Readers who aren’t geezers didn’t watch the Howdy Doody Show Monday through Friday from their TV dinner trays.

I was never a big fan of Uncle Bob, the emcee, or the mindless Peanut Gallery that broke into frenzies of foolish applause, but I always chuckled when Mr. Bluster appeared.

In this episode Mr. Bluster insists on the impossible — a ROUND mailing envelope to contestants in the “Bluster Contest.”

All these years later, I wonder whether another Howdy Doody fan in Queens sat like the rest of my generation in front of his television, eating a Swanson’s TV dinner on a TV dinner tray.

–Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Jan. 10, 2018, the 20th day of the federal government shutdown.