Gabby, it seems, was especially fond of Peter and the Wolf.  More to the point, he was especially fond of Peter and the Wolf record album covers.  He did not claim to have listened to each record that he owns, and he was not obsessive about the condition of the albums themselves.   Simply put, he was fascinated by our unquestioning embrace of a piece of state-sponsored music from the Stalin-era Soviet Union.  And, in some case, he was amused by the narrators; Captain Kangaroo, William F. Buckley, and Sean Connery were his favorites.  He also was drawn to the cover art.  Here are the photos he sent of his collection.

 And that’s not counting the French ones.  For whatever reason, Gabby mixed the Spanish ones (Pedro y el Lobo) in with the English ones.

Except in French it is Pierre et Le Loup.  And here are his photos of his Pierre album covers:

And then the German ones:

Exhausting, no?   I asked my friend about Gabby’s collection.  At first, he just pulled out a sheet of paper from a a file on his desk.

I know what he means.   He remembered what Gabby had told us about the night he and Young Emily knew what was going to happen with them, a night that involved her grandmother’s collection of three wise monkey figures.  He went back to the albums, reading out loud some of the narrators, pointing out the especially good graphics.

And the especially bad graphics.

And then he said, simply enough: