Chapter 1

BANQUET. MAY 2001

“30 Years of Service. Best Wishes Mrs. Thornton. Detroit Public Schools. Building Brighter Futures.”

My retirement banquet from Farwell Middle School was quite the affair! Thirty years teaching social studies at one place generates lots of memories, good ones. Best I can tell, I’ll be the last one to last three decades. I hardly feel retirable, but I’m ahead bailing now and coming back to sub when the fancy strikes.

We all have our nicknames of which the students presume we aren’t aware. I’m “Mrs. Social Stories” for my bent toward tales that convey the subject. They’d always moan, “Oh, here comes another story,” when I’d start and sit at rapt attention till the conclusion. When DPS does Benchmark Indicators to see what students really retain, mine ace the social studies. They remember stories.

I’m sure to them I seem the type who’d never engage in illicit activities. Pretty true, I suppose, except for my “Mrs.” This exception is the story that follows.

DPS sends a bigshot to these banquets to make sure we really leave. The Deputy Superintendent for Information Technology provided my officiality. “Now I’m led to believe that Mrs. Thornton made you learn every President of the last century. We appreciate that you didn’t sue for educational abuse.” Administrative humor, I guess.

Then from the back, “McKinley.” Then somebody joined in, “Teddy Roosevelt.” Then it was the roomful. “Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George HW Bush, Clinton.” Everyone cheered. It was worth all 30 years, right there! Mr. Deputy Superintendent laughed the loudest.

“Say kids, what time is it?” My lead-in generated total silence. So I got more specific. “I’m a really nice guy in a cowboy shirt with fringe on the sleeves.”

A laugh from the back. “It’s Howdy Doody Time,” and I was on my way!

“Let’s start off with our song, boys and girls,” to remind them that I was a very old fuddy-duddy. “Just sing along, especially you, Mr. Deputy Superintendent for Information Technology.”

It’s Howdy Doody Time.

It’s Howdy Doody Time.

Bob Smith and Howdy, too

Say Howdy-Do to you.

Let’s give a rousing cheer

‘Cause Howdy Doody’s here.

It’s time to start the show,

So kids, LET’S GO!

If nobody had sung, I’d have had to ad lib something about preparing for the future, boys and girls. But enough did, even some current students who learned the anthem I know not where.

“So much better than that song where you spell a mouse’s name,” I added for the benefit of my colleagues.

“Hi there, Peanut Gallery,” I started off. “You’re looking at a Howdy Doody girl. Most of what I know. Howdy taught me.” A few laughs. “You average American kids will spend 10,800 hours in the classroom by the time you’re 18, so school’s pretty important. Here’s the scary part, though. You will have seen 20,000 hours of television. Yeow!

“I’m actually a year older than Howdy Doody, where it all started. In Howdy’s time, Buffalo Bob used TV to connect our eyes to our brain.

“Before TV, even, Elmer the puppet would greet Buffalo Bob’s radio audience. ‘Well, Howdy Doody boys and girls, hyuh, hyuh, hyuh.’ They’d yell it back, ‘Howdy Doody.’ The name stuck. Howdy hit the TV invention in 1947. And now you know how old I am.

“I joined the Peanut Gallery (virtually, in today’s terms; I never went to New York) when I was maybe five. The show was at 5:30 so Mom could get dinner on.

“Mayor Phineas T. Bluster pulled dirty tricks against Howdy when Howdy would run for President. Sound familiar? You got your ballot with a loaf of Wonder Bread. It tasted better then and built strong bodies twelve ways. Howdy received over a million votes, but Truman and Eisenhower won anyway. He’d beat the one we’ve got these days, though.” This was, after all, my adieu speech.

I’ll spare you the rest of my oratory, but pursue my thesis -- growing up with Howdy made me what I am. What’s written from here on wasn’t in my banquet speech, you can be sure.

Ready?

INITIATE, NOVEMBER 1956

An aspect of me of which you may not be aware is that I masturbate quite well. (Want to hear what Women’s Lib suggests? “Mistressbate.”

Whoa, you say! How’d she get there? Well they say that sex is like playing bridge -- you need either a good partner or a good hand. So here’s the story of humping with Howdy.

Most girls, of course, do it. I know that I was humping by age ten because that’s when Captain Kangaroo and Mickey Mouse relegated Howdy to Saturday mornings, and it wasn’t Mickey’s magic kingdom I was visiting before dinner.

Perhaps Howdy’s sidekick Clarabell was squirting people with seltzer or horn honking that Mr. Bluster was up to no good. That part I don’t exactly remember. I do remember that I was climbing over the sofa armrest with one leg above and the other around and when I rocked, it felt like a tickle. I was behind my brother Samuel, then about eight.

Howdy was probably commenting something like, “Never take food from anyone else’s plate, especially the cat’s.” He was always giving advice that made sense. I doubt he said, “Tickle your bottom against the sofa arm, not your nose against the birdcage,” but it would have been a Howdy way to say it.

I liked tickling myself that way, so much that I’d do it nearly every show. Howdy would say, “We can all make the world a happier place by doing nice things.” This was doing a nice thing.

I was anticipating nothing more than a tickle when I had my first orgasm. I knew some incorrect things about sex, but didn’t make the connection. Though Howdy of course had nothing to do with it. I associated his freckled face with my success. I’d watch him watch me.

In one episode, Mr. Bluster was stealing the TV signals in the Rockies so the kids in California couldn’t watch. I imagined that I was flying over the mountains while I rubbed.

It didn’t occur to me to prolong things by being gentler.

It didn’t occur to me that my climax might compete for my brother’s attention. I didn’t know he’d turned around while the Peanut Gallery spoke their opinions on Howdy’s “Mommy wants me to go to bed early, but I want to stay up” dilemma, but it was inevitable sooner or later.

“Whatcha’ doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re missing the show,” returning to watching Doodyville.

It did seem right, however, me doing to Howdy’s googly grin.

Howdy went off weekday TV that year. If I was at home Saturday mornings, I might catch the show, but usually I didn’t. It didn’t matter too much because Howdy and I were soon to be sleeping together.

SWEET DREAMS, NOVEMBER 1957

Howdy got me started on the sofa, then helped expand my horizons. This wasn’t the show-time Howdy; this was “Mr. Howdy,” as I called my three-dimensional doll.

Mr. Howdy was confined neither to the living room nor to before-dinner. He could go to bed with me. (Today that sounds erotic, but to an eleven-year-old, it was just where you slept.) Why I started sleeping with him, I don’t know, other than the association.

By subconscious design or accident, it doesn’t matter; Howdy found his way between my legs. He’d be in the dark under my covers and I’d pretend like he was exploring. I’d lie on my stomach, put him between my legs and squeeze his vinyl head. It didn’t achieve even what the sofa afforded, but I liked him there. It wasn’t until I rocked did I recognize the feeling. Up and down felt nice, but side to side worked better to work Mr. Howdy back on center.

I’m pretty sure Mom knew what I was doing because once she came in and pretended not to notice how I was humped up. After that she’d always knock.

The year we started sleeping together is etched in my mind for another Doodyville reason: Princess Summerfall Winterspring died for real in a car wreck on her honeymoon. She (I didn’t know it then) was Judy Tyler, 22, but her Indian Princess age was about my own.

The real Judy Tyler was what the show wasn’t supposed to be about. At 15 she’d been a dancer at the Copacabana. By 17 she’d married her pianist. TV was a way to get to Broadway. When a pretty girl was needed for Howdy Doody, “Over the Rainbow” and “I Got Rhythm” audition got her the feather headband. She’d have known about the casting couch. They didn’t sign her because she had a cute dog Todo.

The Princess puppet was transformed into a shapely maiden who softened some of the relentless commercialization. I wanted those Hostess Cupcakes that they were always pitching. Buffalo Bob didn’t ask; he told you to go out and get some. I wonder if they sold more Cupcakes to grown men after she joined the show.

Unknown to us kids was Judy’s dancing on tables in nightclubs. Off-camera she’d wear tight sweaters and offend Buffalo Bob with her innuendoes. At 19 (how’d she get into those nightclubs, anyway?) she left Howdy to “rejoin her people,” Bob told us.

While Buffalo Bob would narrate old time movies on the show, silent-era comedies or the little Rascals, Judy progressed from B-grade “Bop Girl Goes Calypso” to Elvis Presley’s babe in “Jailhouse Rock.” There’s a promo photo of her leaning back into duck-tailed Elvis with his arm right around her chest, pretty risqué for 1957. The Princess should have stayed with Howdy like I did, as even Elvis later said that those movies were detrimental to his career.

So why am I reminiscing about Princess Summerfall Winterspring? Maybe like her, Howdy too had an offstage presence. Under my sheets he did, anyway.

FINGER DANCING, FEBRUARY 1958

One time poor Buffalo Bob used Howdy’s Shrinking Machine to lose a few pounds, but due to Phineas T. Bluster’s trickery, got shrunk teeny-tiny. It took Howdy and gang a lot of effort to restore him. Why I remember that episode is because it taught me to use my fingers. Or maybe I’d just discovered how to use my fingers, so the plot stuck.

Accustomed as I was to humping Howdy, it came natural to hump my hand, my fist, actually. Then, as every girl discovers, you learn how to tickle your fancy, play the piano, polish the pearl, let your fingers do the walking, however you want to call it.

Doing it pretty much every night, Mr. Doody would watch to make sure I did it right. As Howdy said, “Always do your best at whatever you do.”

SAMUEL, SEPTEMBER 1959

It’s hard to say what led to what, but it’s again associated with Howdy, as he was watching from the TV

I’d walloped my brother with a pillow — not an infrequent sibling communication — and he’d pushed me back, more-or-less a fair fracas. I was the taller, but as a boy, he was the battler. To stay on top he flattened me into the cushion, an eleven-year-old between the legs of a thirteen-year-old, his dominance achieved when my knees pried apart.

On TV, Howdy would hop with his arms forward as the strings maneuvered him. If the puppeteers would have flopped the marionette on top of the sister Heidi Doody and bounced their butts, that’s probably about how we looked.

Of course I knew about boners from what my friends said, though I suppose they’d have said they knew about them from what I’d said, none of us actually knowing much. But when he’s moving more with you than against you, your hips can feel what’s inside his pants.

I was more surprised, to say the least -- and he must have been too -- by what happened next Not that I could have proven he came without checking, perhaps, but I exactly knew that’s what he did.

Maybe our friction did it. Maybe the bouncing. Difficult to say.

My orgasm was fiercer than I’d ever done alone. Samuel just hung on.

Afterwards, we lay there in amazement.

Howdy always said, “And always say ‘please’ before and ‘thank you’ afterward,” but as that didn’t seem quite right, I said, “Cool,” and hoped that Mom hadn’t heard. It was embarrassing, him knowing I came, but as I knew he did too, it came out even. We both knowing actually made it pretty neat.

UNTIL SOME OTHER DAY, SEPTEMBER 1960

Howdy’s final episode was one hour in full color. On our black and white, though, the NBC peacock was just shades of gray. Mom and Dad watched the show with us, even, as we all knew it was the last one.

As the cast packed up to leave Doodyville. Clarabell honked for attention. Teary-eyed, he looked directly at us, “Goodbye, kids.” The cast sang one last time,

It’s time to say goodbye,

Goodbye until some other day.

When we may be with you again.

I was past being a major fan, but I was still really sad. So was Samuel. Maybe it made us closer; I don’t know. Before bedtime, I tried to hump Mr. Howdy, but with the red by now rubbed off much of his hair, he seemed sad himself. Maybe this was the end of that too,