Mendel Letters 12: President Schmuck

Hard copies of these typed letters were discovered in an old camp trunk in the basement storage facility of one of the few buildings that remain standing in this Brooklyn neighborhood. The building is quite decrepit and is scheduled for demolition. The letters were found in November 2048 by a teenager who believes they were written by his great-grandfather. The letters are addressed to Mendel, the letter writer’s father, who appears to have been dead for at least six years when his son, whose name we are unsure of, started to write him. The son appears very agitated in some of the letters. With permission from the family, we are publishing them on the date they were written, only 28 years later.

December 26, 2020

Dear Mendel,

I was thinking about the time you were in the hospital being treated for Congestive heart failure and doctors were trying to decide if you were well enough to go home and take care of yourself. As part of the release process they asked you a series of questions. One question was — “Who is the President?” You replied, “The Schmuck.” So, they asked you who was the President before him. Your reply, “The other Schmuck.” A doctor called and asked me to speak with you. I told you if you wanted to go home, you had to stop playing around and just answer their questions. The irony is that if you were in the hospital now and said the President was “The Schmuck,” the doctors would probably think you were right and would release you.

Your son