Forward with the Tankerville Club

We flew the flag for a Tankerville Club party 

Over the weekend, I accepted the responsibility of leading the Tankerville Club of Cincinnati, a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars. I’m honored and excited!

One of issues yet to be decided is my title. Paul Herbert, BSI, founded the club 41 years ago and led it as Official Secretary until his death in February, as I have recorded previously on this blog. Nobody can fully replace Paul, so I don’t believe that any else should have the Official Secretary title. We’ll come up with another.

About 30 members of the club, many of them long-standing, met to salute Paul’s memory at a party on Saturday. Joel Senter, of Classic Specialties and the Sherlockian E-Times, rightly called Paul “a legend.”

Member John Bloomstrom proposed a toast that saluted Paul’s well-known penchant for unsolvable quizzes: 

We’re here to toast a Sherlockian whiz,Who loved nothing better than a devilish quiz.You could read the Canon multiple times,But his questions rarely referenced the crimes.You could argue for points, or act like a jerk,The best you could do was get Paul to smirk.Puns, songs, and references to all things oddWhere carefully crafted simply to get your panties in a wad.So raise you glass and taste the fizz,Let’s savor the times we cursed that damn quiz.

I can’t compete with Paul Herbert’s quizzes. I won’t even try. But I will do my best to see that we continue to have a lot of fun with Sherlock Holmes in the Tankerville Club.