In a sea of Goosebumps and Harry Potter titles, “Henry Huggins” stood out.
I picked it, the 50th anniversary edition of Beverly Cleary’s classic book for kids, because I’d read it – probably 45 years ago.
I figured my second-grader would like it. “Henry Huggins,” I decided, would hold his interest. He could relate to Henry, a clever character who enjoys all sorts of neighborhood adventures.
So my boy started the book, which opens with: “Henry Huggins was in the third grade.” Soon, the questions began.
On the first page, Henry takes a bus downtown to swim at the YMCA. I hadn’t remembered that. True fans of Cleary, a treasured Northwest author, know that Henry lives on Klickitat Street in Portland, Ore. A third-grader taking the bus, by himself, to downtown Portland? Times change, I guess.
What I hadn’t realized, before the rereading of “Henry Huggins,” was how completely times have changed. On nearly each of the 155 pages in the book, first published in 1950, there was some anachronism puzzling my child.
In chapter one, Henry “went to the corner drugstore to buy a chocolate ice cream cone.” Ice cream at the drugstore? I told my boy how I grew up riding my bike to Spokane’s Manito Pharmacy, which had a soda fountain and penny candy. Henry’s cone, by the way, cost a nickel. The bus was a dime.
Before catching the bus home, Henry meets the stray dog that becomes his pet Ribsy. He finds a pay phone to ask his mom if he can keep the dog. My boy wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a phone booth. And he was totally stumped by this: “He gave the operator his number.”
Operator? That explanation took awhile.
Even the language is a charming relic. When was the last time you heard anybody talk like this? “Say, sonny, you can’t take that dog on the bus.”
There’s also political incorrectness in circumstances that were once the norm. At Glenwood School, clearly a public school, Henry is in a Christmas operetta, called “A Visit to Santa Claus.” He much prefers his role as Second Indian in a play for the Westward Expansion Unit, with his one line of dialogue: “Ugh!”
No author would ever write that today.
There’s more to “Henry Huggins” than one of those “remember when” e-mails. My brother is always forwarding me these things listing items meant to evoke baby-boom nostalgia – stuff like PF Flyers and candy cigarettes.
Read between the lines, you’ll find safety and certainty in Henry’s world. It’s a crisis when Henry throws a friend’s football, a birthday present from a grandma, and it lands in a passing car that doesn’t stop.
In our neighborhoods – even nice places like tree-lined Klickitat Street – crises might now involve gunshots, gang activity or a sex offender, but probably not a “genuine cowhide football.”
Henry doesn’t worry about standardized tests – my second-grader already toils over sample WASL questions. Henry’s parents, a stay-at-home mother and mild-mannered father, are wise and patient. Even flea-ridden Ribsy doesn’t rile them.
Here’s a “Henry Huggins” line that confused my son: “Robert came down with mumps.” I told my son about being sick with painful swollen glands, and how he’s protected by the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.
Everything wasn’t better in the past. Before my father was born, one of his brothers died of a childhood illness.
It wasn’t all better, but it was altogether different.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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