piece was finding a used car. Not just any car, but a vehicle of such perfection, capable of such a glovelike fit to your physical requirements that after hundreds of false starts, of hopes raised and dashed, to merely slip into the driver’s seat of this perfect car was itself such a transport of the senses, such an elevation above the commonplace and unfit that–once in place–to shut the door, start the engine, engage the gears, and drive away were all anti-climactic.

I think the car was a Buick. (I warned: my recollection is more powerful than detailed.) I have a visual picture, created by your words, of a Roadmaster, one of the largest of the line.

Please–say it’s so. Say this thing exists–at the very least in a script, or in a transport of aural salvation, recorded–available to share with me who remembers and with the rest of the world who should. Things this good must not be lost and forgotten. Absent pieces like this, how are we to instruct our children in true humor? Look what they have for models and guides: young men and women (and some who are not young and should know better) who stand on stage and scream obscenities into hand-held microphones and think they are funny.

They are not. You are. Please help us remember.

Yvonne

September 29, 2000

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,

I have been reading the clever notes you have received from other fans, and I regret that I simply cannot compete. I’d just like to say that at 31 years of age I have just stumbled onto a book of yours, The Education of Robert Nifkin, and it was fabulous. Thanks for writing it.

Alison

September 28, 2000

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,

Being a person who goes to Genghis Khan HS I greatly sympathesize with your characters. My biology teacher is exactly the opposite of Ms. Sweet, instead of being the most boring teacher on the planet earth she is the most hyper, with her most recent act of insanity making my class get up and do the “molecule dance”.

My question for you is about a comentary you recently made on “Car Talk”. I was just wondering what the exact measurements of a Pinkwater car seat would be?

Sincerely,

Alison

Tony Andexler

September 27, 2000

Daniel,

Happened to run across your page and noticed a forum message regarding a Casio watch called “Twin-Graph”. You have a photo of yourself wearing this watch.

I was wondering if you still have this watch and if you would be willing to part with it?

I have been looking all over the net for this watch, and can’t seem to find it anywhere.

I’d be very interested in any info you may have.

(Sorry this doesn’t have anything to do with your books, I’m sure your a great author, and will have to pick up one of your books.)

Thanks again.

Tony.

Tony Andexler

September 27, 2000

I’m not 100% understanding with your answer. Yes I am very interested in buying this watch from you. I’m not sure what price you would want for it, but this watch sold new in the 1980’s for around $50.00. If you would like I will offer you $100+. (I’m willing to pay TOP dollar for this watch!)

Tony Andexler

September 27, 2000

Daniel,

Wow, I’m trembling right now with excitement! I have been looking for this watch for a long time and never found it.

Why do I want this watch so bad? When this watch came out I was around eleven years old. It was the first time I used my hard earned money (mowing lawns) to buy sometime so expensive. I guess you could say I’ve always been a techy-nerd. I had a computer around me all my life and loved any kind of high tech gadget. Living in Ohio (Streetsboro, OH) I took the money I earned and had my dad drive me to a store (No longer in business) called BEST. It’s like a Service Merchandise but not Best Buy. There I bought the watch for around $50.00+.

After having the watch for sometime, I can’t remember what happened to it. Did I break it? (I usually took apart every electronic thing I could get my hands on.) Or did I just lose it?

Anyway, I never found the watch again, and for the longest time never considered it. I’ve been through a lot of watches and computers in my life (Which my parents just didn’t understand) so one lost watch didn’t mean anything. So I thought.

My family and I then moved from Streetsboro to the Chicagoland area and there I graduated high school at Wheaton North. During my high school years I wondered what happened to that watch and thought, “man that watch was cool, so advanced for its time”. My parents didn’t like Chicagoland very much and moved back to Ohio after I graduated and I stayed behind eventually moving downtown Chicago.

Living downtown I went to school at Columbia College studying Graphic Design never realizing what my life had in store for me. A few years later I started an Internet web Development Company called Andexler.com and last year we finally moved into an office space on Ashland Avenue in the city. I guess you could say my geeky techy childhood finally paid off. From all the computers and weird geek watches my life finally brought me to whom I am today.

I’m twenty-six now, and still to this day I can remember that watch and wish I still had it. Even in the 21st century I can still say this watch is techy cool. (Having five alarms and the neat little graphics it would do when the alarm sounds.) I’ve had Rolex’s, Movado’s, Gucci’s and other high-class watches, but nothing was as enjoyable as this Casio watch.

For the longest time I was searching for this watch and never knew the Model number, so trying to find it was like a needle in a haystack. Until a few months ago, I wrote to a Japanese watch forum and described the watch I was looking for. Someone replied back and knew exactly what I was looking for and said it was called a “Twin-Graph”. (Aha…. that’s right!) And the model number was AE-20W. I was thrilled just to have this information. Unfortunately, I found out this person DID have the watch and would not even consider trading/selling or anything for it. Must have the same momentous value as I considered it.

I’ve been on eBay, Casio, Japanese web sites, and all over the web and can’t find it anywhere. (And believe me I know where to look, I do this for a living.) I had a good feeling this was going to be nearly impossible to get a hold of. Until just the other day I was on the “Google” web search and typed in “Twin-Graph” there your forum popped up regarding a message that someone saw you wearing a Casio “Twin-Graph” in a photograph of you on the back of one of your books. (Amazing!)

So this is where the story leads us now. Back to you! Maybe you have some universal force that makes everything lead to you. I don’t know.

Right now I am so very impressed with your gratitude and politeness on this matter. It’s astounding that I happen to run into this meaningful piece of my childhood from such a fundamentally renowned author. Your interest in the matter is greatly appreciated.

So you ask me why I want this watch so bad?

My answer: I can’t say for sure if it brought me to where I am today, but it did have a major roll [sic] in my life as a tech/entrepreneur. It was the first time I used my hard earned cash as a child to lead me further into the computer technology industry that we all rely on today.

Again, I want to thank you for your sincere and quick responses to this subject. I will include my mailing address and information in a following email.

Thanks again!

Edmund Graziani

September 26, 2000

Dear Mr. Pinkwater and friends,

It’s really amazing what a google search will turn up; I searched “leonard neeble” and found your wonderful site. Can’t think why I didn’t do it sooner.

First, I was rereading “Alan Mendelsohn” the other day, and my hair stood on end when I caught a passing reference to Miskatonic University, my old alma mater. It’s been many years since I was a graduate student there, under the tutelage of Prof. J.L. Borges. I was working on a dissertation in comparative pataphyisics and exogastronomy, but unfortunately read a little too far into some ancient Tlon manuscripts. I spent a while recovering at the Alfred Jarry Sanitarium. I’m better now.

Second, I have a rather crankish question to ask, one which I bore all my friends with. If you had to select one example of “bread” to represent the planet earth in an inter-galactic bake-off, what would you choose? I am tempted to guess that your answer will be that paragon of chewy bakedness, the bagel; but can you really pass on such wonders as the brioche, croissant, baguette, caraway rye, challah, english muffin, crumpet, tortilla, roti, pita, et. al.?

Sincerely,

Edmund

Rainman

September 24, 2000

Mr. Pinkwater,

In these parts a ‘toot’ is someone of very good character and who is nice to be around. A real fun-loving and pleasant individual. I meant no slur to you or your wife…my post was a complement written the best way I know how. I stand corrected and will use “hoot” henceforth. Thank you for the lessons.

Rainman

September 24, 2000

I only know of Mr. Pinkwater’s work: “Fishwhistle.” I have it on a book on tape and listen to it over and over without tiring of his wit, humor, and candor. I really enjoy his recap of childhood years and of his humorous imitations of the people who made an impression on him. Mr. Pinkwater is a great narrator and story writer….his wife must be a real toot also.

Mrs. J

September 22, 2000

Dear Daniel Pinkwater:

Several years ago I worked in a school library. One of my jobs was reading to the younger students. My very best favorite book was Aunt Lulu. I loved the 14 dogs and their names, …….Teddie, Neddie, Eddie, Freddie and………….Sweetie Pie. Ended up the students would squeal Sweetie pie’s name. I just loved it. I sometimes see former students and ask them if they remember the book. This summer I looked in the children’s section at the public library and checked out several of your books, Aunt Lulu being one of them and thrilled at reading aloud to my 18 and 20 year olds. Surprised at finding reference to Toledo, Ohio in Spaceburger; I wondered why you picked our city for this story. Maybe it is time I should start a Daniel Pinkwater collection for possible grandchildren.

Enjoying DP,

Mrs. J

Murray the Elf

September 15, 2000

Dear Mr. Pinkwater,

I have been a fan of yours ever since a friend of mine turned me on to Toothgnasher Superflash. Many years later, I married said friend, in part because he still had his copy of Fishwhistle (mine had walked). Now I am trying to emulate you by writing children’s books. Pray tell, how does one live through all the rejections prior to the first sale?