The "Jack 'The Scribbler' Brubaker" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking up the word "Scribbler" online to see when it was first used.  Seems that it was first used in print in 1556 when it was used to mean "hurried writer."   I searched for the word since I have read a column every Sunday in my local newspaper titled "The Scribbler" for a long as I can remember.  Neat column written by a fellow named Jack Brubaker who considers himself "The Scribbler" while writing his column which deals with a variety of unusual and different items in my newspaper.  "The Scribbler" first appeared in the Lancaster newspaper on May 24, 1919.  That column was published in The Daily Examiner and Express which merged with The Lancaster New Era which eventually became LNP.  The column was published weekly except during WWII.  It returned in 1947 when a trio of writers became "The Scribbler."  One of those writers was Gerald Lestz who was the step-father of my girlfriend at the time.  Then in 1951,  the column was once again discontinued until 1957 when Mr. Lestz resurrected the column once again and authored the column until he retired in 1979.  It was at that time that Jack took over.   On May 23, 2018 the column celebrated it's 99th birthday.  "The Scribbler is one of the oldest newspaper columns in the world!  "The Beachcomber", published in the London Daily Express, is considered the world's oldest newspaper column followed by "The Scribbler."  Well, this past Sunday, August 28, 2022, I found another interesting story in "The Scribbler."  Seems that a writer, Dr. Alan Peterson from Pequea Township, wrote telling The Scribbler that he was watching an INSP show, part of the "Wild West Chronicles" called "Doc Susie Goes Underground",  that featured Doc Susie calling Bat Masterson "the Scribbler."  She walks into his office and says, "Is the Scribbler in?"  Doc Susie couldn't be talking about  Jack Brubaker...could she?  Could be that Bat Masterson was being called a scribbler...meaning hurried writer.  In the early 1990s Mr. George Rosenfeld wrote a column of poetry called "the Scribbler" for the nearby Elizabethtown College Chronicle.  When he found out about the Lancaster newspaper's "the Scribbler," he changed his column to the "Hillbilly Scribbler."  So...who is the "real" Scribbler?  To me, "The Scribbler" will always be Jack Brubaker.  

Jack Brubaker

I'll always picture this guy with gray, receding hair, wearing wire-rim glasses and sporting a gray mustache with a smile on his face as "The Scribbler."  Who else could it be???  My only regret is that I look so much older than "The Scribbler."!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.