While browsing through the bookcase on our wall, I came across “The Real Diary of a Real Boy,” published in 1902. It is, in fact, the real diary that the author (Henry Shute) kept when he was an 11-year-old growing up in Exeter, New Hampshire. My dear mother, who also grew up in Exeter, gave me her copy of this book when I was about the same age as the young diarist.
The book conveys the thoughts and feelings of a young boy experiencing small-town rural life in the 1860s. The spelling and grammar are atrocious, although the young boy eventually went from Phillips Exeter Academy to Harvard and then on to a career as a lawyer, judge and writer.
Here’s a flavor: “Father is sick because he et to mutch salt fish and potato and pork. He is awful cross and hit me a bat today because I left the door open. I guess he will be sorry when i am ded.” At one point, young Henry thought rats were getting into the hen house and prevent them from laying eggs, so he got his “bowgun” to go kill the rats. “I looked and she had lad an egg. I left the egg there and hid behind a barrel and got my bowgun ready for the rat. Well, the leghorn hen went on the nest and I supposed she was a going to lay, but she broke rite into that egg and began to gobble it up. i was so mad that I let ding at her with the bowgun and just then she stuck up her head and the arrow took her rite in the back of the head. she hollered one little pip and then went rite out of the nest backwards and flapped round awful. I picked her up and she was dead.”
The book included many references to “fits” (fights) and having to stay in a box in school for being sassy and, in the summer, going swimming and fishing and having spats with friends and making up and on and on. There were lots of punishments going on both at home and at school. “More fellers gets licked mundays than enny day in the weak.”
The book’s uncensored take on life from the viewpoint of a young boy became a classic, reprinted several times.
A few years ago, I found a diary that I had kept at about the same age. Perhaps this book inspired me to write it at the time. While my efforts were not nearly as colorful or entertaining as Henry’s, I was a better speller and grammarian. I focused on what time my dad woke me up or how many points I scored in a basketball game or what words I got right in a spelling bee.
I didn’t include some of the mischief my siblings and I got into as kids. Calling up a drug store and asking if they had Prince Albert in a can. And when they said, “yes” we would say, “You better let hit him out before he suffocates.” Or calling several taxicab companies and requesting a ride and giving the address of the neighbor across the street and peeking through the window. Or lobbing water balloons at a young girl in a prom dress. (Ouch). Or flicking a pebble using a plastic spoon at a car and seeing the windshield shatter. (Ouch again.)
Students at all-male Bowdoin College in the early 1960’s had abundant energy and time for hijinks. Participating in raucous water fights between Appleton Hall and Hyde Hall. Singing racy, to put it mildly, songs at fraternity parties. Throwing moons from cars when returning from Portland late at night. And, by the way, these activities occurred before marijuana and harder drugs hit the college scene.
Even today, when I make an off-color quip or toss out a timeworn joke, Tina will say, “Will you ever get out of junior high school?” I say, “Maybe not, but you’d miss me if I was ded (sic).”
David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns. dtreadw575@aol.com.
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