In Praise of Edith Bunkerizing

Of Cling Peaches and Alex Trebek

My mother didn’t talk much when I was growing up – she would been happier as a hermit, with no kids or husband to bother her – but on the rare occasions that she did tell a story or describe something she’d seen, her path was unusually circuitous. She’d start at the beginning but quickly veer off into a direction 180 degrees away, words turning muddled and gray, but eventually she’d return and make the point she could’ve made in her second or third sentence.

We called it Edith Bunkerizing, after the rambling way of storytelling that actress Jean Stapleton’s character made famous in All in the Family in the early 1970s. My favorite example involved cling peaches, which still makes me laugh five decades later.

Today I realize that when we laughingly accused our mother of Edith Bunkerizing a story, it probably made her retreat further into her shell.

But…a topic for another time. My point is that when it comes to online research, Edith Bunkerizing is an excellent way to discover facts and figures and stories that might otherwise remain hidden. In fact, I will admit that my love of research and my ability to block out the world while I’m truffling for some hidden fact is a direct descendant of my mother’s inability to tell a straightforward story. In this way I’ve uncovered delicious tidbits that no one else has uncovered, and that the subjects of my biographies have probably long ago forgotten.

That combined with a childhood spent digging through Mostly Dead People’s Stuff at thrift shops, garage sales, and junk piles — all of which came soused with a heavy-handed dose of the scent of desperation — and I’m happiest when I’m digging and I don’t know what I’m going to find…if anything.

Photo by chrissie kremer on Unsplash

Again, another time. Edith Bunkerizing is an excellent way to expand your own research and find deeply-buried tidbits that perhaps don’t want to be found. In order to do this, you must first turn off your brain and rely on pure instinct. And look away from the sun; instead, look off-center at the periphery or even the polar opposite.

Here’s how I found what I consider to be the best anecdote in my book Who Is Alex Trebek?

From my early research, I already knew Trebek had cut his teeth working at the Canadian Broadcasting Company in the 1960s.

Alex and Mike the Mutt, from Vacation Time, a CBC children’s show, hang out in 1964. Credit: CBC Still Photo Collection/Roy Martin

So I spent a few hours wandering around online with this search term: "Canadian Broadcasting Company" [or CBC] "Alex Trebek." [Remember, QUOTATION MARKS ARE YOUR FRIENDS!!!]

At one point, I thought, there must be a book about the history of the CBC somewhere. I searched Amazon, which yielded zip, along with several other sources. At that point I was toast, so I closed my laptop. But the seed had been planted.

A few days later, I noticed a footnote in another article that cited Cue the Elephant, a book by author Knowlton Nash about the history of the CBC. Bingo. It was long out of print, but I thought the text might be online at either Google Books or the Texts section of the Wayback Machine. And if it wasn’t, I’d buy it from Abebooks.com or another used-book site.

It’s impossible to exactly replicate a search from almost five years ago — I also wrote the book before Trebek died, so my results back then were dramatically different from what comes up in today’s search. Google comes up empty — authors can now request that their books be removed from the database. But two versions appear at the Wayback Machine, so I type in Trebek and hit the same gold I hit five years back, maybe more, since AI keeps improving search parameters. 26 results pop up, including the passage where one of Alex Trebek’s co-workers tells about the time she stole an X-rated photo from his Toronto powder room in the early 1970:

“I looked on the wall and thought, ‘Oh, what a lovely picture of dancers,’” said Juliette – one name only – who co-hosted a noon-hour radio show with Trebek. “There were about forty different couples dancing in this picture, or so I thought. As I looked closer, I saw they actually were all in different sexual positions. They weren’t dancing at all. I thought, ‘Oh my God, isn’t this awful? Why would Alex have this on the wall?’ So I took it off the wall and out of its frame and took it home. I’ve still got it.”

The popular Taylor & Ng mugs from the 1970s featured a bevy of rabbits doing what rabbits do…

I love this anecdote — which appears on pages 39-40 of the book — because it provides a different view of the straitlaced buttoned-down Jeopardy! host that we’ve watched for decades.

And I only found it because I was Edith Bunkerizing.

The Takeaway: Forget about the shoulds, the safe bets, anything you normally do. When you’re searching for something online, when something pings into your mind, follow that trail, and then follow the trails that ricochet off of it. Eventually, you may find a surprise. At the very least, you’ll broaden your knowledge of the topic you’re digging for.