Memories of Bayport and The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook

With Fenya currently packing up her belongings in order to move them out to Toronto, there is quite a bit of sorting going on, mostly of the keep/ditch variety. Some hard choices for sure, but with limited space in their first shared dwelling (550 sq. ft.), she had been doing pretty well at divesting thus far.

Looking at the bookshelves in the basement, I know my own time of reckoning is coming nigh; dusty college textbooks, references untouched since Wikipedia is easier, wonderful paperbacks meant to be read again "someday"... the list goes on. 

Some books will be kept because they are likely to be reread (Lord of the Rings), some because they should be re-read (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), and still others because they are great ones to lend out (like that copy of Inside Delta Force I loaned out to someone and has yet to return).

Some are on the bubble, tipping between practicality and sentimentality. That kids' edition of Tarzan with the Ape/English dictionary in the back? That will be hard to part with. Harder still will be the long-coveted grail of my childhood - The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook.

I was reading before I trundled off to first grade (no kindergarten in rural New Brunswick where I grew up) and was a voracious reader. A cousin of Mum's introduced me to the Hardy Boys when I was in first or second grade, and I was agog. These weren't kids like me or grown ups like my folks, but something in-between...

They went to school but also drove cars, knew judo and boxing, were proficient with scuba equipment and firearms, and regularly thwarted kidnappers, smugglers and thieves. They also regularly rescued their own father, who got into an awful lot of tight scrapes for a world-famous detective. I fell for the series like a safe dropped out a window.

My personal collection was only a handful of second-hand books gathered from garage sales or received as gifts, but I pored over the stacks in the library at Willow Park Elementary (after passing Mrs. Cameron's read-aloud test required to check out books from the upper elementary section) to make sure I hadn't missed any.

I read all the Hardy Boys I could find at the Leduc Public Library as well, looking over the checklist on the back covers to see if there were any titles I had missed. One volume tantalized me terribly with its unfamiliar formatting and the absence of any descriptor you might use to convey a sense of the unknown, such as mystery, secret or clue: The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook.

My mind reeled at the thoughts of what legerdemain might be contained within such a tome, and its very elusiveness only increased its credibility in my eyes over the years.  And on one fateful day, when Dad was purchasing a book at the Coles in Southgate Mall and I dutifully looked over the DI-DO section of the young readers section to fill gaps in my Hardy Boys reading list, there it was.

I hurriedly brought it over to my father, breathlessly explained how long I had been searching for this particular title, and begged him to purchase it for me. This was not something I did a whole lot of (I don't think?), and he and Mum both liked to encourage my reading. This coupled with the real-world information credited on the cover to a retired Bureau man swayed him enough to drop $3.95 and elevate him to truly heroic status in my eyes.

And make no mistake, I devoured that book. It was set as a series of short stories featuring everyone's favourite teenaged detectives, but each one was followed by a non-fiction chapter outlining the techniques, science or equipment used in the preceding tale. Fingerprinting, surveillance, crime scene analysis, plaster casts of foot or tire prints and photography were but a few of the topics covered. What nine-year-old didn't want to learn how to tail a suspect without getting caught, or where the best places were to dust for fingerprints? 

I never got so far as to build my own fingerprint kit (with dusting powder, adhesive tape and index cards) but marveled at the inside lingo of loops and whorls provided no doubt by legit G-man William F. Flynn.

One lesson about observation really stuck with me; after witnessing a motor accident, Frank and Joe Hardy describe one of the autos involved while their hapless friend (and consistent transportation provider thanks to his jalopy) Chet Morton confesses he only made out a blur. 

One of the brothers patiently explains that observational skills can be developed over time, like a muscle, but will not perform if left unexercised. He demonstrates by turning Chet around and saying, "You've been with us all morning; describe the shirt I'm wearing."

Poor Chet guesses incorrectly, and the brothers don't chide him, but encourage him to work on it, because they may be quasi-fetishized establishment squares, but are good chums and stand up fellows nonetheless. I immediately pictured myself failing that selfsame test, and would probably do so today as well, despite the valuable lesson Frank and Joe tried to teach me. But their encouragement of their less-observant comrade stuck with me even more.

Despite my fervent and misguided childhood wishes (pro tip: don't tell your friends you wish one of them would get kidnapped so you could rescue them), I never got the opportunity to truly apply anything I'd learned from the Hardy Boys Detective Handbook. I did get a nice basic understanding of how forensics worked, and its limitations, which made me a bit more critical of other youthful mystery series.

And I read most of them: Alvin and the Secret Code, Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators, Encyclopedia Brown, etc. Kids interacting with adults, interesting settings, and always a puzzle to solve, a mystery to unravel- but only the Hardy Boys backed it up with one book of real-world knowledge, and I am grateful for that. And for Dad, who was not an easy sell on such things, who relented to my pleas almost a half-century ago.

Yeah, I am probably going to hang on to that Handbook.

(Original 1959 edition with even squarer Hardys)