In Celebration of Archie's Birthday -- October 23*
We all know from The League of Frightened Men that Archie Goodwin's birth date is October 23rd*.
In this, the year of Rex Stout's 125th birthday on December 1, the Wolfe Pack celebrated Archie's special day with a Birthday Dinner in his honor. The dinner was held in the aptly named Stout Room at Heartland Brewery, located in Manhattan just a few blocks north of the brownstone. The evening featured:
- some of Archie's favorite dishes -- those Fritz will not prepare -- and a vegetarian alternate (see menu below)
- Katie Pasko's announcement of the 2011 Archie Goodwin Lifetime Achievement Award, immediately below
- a truly puzzling quiz (try it yourself!) about Archie's Life & Times prepared by Werowance, Ira Matetsky
- photos of the event (below)
- a heartfelt rendition of "Happy Birthday"
Winners of the 2011 Archie Goodwin Lifetime Achievement Award
Dashiell Hammett
Robert B. Parker
Ellery Queen
(Frederick Dannay and Manfred B. Lee)
*HOW OLD IS ARCHIE??
*If you ask, "How old is Archie," I believe he would use Lucy Valdon's response: "Old enough."
From League of Frightened Men:
Chapter 12:
I had a nice piece of leather of my own, not as big as Paul Chapin's treasure box, but fancier. Sitting at my desk around five o'clock that Wednesday afternoon, killing time waiting for a visitor who had phoned, I took it out of my inside breast pocket and looked at it; I had only had it a couple of weeks. It was brown, ostrich-skin, and was tooled in gold all over the outside. On one side the tooling was fine lines about half an inch apart, with flowers stemming out from them; the flowers were orchids; the workmanship was so good that you could tell Wolfe had given the guy a Cattleya to work from.
The other side was covered with Colt automatics, fifty-two perfect little gold pistols all aiming at the center. Inside was stamped in gold: A. G. from N. W. Wolfe had given it to me on October 23rd, at the dinner-table, and I didn't even know he knew when my birthday was. I carried my police and fire cards in it, and my operators license. I might have traded it for New York City if you had thrown in a couple of good suburbs.
