Kids, It's the Doody Truth

I don't remember what happened on the show itself, either. Was Big Chief Thunderthud there to shout "Kowabunga!"? Was Mr. Bluster, the Doodyville mayor, brought on to be old and officious? My memories consist of what I saw off-camera, what I'd never seen while sitting on the floor of the Hamlins' living room.

First, there is little as dispiriting as a marionette hanging motionless from its strings in the posture of somebody shot trying to escape over a fence, especially if it's Howdy Doody, during commercial breaks. But what really appalled me was Howdy's voice.

It turned out that back then, Buffalo Bob (known in 1948 as Uncle Bob, I think) did Howdy's voice, but he didn't even have the professional decency to keep his lips from moving, like Edgar Bergen. He just stood off-camera and talked in a slightly strangled version of his own voice. But we have to save Doodyville, Uncle Bob! Then he'd be back on camera: Don't worry, Howdy!

After the show ended, and feeling suddenly superfluous, we of the Peanut Gallery were hustled back over the cables. We passed Clarabell, who, if he wasn't smoking a cigarette, looked like he was while he swapped wisecracks with a member of the crew. I thought about saying hello to him, he was only feet away, but I thought again. A girl in back of me went for it.

"Hi, Clarabell."

I was watching Clarabell's face the way I used to watch ventriloquists' mouths. I saw he had heard the girl's greeting and decided to ignore it. I felt bad for the girl. I also felt very glad, even proud, that I hadn't set myself up for the dust-off she got. Clarabell, it seemed, was just another grown-up in the grown-up world that seems shopworn and unhappy to little kids, a world of foreclosing possibilities and ugly appetites.

I'd keep watching "Howdy Doody," but it was never the same. I was like an expatriate reading a newspaper from home and knowing it was propaganda.

Years later Mad magazine taught me that disillusionment has another advantage besides conferring adulthood: It's life's own supply of raw material for laughs. Maybe this is why a lot of parents hated it. In the issue I'm thinking of, there was a satire of "Howdy Doody." A cartoon Buffalo Bob asks what time it is, and the Peanut Gallery responds by saying things like "Day time? Nap time? Daylight saving time?" It was everything but Howdy Doody time.

I'd long since learned that. But it was nice to see that somebody else understood, that I'd been right all along, that I had a good shot indeed at becoming a grown-up myself, someday -- maybe even one who didn't dust off little kids who said hello.