12 July—Today is the 487^th anniversary of the death of Desiderius Erasmus and the 115^th birthday of Milton Berle. It would be, anyway, had Berle not died in 2002. So here’s my Milton Berle story.

I met Milton Berle in the early seventies, not long after I had moved to Litchfield but actually enjoyed making regular trips down to New York for lunch with my editor, publisher, accountant, or whomever. Whomever included my uncle the lawyer, who let me use his personal cigar humidor in the fabled humidor room of Dunhill’s Fifth Avenue shop.

I had two good-size Dunhill humidors at home, of course, but the storage conditions in the humidor room were far too perfect to pass up. Especially for free. And the shop was right around the corner from my publisher. I still have the humidors, but they haven’t held, nor have I smoked cigars for longer than I like to recall.

So, after lunch with my editor and Margaret Farrar at the Forum of the Twelve Caesars (on Sol’s corporate credit card, of course), I stopped in at Dunhill’s to pick up some cigars. And who should be raiding the humidor next to my uncle’s? “What’s a young shit like you doin’ smokin’ grown-up cigars?” I was only 30 or 31, so it was a fair question for an old fart like Milton Berle to ask; he’d have been in his sixties.

“Luckily I didn’t have to show a driver’s license,” I was slow to riposte. What else could I say? I’m not very good with comebacks.

“Know who I am?”

“Of course I do.” I was building up steam. “You’re Adolph Berle’s brother.” Adolph Berle’s name was pronounced “burly.”

“Who the fuck is Adolph Berle? And that’s not my name, schmuck.” I explained to Milton that Adolph Berle had been a member of FDR’s Brain Trust and was a statesman whom I had met a decade earlier.

“Is he Jewish?” Milton asked.

“Haven’t the foggiest, never came up. Why should it?”

“Just asking. Berle’s not my real name anyhow. What’s yours?” We performed a formal ritual introduction, shook hands, and schmoozed. It turned out that Milton knew my uncle, many of whose clients were entertainers. “What are you smoking?”

It was a Ramon Allones. “Shit, I like you, kid. Thanks for the education. I never had one. Ever smoke a real cigar?” He meant a Havana cigar, of course. “Lemme give you a good stick.” So Milton gave me a pre-Castro Montecristo out of his humidor.

The Montecristo certainly was good. Just like the Havanas I had taken home from England and the contraband ones that were commonly available in Washington.

I was to meet Milton Berle again, about a year later. But that’s for another time . . .