In 1978, while still living in Pennsylvania, I was asked to help out with
the production of a talk show on a nearby community access TV station. The show
was called "The Kitchen Table," and when I arrived for the first taping
I immediately noticed a number of very obvious problems. First and foremost
was the show’s low-budget look: the elfin host, Malcolm Mowrey, sat behind
a tea tray, and not a table, when he interviewed local "celebrities."
There were other problems as well; these included a hippie-ish second banana
who drowned out most of the host’s and guests’ remarks with too-loud
and ill-timed laughter, and a deafening six-piece band which took up one-half
of the very small studio.
Into the chaos of that half-hour show walked the barefooted Samuel Taylor Rothschiller.
Mowrey introduced him as a "noted philosopher and free-thinker," but
no one other than the host seemed to know who he was. While on camera, Rothschiller
made some extremely witty remarks which, unfortunately, were obscured by the
second banana’s hysteria. However, near the end of the show, he caused
quite a commotion by revealing a psychic newsflash he said he’d just received.
He said that the world would end in fifteen minutes, but since the show was
to be over in ten, we would all miss it. (He was, of course, joking.) After
the show I chatted briefly with him about the philosophical implications of
"out of sight, out of mind" in relation to existentialism. And that
was the beginning of, if not a beautiful friendship, certainly an odd and long-lasting
one.
In the months that followed, I learned of Sam’s past, of his strange work
history [see "STR Bio"], and of his plans for the future. He often
spoke of buying a van and outfitting it with a bed, a refrigerator, a writing
table and a typewriter. He would then drive across the North American continent,
writing wherever he stopped. I told him I had had the same dream just after
high school, but couldn't figure out how to swing it financially. This seemed
to him only a minor consideration.
Then, in the winter of 1979, he disappeared. But before he departed, he sent
me a manila envelope filled with scraps of paper, an empty and flattened toilet
paper tube, and a typewritten sheet of paper. On the last he had written that
he had procured van and bed, had packed up typewriter and table, and was off
to "re-search for America." He said that since many other people had
already gone off to search for America, the country now needed someone to re-search
for it. Typically, he never disclosed exactly what he felt he would be re-searching
for.
The accompanying scraps of paper contained notes Sam had made over the years.
On the toilet paper tube he made reference to the scraps, having hastily scrawled
the words: "The Collected Epigrams of STR. Edit and publish. I shall return--eventually."
In the mode of the early Christians, expecting his return sooner rather than
later, I hesitated to begin editing the "Collected Epigrams." As time
went by, however, I would realize that he would not be returning until later.
In the meantime, he continued to send me postcards. I use this term loosely;
sometimes what arrived in the mail were real, store-bought postcards, but more
often they were postcards fashioned from diner placemats, pieces of discarded
rubbish, even flattened toilet paper rolls (a favorite medium), with an epigram
hastily scrawled over it and a stamp affixed to it. These I duly deposited into
a large shoebox marked "STR" stored in my closet.
Then, one day in 1985, I received a real postcard depicting Custer’s Last
Stand, with this message appended:
Been reading too much. Finished Sartre's Being and Nothingness,
and am not sure which I should choose. How goes the editing?
Hope to hear of publication soon, especially since I've stopped
believing everything I write. --STR.
Taking this as a strong hint to get going, I began collating and sorting, all the while trying to figure out who would publish this bizarre collection. It wasn't until four years later, with access to HyperCard, that I decided I could do it myself. And so here it is, for the first time anywhere in a coherent format, Samuel T. Rothschiller’s My Penny of Observation. I have supplied the title, taking it from a line spoken by Armado, the fantastical Spaniard, in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. I think Armado and Sam have a great deal in common.
© 2003 Stephen A. Schrum
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