SAN FRANCISCO -- Never, repeat never, say 'knock knock. Who's There?' to Charlie Orr.
He can give you 147,771 different answers.
Orr, 71, is president of the National Knock Knock Joke Club, which he claims has 10,000 members.
Orr defends the knock-knocks as the only original American joke form. They trace their history back to the days of Prohibition, when a tap on the speakeasy door produced a peek through the peephole and the question, 'Who's there?'
Orr, as befits the head of the club, has written down 147,771 replies to the historic question.
Orr says the first knock knock joke was created by two men inside the rest room of a New York bar.
'Knock, knock,' one said.
'Who's there?' said the other.
'Ranger.'
'Ranger who?'
'Ranger clothes before leaving.'
Orr said he got hooked on the jokes at a long-ago square dance when the caller answered 'Rhoda Who?' with 'Rhoda horse all the way here.'
Orr said he doubled over with laughter and his future became clear.
He said this week that he often has to defend the jokes against those who don't find them funny.
'Perhaps they are a low form of humor,' he said, 'but in these times, low humor is better than nothing at all.'
In the meantime, Orr keeps writing down new ones daily -- in abbrevated form.
147,757 -- For rooms -- four rooms the bell tolls.
147,762 -- Avenue -- Avenue heard of me?
147,769 -- Peru -- Peru of the pudding is in the eating.
'When you really get into this,' he said, 'you leave out the knock knock part. Takes too much time.'
