PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Bob McCully’s friends would often chuckle at the homespun humor he wove into his annual Christmas cards.

But they were stunned by the cards that arrived just last week.

“I was taken aback, put it that way,” Joe Negri recalls. The acclaimed jazz guitarist in Scott Township collaborated with the humorist to compose dozens of quirky songs for yearly musical reviews.

The front of Bob McCully’s card reads: “Hello, please don’t call. I recently moved to a quiet neighborhood.”

The “quiet neighborhood” of which he speaks is Homewood Cemetery. McCully died four months ago at the age of 88.

“My new place doesn’t have a phone,” the inscription continues. “And the gates close after dark.”

“I showed it to my wife,” Negri says, “and she was a little surprised. But you know, after about a minute or two, I realized that’s Bob McCully.”

The author of musical satire and advertising copy wrote zany scripts for KDKA Radio legend Rege Cordic in the mid-50s.

The wordsmith remembered his late colleague in a 1999 interview on KDKA-TV.

“About 85 percent of the morning audience was listening to Rege Cordic. And they always used to do that thing, ‘If you’re listening to Cordic, honk your horn,’” he said. “Well, horns were honked all over the place.”

Now, Bob McCully is “honking his own horn” with a touch of cryptic humor.

“He really got the last laugh,” Joe Negri says, with a laugh of his own. “He really did.”