Old Friends

I've rediscovered a couple of old buddies--the Hardy Boys. I read a recent biography of Leslie McFarlane (the original ghost writer of the Hardy Boys series, hired by the Stratmeyer Syndicate to write the first 20 or so titles)--the bio itself was not that great (although well-written) but it got me to thinking again about the series, which I DEVOURED in 4th and 5th grades. A little bit in 6th grade as well. I also loved the Bobbsey Twins and I read a little Nancy Drew but my big thing was the Hardy Boys--I read every one of the original titles published by Grosset and Dunlop, and I still have many of them. Two brothers, a year apart (either 15 & 16 or 17 & 18, depending on which version). Frank was the older and had brown hair and brown eyes, and was more serious; Joe was the younger, with blue eyes and blond hair, and more impulsive. Man, now I want to go home and reread them all! I made my friends play Hardy Boys with me, and I usually insisted on being Joe. AND I wrote fanfiction--the very first I ever wrote, and sadly I do not have it. (I have almost everything I ever wrote, but not The Hardy Twins. See, this is why I'm so hard on fanfiction, I know how bad it really is--FROM EXPERIENCE.) Quite coincidentally I had a huge crush on Shaun Cassidy, and when I found out that Shaun was going to play my hero in a TV version of the books!--you can imagine my reaction. I LOVED that show. I've been catching some of the episodes on YouTube and it actually stands up quite well! Creaky '70s sets and haircuts aside, what matters most is the relationship between the two brothers, and Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson are adorable together. My favorite episode was called "Sole Survivor"--Joe wakes up in a Hong Kong hospital and is told that he's been in a coma for a year and his brother and father (Fenton Hardy, who used to work for the NYPD!) were killed. Shaun acts the shit out of this, no, I am not kidding. (His mother IS an Academy Award winner after all; he's got good acting genes.) Lots of misty-water-colored flashbacks about his brother. They're just so cute together, great chemistry. Of course it turns out not to be true--he's been in the hospital for a week. the first clue should've been your hair, Joe--even with that incredibly long '70s hair, you would've noticed if it had been a foot longer!



As bare-bones as the prose was, the books were not completely devoid of literary merit--I actually learned some interesting things when I read them. For instance The Clue of the Broken Blade taught me the three different kinds of fencing blades--foil, épée and sabre. And The Clue of the Hissing Serpent taught me the Persian phrase "Shāh Māt" meaning "the King is captured" and also how hard jade is. In The Crisscross Shadow I learned about lacrosse and how it was an old Indian game, and in The Witchmaster's Key the London Blitz was referenced, so I looked that up. Very educational! :)