FAIRFIELD – Is “Sonny’s Superfan” the new Postcard Jack?

The folks at Sonny’s Pizza on Main Street seem to think so.

During the past year and a half, Sonny’s has received 17 postcards from throughout the Eastern Seaboard and from New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

All of them are signed in the same handwriting: “Your Sonny’s Superfan.” And most of them have visible postmarks — from Boston, Vermont, Cooperstown, N.Y., home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and from Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

“We get postcards from people that we know, but these postcards are from somebody totally anonymous,” said restaurant manager Bob Woodsome. “We don’t have a clue.”

“We thought we knew who it was, but he said it wasn’t him,” said pizzeria employee Deanne Gage. She was referring to a salesman from Augusta who pops into Sonny’s from time to time. “We think the writing looks familiar, but every time we think it’s somebody we know, they say it’s not.”

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So it’s a mystery, they said, just like the mystery behind Postcard Jack, who anonymously sent thousands of postcards from all over the world to the Oasis Restaurant in Madison over 30 years, beginning in 1979-80.

Jack turned out to be John “Jack” Garbarino, who died in December 2009 in New York City at age 67. His identity was revealed a month after his death by his brother Bill.

Now this.

“We really didn’t know what to make of it,” Woodsome said. “We were trying to figure out who was a regular customer who might be on vacation, or a few of them from Florida, where we have some customers that are snowbirds.

“We’re totally clueless as to who’s doing it. It’s fun. Even the mailman, he says, ‘I’ve got another postcard for you.’ “

The messages on the cards to Sonny’s are usually the same, such as the one from Ponce de Leon Light House in Florida: “No Sonny’s in Ponce.”

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Woodsome said that the postmarks are from so many different locations that’s it’s not likely somebody from Fairfield has a stack of them and is sending one off every month.

“We’re not doing it; it’s nothing that anybody from Sonny’s is doing,” Woodsome said. Restaurant owner Cheryl Walker, who opened the place with her late husband, Jay Walker, in 1970, said she likes a little mystery, too.

“I’m just totally shocked; just so amazed that someone is so in love with Sonny’s Pizza that they would do that,” she said by cell phone, visiting a new great-granddaughter in Virginia. “We’ve gotten them for quite a while now; I just can’t find out who it is.”

So what is it about Sonny’s pizza that turns an ordinary consumer into a Superfan?

Maybe it’s the sauce, Woodsome said. Or maybe it’s the supersub.

The most recent postcard arrived March 21 from Burlington, Vt.

“Hi gang,” the writer says. “Thought winter was over; not in Vermont, though. Could use two things — a few days of warm weather to get rid of the snow and a delicious Sonny’s supersub. Happy March Madness, your Sonny’s Superfan.”

 


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