Read Online Pipsqueak by Brian M. Wiprud - Free Book Online

kidded myself that I might be able to at least locate him, call the cops, stand witness against Cola Woman, and then Marti would give me Pipsqueak in gratitude for nabbing the hooligans. Then there’s the matter of Nicholas, who says it belongs to someone else, though he might (almost certainly) be lying. Then why does he want it? I mean, how much is a puppet from a lousy local sixties cartoon show really worth? A couple thousand? Why did Cola Woman kill a biker just to steal Pipsqueak?
    I figured it couldn’t hurt just to see where Pipsqueak had been all these years since
General Buster
. I couldn’t even recall when he went off the air.
    So rather than go directly home, I headed to the Broadcast History Center. Angie and I’d gone to an event there a few months before. I walked from Dudley’s over to Avenue of the Americas and the A train, the no-nonsense subway that bypasses lesser stations and puts you uptown but fast. Twenty minutes after stepping on the train, I was face-to-face with a skinny young woman with hideous black-framed glasses, bright green dress, and matching three-inch rubber clogs. She looked like a giant starving frog, one that happened to work the sleek but elegant front desk at the BHC.
    I told Frog Girl what I wanted, she had me fill in a little card, and I was soon seated at a computer terminal in a research cubicle. Now, I don’t own a computer, or a PC, whatever. I still organize my life with 3x5 cards and file drawers. I suppose I could bar-code all my taxidermy and scan them prior to renting, but that would be pretty elaborate for a couple of pieces a week. I’m one of those who still use phone calls and postcards rather than e-mail or personalized annual desktop-published newsletters. Oh, I could do my taxes in twelve-point-five minutes and play the markets with my expendable income. Sounds great, but until I bank my first million, I’ll just have to squander the
full
two hours that it takes now to do my finances on a calculator. Dudley says I’m a technophobe, but mostly I’m just not that interested in gadgetry or enhancing my day-to-day infrastructure with Internet providers, modems, and flashy screen savers. My car doesn’t “think” about the brakes locking, ignition timing, or fuel mixtures, and my limited intellect does the navigation without benefit of orbital transponders. Viva Thoreau:
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
    Angie, on the other hand, has a computer, and she’s beginning to fall prey to its wiles. How can I tell? Not normally much of a cardplayer, she’s now a solitaire junkie. (The phenomenon seems pandemic: Computer solitaire has replaced baseball as the national pastime.)
    Cro-Magnon though I am, an encounter with the museum terminal did not spook me back to my cave. It was very similar to the ones in libraries that are perfectly simple, helpful machines. User-friendly, if you insist. And yes, I still go to the library to check out books, though I’ll admit that whale seems doubly harpooned by Web crawling and superstore book lounges.
    I filled in the Subject blank on the screen and depressed the Enter key. The following jumped onto my screen:
    The General Buster Show
aired from September 1964 to June 1972 with almost 2,000 episodes broadcast locally. While at its inception the hosted “cartoon show” format was already well established by others, the show’s creator and star player, Lew Bookerman, was the only one to base his show on Cold War themes that by today’s standards seem quite dark. Bookerman’s show was largely entertainment rather than educational, with some morality themes. Each show promoted a “duck and cover” segment, and playful treatments of espionage and treason were common elements. Puppets were a common element in children’s programming of the day, but
General Buster
’s puppets had the distinction of being made from real animal fur by Mr. Bookerman himself.
    General Buster
broadcast to a limited