"Tempestive Edimus"

Just this moment, I have begun to appreciate those people who forever wish it were still 1888. A few feet behind my left shoulder is a telephone, one-of those devices that most Victorians were so happy without. It keeps reminding me of a live hand grenade, another device that I could be blissfully ignorant about if I had only lived in the time of Sherlock Holmes. Any moment the telephone behind me is liable to explode.

Why? Well, it may have something to do with the fact that this month's column is now exactly seven days overdue. As this is the shortest month of the year, February, the anxiety of my editor to get the March issue of Plugs & Dottles to press should be reaching critical mass at any moment now. Never mind the fact that this is due to be the one hundred and fiftieth issue of P&D. I can almost hear the Lascar now:

"Yes, we would have made it to our sesquicentenary issue, if only Keefauver had turned his column in. Time to cross 'Tempestive Edimus' off the cover and buy a Winnebago."

For a hundred and forty-nine issues, Robert C. Burr, editor, Lascar, and elder sibling of The Brothers Three of Burriarty (Bob, Robbie, and the nearly unknown Bert), has turned out his monthly newsletter with clockwork regularity-something fairly rare in Sherlockian circles (or any other small press operation, for that matter). Peter Blau's Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press, the Occupants of the Empty Housers' Camden House Journal, and a scant few others have pretty impressive recor s themselves, but none have accomplished what they did with the burdens Bob must bear. After fifty-six smoothly flowing issues of pure Burr, it was almost as if the ever-punctual Bob decided to make P&D even more of a challenge to put out each month: "I'll get Keefauver to do a column!"

Bob is sort of reminiscent of those joggers you see running their daily five miles with weights strapped to their ankles and a barbell in each hand. For the last ninety-three issues, he has been meeting his monthly bench mark with one or two unruly columnists strapped to his typing fingers.

While I sit just across the Illinois River, staring at a blank sheet of typing paper and wondering: Just how did the letters from the tide-waiter and the fishmonger solve the case of the Grosvenor Square furniture van? . . . Why is the East Peoria antique mall offering a copy of HOUN for $150? . . . Will Doylean scholarship supplant Sherlockian scholarship? . . . How exactly did Holmes stop dogs from conquering Victorian London? . . . Can I still make the first matinee of "The Silence of the Lambs"'? . . . Will William Ballew notice the tie-in of that movie titze to "Silver Blaze"? . . . and so on. While all that is going on, Bob sits staring at a Plugs & Dottles layout with the middle two pages blank, ignoring the urge to rush out to the printers, shooting desperate glances at the calendar. Eventually, he reaches for the phone.

The telephone just behind my left shoulder has just exploded in sound as I write this. And it is Bob Burr at the other end.

Maybe the Victorian era might have spared me that phone call. Maybe, too, the Victorian era might have saddled me with an editor who would pay me a Grimesby Roylott-like visit in person. Bob's friendly phone calls are a much gentler form of prodding. By the time we're done talking of Sherlockian news and gossip, my column is 20 minutes later past deadline. Bob has also admitted that he himself has a few blank spots to fill.

But fill them he will, and with my column now done, Plugs & Dottles will come out once more . . . on schedule. Happy Sesquicentenary, Bob.

(This column appeared in the March 1991 issue of Plugs & Dottles.)