My Obsession With A Nonsense Riddle

“If it takes fourteen geese to get down off an elephant, how many Palmolive wrappers can it take to paper a boxcar?”

In his book, Riding The Elephant, Craig Ferguson briefly mentions one of the difficulties of hosting a late-night show, (The Late Late Show, pre-Corden), was sometimes simply not having anything to say or talk about on some days. As a fan of his show, I now recognize the difficulty in episodes that saw him devote part of his monologue to trivial footnotes like the independence day of some far-off country unknown to Western eyes.

On the other side of the coin, the late 60 Minutes grouch-in-chief Andy Rooney, on the eve of his retirement and shortly before his death in 2011, told Morley Safer that looking around at what’s going on in America and the world, Rooney always thought it was impossible not to come up with something to write about or talk about every week on the show.

(Of course, Rooney had the benefit of only doing one episode a week, as opposed to the five-day grind of late-night television.)

I find myself torn in the middle between Rooney and Ferguson. I find it hard to believe that there aren’t enough things going on, enough experiences, enough things of personal fascination, to write something every day. Maybe finishing a piece every day can be a challenge, but I chalk that up to learning the discipline of editing. Discipline is also crucial in keeping an objective mentality towards your work.

It goes without saying that not everything we write is gold and belongs out there for the public to see.

The charge of “writing for yourself” has often been labeled at me by people whose opinions and advice I value highly. I certainly always consider my audience when I write anything. However, I also know that occasionally, a writer does have to take a risk and test out whether something that may seem offbeat and out there can find some audience willing to open their minds or tolerate what could come across as self-indulgence depending on the reader’s point of view.

This is a long way of saying that I’m crazy enough to write a piece about a nonsense riddle that I heard years ago…and on a short-lived TV series.

J.J. Starbuck (1987–88), a one-season wonder, was an attempt to blend McCloud with Matlock (I’m not pulling Matlock out of random, Starbuck failed in the ratings despite having Andy Griffith’s popular legal drama as its lead-in on NBC.)

Dale Robertson played a multi-millionaire Texas businessman who, following a tragic loss, decided to dedicate his time and money to helping people. He traveled from town to town, saw a problem befalling someone or even an entire community, and tried in his down-home way, to make things better. There was also a mixture of murder-mystery procedural thrown in as Starbuck sometimes served as a cowboy detective, often on his own. In the last few episodes of Starbuck, to accommodate Robertson’s age and limited mobility, the great Ben Vereen joined the cast as J.J.’s P.I sidekick, reprising a con-man role (“Tenspeed” Turner) he had played on another short-lived series, Tenspeed & Brown Shoe. (TV producing icon Stephen J. Cannell worked on both shows.)

In one early episode of J.J. Starbuck entitled “Incident in San September”, Starbuck faced a crisis involving his own company. When four of his company executives are taken hostage overseas by a pre-Hans Gruber terrorist by the name of Kruger, Starbuck is forced to think fast to meet Kruger’s demands, which involve a cargo ship of Starbuck’s and arranging the ship’s official transfer to the terrorist. With the U.S. government refusing to negotiate with Kruger and insisting Starbuck trust the Army to take care of the matter, Starbuck is forced to work underground to rescue his people.

Part of the plan involves Starbuck, in need of another ship for the covert rescue operation, forced to barter with a former business rival of his in Turkey, Patul Batulik. Starbuck, as it turns out, had been less than honest with Patul in some of their previous dealings, and he expects that Patul will take advantage of Starbuck’s crisis as payback. The tragic twist is when Starbuck finds Patul in an Istanbul hospital, nearing death. As it turns out, Patul long knew about Starbuck’s dishonesty in the past but relives J.J. of any past guilt, pointing out that he [Patul] would have done the same thing to Starbuck. J.J. is, however, surprised and touched when Batulik offers to give, not sell, Starbuck one of his ships for free, no strings attached.

As a grateful Starbuck prepares to leave, Patul reminds Starbuck of a confounding riddle that the old Texan had once told him back in the old days that oddly summed up their relationship.

“If it takes fourteen geese to get down off of an elephant, how many Palmolive wrappers can it take to paper a boxcar?”

Later on, Starbuck thinks more about the riddle as it leads him to realize that he may have a traitor in his company who may have been in cahoots with the terrorist Kruger.

I could explain more about the plot, but I’m not writing an episode review, especially for a show that millennials and younger generations may not even have heard of.

I will jump right to the ending of that Starbuck episode when Patul Batulik is revealed to have died. As J.J. drives home, having saved the day, he thinks about what transpired in the last few days. Starbuck once again comes back to the strange riddle. The last lines of the episode involve what the now-late Batulik had said back at the hospital about the riddle just before the two men parted ways for the last time.

The riddle was, as Patul put it “A confusing piece of nonsense. Not unlike life itself.”

Now, this is the part where you are wondering what the story's point was up until now.

Is the writer grasping for straws to write about a short-lived show from the 1980s and a nonsense riddle that only some people may ever have heard of?

The point is that Patul Batulik was right about what the riddle represents.

Life can be a confusing riddle. No matter how much we try, no one person possesses the answers to whatever problem. Most times, the answers come from common sense. Other times, they come from one’s moral center or sense of conscience.

As Starbuck tells his niece, “Things confuse us because we don’t have all the details.”

Now where does the subtitle of this story fit in?

One of my favorite celebrity memoirs is Steve Martin's 2007 chronicle of his stand-up career Born Standing Up. In the book, Martin discusses achieving the universally acknowledged high point for most comedians of that era, a guest shot on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

(Incidentally, Martin also deconstructs the alleged belief that one great appearance on Carson could launch a career. For his generation, it sometimes took a few appearances before hitting it big. By the late 1970s-1980s, perhaps due to it being talked about so much, the myth became a reality for Drew Carey, Billy Crystal, and others.)

In one passage of Born Standing Up, Martin recounted when, after one stand-up set, he made his way to the couch next to the master. At one point in the show, Johnny had launched into an impression of Goofy. For a man who was considered the man who brought showbiz cool to late night, Goofy impressions don’t seem to suggest real truth in that belief.

The twist was later in the show, while seated next to Martin during a commercial break, Johnny whispered into Steve’s ear.

“You’ll use everything you ever knew.” — Johnny Carson

The implication is that whatever tools, tricks, or jokes of the trade are at your disposal will always be there when you need something to do or talk about.

…and that’s the point of me writing about a short-lived show with an old cowboy spinning down-home truth about geese, elephants, and boxcars.

When you are a writer searching for ideas or topics for a story, you may be surprised by what you’ll write about, and what meaning you’ll try to take from it.

The J.J. Starbuck episode "Incident in San September" is available to view here on YouTube (for now)

Sincerely: Random Access Moods