Addendum: The Garfunkel story as I remember it

I was City Editor and Bob LaMendola was a reporter for the Hagerstown Morning Herald in 1984. Early one afternoon, Bob got a tip from a friend at the Waynesboro, Pa., newspaper (it might have been Greencastle) that Art Garfunkel had just walked through that town on his way to Hagerstown. Bob and I got in my car, a little yellow Subaru, and drove out Route 60-something-or-other  and sure enough, there was Art Garfunkel walking down the road, alone, wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap and carrying a backpack of some kind.

We pulled over to the side of the road, got out and ran to catch up with him. We asked if we could walk with him and he said we could. We walked about a mile or more, but as I recall, he wouldn’t say what he was doing. He said he’d talk about anything else, so we talked about families and dogs and some mundane stuff. At one point, he commented that Bob and I tended to “speed up” when we walked up hills, unlike people in New York where everything is flat.

After a while, we turned and walked back to the car, and as we passed him driving back into town, Bob invited him to go somewhere for coffee, but he declined.

We went back to the office and told the story to our our editor, Dave Elliott. When Dave asked if we were sure it was Art Garfunkel, Bob said he was sure and everything was fine, but some stupid person (it was me) said, “I just thought he’d be taller. Paul Simon must really be short.”

That sent up red flags like a May Day parade. Elliott said he wasn’t running any story unless we were sure this guy wasn’t an imposter, so poor Bob had to start calling Columbia Records, talent agents, other musicians, anybody he could find who would verify that Art Garfunkel was in town. He found no one.

Finally, he started calling hotels and asking, “Do you have an Art Garfunkel registered there?” Everyone said “no” until he hit the Sheraton, where the desk clerk said, “Well, we do, kind of.” He explained that there was a man who had registered as Felix Krull, but he paid with Art Garfunkel’s American Express card.

Bob had him ring the room and when Garfunkel answered and Bob explained his dilemma, he asked Bob not to write a story about his walk. He told Bob the New York Knicks were on TV, adding, “I’m just a guy watching a basketball game.”

Of course, Bob did write the story, and a few years later, Garfunkel released an album and a VHS documentary film entitled “Walk Across America,” detailing his walk from the east coast to the west coast of the United States. I proudly bought a copy, and even though he didn’t mention Bob or me in his movie, we both know that for a little while back in 1984, we were part of that walk.