Okay, here's my Buffalo Bob Smith story. It took place at the Licensing Show in New York in the early nineties, and I guess it helps make the point if I explain what happens at those events. The Licensing Show is a place where companies exhibit, either because they own great properties (famous characters, copyrighted designs, etc.) that someone might want to put on a t-shirt or lunch box, or because they license the rights to put great properties on those t-shirts or lunch boxes, or because they broker deals to make that happen…
Well, anyway, just understand that this is a convention about the marketing and licensing of identifiable properties and that most of those present are involved in some way with licensing. There are exhibits all over and many of the booths are filled with celebrities and freebees, the better to attract wanderers to the displays.
This particular year, Buffalo Bob Smith — star of the legendary Howdy Doody kids' show — was there to promote a new wave of Howdy Doody licensing from King Features Syndicate. He was appearing in the King Features booth and when I heard this, I decided to amble over and see if I could meet him. That was until I saw the line. It looked like about a three hour wait to meet Buffalo Bob, get one of the autographed photos he was signing and shake his hand. The line, filled wholly with folks in the proper age bracket to have watched Howdy Doody when they were eight, snaked through the entire hall, down past booths where you could get your photo with W.W.F. wrestlers or Playboy models or some suffocating person in a giant Snoopy costume.
The length of the queue caused me to pass. I mean, with a line like that, how much time could you possibly get to talk to the guy? Twenty seconds? So I took a look at him — older but still handsome in his Buffalo Bob jacket with the leather fringe — and I continued walking.
Later on as I walked past, the line was still just as long, if not longer, but I heard someone call my name. It was a friend who worked for King Features. She welcomed me into their exhibit space and we chatted for a while. Then she said, "Would you like to meet Buffalo Bob?" I said sure but there was that long line…
"You don't need to stand in line," she said and she led me over to Buffalo Bob. We came up behind him and she interrupted his signing to do introductions. He threw down his pen, turned around and got up to shake my hand, then we talked for two minutes or maybe three, I, of course, said all the geeky stuff everyone said to him about watching him when I was a kid and being happy to see him mobbed by fans, etc. And all the time I was saying such things, I was eyeing the line of people who'd been waiting half the afternoon for thirty seconds with him. Eyes were glaring at me with raw hatred and I could hear them all thinking, "Who's this rude clown who thinks he's so much better than us that he doesn't have to wait in line?" Well, of course. If I'd been there for 3+ hours, I'd sure have resented the hell out of me.
It made me nervous so I said to Mr. Smith, "Listen, I'd love to talk to you longer but you have all these people here waiting to meet you…"
He ignored that and went on talking to me about whatever we'd been discussing. The lady who introduced us had told him I did the Garfield cartoon show, and he was telling me how much Garfield merchandise he was seeing everywhere. Again, I said, "I shouldn't monopolize you like this. These people have been waiting all afternoon for your autograph…"
And I will never forget this — and so help, me this is verbatim: Buffalo Bob Smith, the King of Doodyville himself, pulled me to one side and he whispered to me, "You don't understand…my job is to keep the line as long as possible."