In Impromptus today, I have occasion to tell an old Erich Honecker joke. (They’re all old, I realize.) A friend of mine — a scholar of Russian — has now sent me another joke heard in East Germany. Here goes:

An East German worker gets a job in Siberia. Aware that his mail will be censored, just like back home, he says to his friends, “Let’s establish a code. If a letter from me is written in ordinary blue ink, the contents are true. If it’s in red ink, it’s all false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. It’s in blue ink. It reads, “Everything is wonderful here. The stores are full, the food is abundant, the apartments are well heated, the girls are pretty and friendly. The only thing unavailable is red ink.”

Elsewhere in Impromptus, I suggest a gift for the Democrat who has everything: the Barack Obama “Movement for Change” Illuminated Train Set (here). I then say, parenthetically, “Are trainiacs ever liberal Democrats? I’m sure some are. I think of it as more of a Republican pastime, however.”

A reader sends me an instructive and enjoyable letter:

. . . Your “trainiacs” should be “rail fans,” “model railroaders,” or “toy train collectors” (alternatively “toy train aficionados”). These are three separate people groups — may their tribes increase! — that seldom overlap or meet, except in general enthusiasm for all things choo-choo. I fall into the last category, but was reared by people in the first two. . . .
As to the politics of grown men playing with toys, I can only say that most are non-political, though they lean culturally or habitually conservative. A small minority of train nuts are liberal. . . . And, of course, they keep their toy trains running on time.
The majority are men fashioned after Jean Shepherd’s “Old Man”: “Some men are Baptists, others Catholics. My father was an Oldsmobile man.” Train men are seldom anything but HO-ers, Lionel-men, Pennsy fans, etc.
Also, you may wish to know that there’s a strange correlation between lovers and builders of pipe organs and lovers and players with toy/model trains. Perhaps it’s the antiquarian nature of the technology, who knows?

Finally, I thought I could sneak in a letter related to an item from an Impromptus last month. I discussed a defecting Cuban outfielder named Yoenis Cespedes. Someone asked a scout with long experience in Latin America whether Cespedes would be able to adjust to the pressures of his new life in America — the big leagues, the competition, the expectations, all that.

He said, “This guy is used to playing baseball with Fidel Castro behind the backstop. That’s comparable to having the devil on horseback watching you. So I don’t think he’s going to be scared of some Americans.”

A reader writes,

Hi, Jay –
You’re not old enough to remember a baseball tale that I think you would appreciate. Somebody asked Warren Spahn — who managed more than 350 wins even though he spent three years in khaki — whether he was nervous before a big game. Spahn said, “I was at Remagen.” (Bronze Star and Purple Heart, by the way.)