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

I heard his name was Humphrey Popcorn.