(photo by Peter Rosbjerg)
If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.
~Raymond Inmon
On an otherwise unremarkable day, in a small town library in northeastern Nebraska, three sketchily drawn teenagers standing out against a stark white background caught my eye and were soon to capture my heart. That was nearly three decades ago, in 1982. I was thirteen years old and had just discovered Daniel Pinkwater’s latest novel, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, standing erect just above eye level on the shelf showcasing new arrivals. I will never know which librarian chose to place that particular book face-out on that particular shelf on that particular day, but he/she will forever be counted among my heroes.
It was roughly thirteen years ago that I picked up my paperback copy of the same book to read aloud to my six year old daughter. Pinkwater’s absurd wordplay coupled with a storyline about teenagers sneaking out at night to go to the movies and track down nefarious ne’er-do-wells contained the perfect balance of adventure and silliness to make a young child look forward to before-bed story time.
Recently my now nearly nineteen year old daughter requested that I read the story to her once more, a request seconded by her mother who missed out on the ending of the story all those years ago and is quick to remind me of that fact if ever The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death works its way into conversation. And so, in stolen moments between work, schoolwork, and bedtime, we have been revisiting Walter Galt, Winston Bongo, Bentley Saunders Harrison Matthews (aka, Rat) and the rest of the menagerie of Baconburg. We are a third of the way through the book and are enjoying it as if it were our first time.
For the uninitiated, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death tells the story of two chubby teenage boys who sneak out of their homes several nights a week after their parents have gone to sleep to watch movies at the Snark Theater, hence the term “Snarking Out”. The Snark shows old classic and not-so-classic films, double feature style, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On a solo-Snark Walter Galt, our narrator, meets a skinny, rat-faced girl who appears to have been Snarking Out as well. The trio soon learns that their hometown of Baconburg has much more for after-hours adventurers besides the Snark Theater’s celluloid offerings.
For as long as I can remember, night has been a magical time. Cool summer-night breezes coming in through my bedroom window as I lay in the top bunk; the night music of cicadas and crickets and bullfrogs; the bright whites of stars burning in the night sky–these are the scents, the sounds and the sights of my childhood. As much as I loathed the darkening sky for its omen of a soon-to-come bedtime, I loved it for its mystery. But for all that, I did not sneak out as a child or as a teenager, at least not in the way defined by Daniel Pinkwater’s characters. True, I lived many miles from town and thus having any nocturnal adventures on the streets of Norfolk, Nebraska would have necessitated a fatigue-inducing, hours long bike ride just to begin. That minor detail aside, I cannot even remember making plans to sneak out with friends after our folks nodded off. That is not to say that I never, ever had any adventures at night.
One of my fondest memories was a birthday sleepover for my friend Monty, who lived on the next mile over from our housing area. Calling it a “sleepover” is perhaps deceptive as it was never our intention to get any sleep that night, and in that we succeeded. Were I to ask his parents if they got any sleep that night, I suspect the answer would be in the negative. We listened to music and watched movies. We went outside and played a long game of hide and seek and then walked around a four-mile section of road in a night so black that you truly had a hard time seeing more than a few feet in any direction. Later, when I was an older teenager working late nights at the local Golden Corral, I would sometimes walk those same roads after coming home and showering off the accumulated grease and grime, worn out but still too wired to lay down to rest. I have always been drawn to the night and even now when slumber is something I crave in ways I never did as a child, I find myself living the life of the night owl, reluctant to let sleep draw the curtain over the remains of the day.
But I never truly “snarked out”. In their adventures Pinkwater’s characters discover gustatory delights in late-night dives, listen to speeches in the local park, explore parts of their hometown that they were previously unaware existed and see a really interesting variety of films. Cut away all the kooky antics that firmly cement The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death as a work of fiction and what remains is the kind of real adventures that would have thrilled me as a child, and frankly entices as an adult. Perhaps it is a symptom of mid-life, but the more poignant regrets that arise from looking back over the course of my life often involve little, seemingly unimportant things. Like the fact that I never sneaked out of my house at night.
There are a trio of books that I highly recommend that touch on this theme of the adventures of life going on when sensible people are home in bed asleep. The first is of course the aforementioned The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death. The second is Haruki Murakami’s novel After Dark which takes place over 7 hours of a Tokyo night. In one of the novel’s threads a young man meets a young woman, becomes enchanted with her, and spends much of the night either with her or thinking about her. Like Snarkout Boys, the city is as much a character as are the people who inhabit the city and we are led to believe that the city at night is a far different and perhaps more interesting being after the sun goes down. One of many impressions upon finishing After Dark was that I needed to take walks at night, something I began doing with my dog Charlie, making sure that our course took us down Main Street. While the old part of Blue Springs, Missouri is no Tokyo, Japan, nor even Baconburg, there is something different about walking down lighted streets outside of closed shops as opposed to walking down the more dimly lit neighborhood streets after dark. The silence is tangible. That particular part of town is not the self it shows people during the waking hours. When you are the only one walking the streets at night, even when it is only 9 or 10 p.m., it seems wrong somehow and gives me just the slightest taste of what Walter and Winston must have felt every time they successfully made it out of and then back into their rooms without their parents’ knowledge.
The third of these books is Enchanted Night: A Novella by Steven Millhauser. In Millhauser’s novella we are given a voyeur’s-eye-view into the lives of a handful of restless residents in a small Connecticut town on a hot summer’s night. For some of these characters the wee hours are those in which they live their lives, driven by insomnia or old habit to come alive when others are drifting off to dreamland. For others the summer heat and something in the night air and the moon’s gaze draws them out into the darkness. The lives of these small town folk, and a few usually inanimate objects, intersect in one fascinating night that compels the reader to experience it again and again over multiple re-reads. For the regular sleeper the idea of an occasional bout of insomnia is filled with possibility. It is a romantic notion that would no doubt be cured by the reality of the experience. But when I read this book for the first time in April last year, I longed to be awakened on a moonlit night with energy to spare and a desire to venture forth into the night rather than return to sleep. One of the things I am determined to do this summer, on a hot moonlit night, is to re-read Enchanted Night. In setting down that goal I am aware that as strong of a proponent that I am of people of all ages experiencing adventures within the pages of a book, I am equally convinced of the need for adventures to be experienced in ‘real life’. It is never too late to Snark Out.
Regrets are a fact of life, yet they can be approached in a variety of ways. We may not be able to unsay or undo those things we have done to people that we wish desperately we could erase. But we can do some of those things we wish we had done when we were younger, things we think we missed out on. We may discover that those things are not as magical as our romantic ideals or we may discover that some things spark a sense of awe and wonder regardless of one’s age. I can resume walking several nights a week, a pleasure that I have neglected over the past year. I can open myself up to spontaneous impulses to actually go out and do things after dark, to revel in the same innocent pleasures of food and good company that Walter and Winston and Rat experience. When I am awakened for whatever reason in the middle of the night I can step outside, if only for a moment, to gaze into the night sky, to say ‘hello’ to the moon, to smell that sweet night air and recall my youth.
Unlike Walter and Winston, I will not stuff books and pillows under my covers to make it look like I am in bed asleep. And rest assured if I do wander off into the night, I will leave a note. And take my cell phone along just in case I need to call home.
I hope you’ll enjoy your snarking out. I’m going to look for Mr. Pinkwater’s book. Sounds like something my students might enjoy.
In my youth I worked graveyard shifts in downtown San Francisco. Come 11:15 P.M. I would leave for work, one of the few people on the streets downtown at that hour. Later in life I had a job that required very early arrival 6:00 a.m. I saw the same part of the city in the hours before everyone was up. There was only one place where I could buy a cup of coffee on the way to work at 5:00 a.m.
It gave me an insight to city life not many people get.
“…reluctant to let sleep draw the curtain over the remains of the day.” Now that I can identify with! I hate giving up the day, and would live without any sleep if it were possible.
I must admit to some snarking out as a child (don’t tell my mom). The way we managed it was we had “sleepovers” that were camp-outs in the backyard. Our parents never dreamed that we left the tent once the town was asleep and indulged in all kinds of adventures – climbing the neighbor’s pear tree for a late night treat was always on the agenda. We would also walk the mile to the small community swimming lake and take a midnight skinny dip. Ah, yes….
I’ve never read The Snarkout Boys, but it is definitely on my list now. Thanks!
i had been studying the spines of Pinkwater’s books just the other day with N at the Library. The last name caught my attention. Will have to give them another look.
I will be certainly taking a look at After Dark.
Really enjoyed this post, Carl. Loved your reminiscing, and how it took me on a small trip of my own. Like you, I may have to create some more memories of being out after dark to reminisce about in the future…
~L
Oh, I sneaked out more than once. I didn’t let miles get in my way. A friend and I biked 5-6 miles into town one night. Wandered around (okay we did more than that but I’m not saying what it was), then biked back. Got in trouble when we got home.
That was just one experience of several.
It was getting the full blown ninja suite that perpetuated my misbehavior.
these books sound lovely.
I worked graveyard shift for about 8 months. Went in to work at 10:45 p.m. and got off at 6:30 a.m. I loved it! No traffic, get off in the morning and get the shopping done with no crowds…live in the country so the only noises that would disturb my sleep were my neighbor mowing the yard, the dogs that barked all night were now also asleep. It was wonderful…my mom HATED it!!!
still, always been a nightowl and when left to my own devices I revert quickly ^_^
sgist: My first job in the mental health field was working overnights. I was going to school at the same time and could never get used to it, couldn’t get on a normal sleep schedule. Later I worked the late shift and got off at midnight…really hard to go to bed right when I got home. No matter how tired I might have been at work, the drive home woke me up. I’ve tried to get on a more healthy sleep schedule this year, and I have had some nights when I’ve went to be before 11, but more often than not I revert back to night owl habits as well.
James: So…was that with Rob? You can’t just hang that out there and not give the details. You’re an old fart now, what could possibly happen? 😉
During the summer, in the daytime, a group of us would occasionally bike the 7 miles into town and would hang out at the mall, visit the library, eat out somewhere. It was fun, but boy were we wore out when we got back. Since the majority of the trip involved either riding on the shoulder of a big highway or down a very busy country road, if we had ever attempted it at night our parents would have been sure to permanently cripple us, at the very least. 🙂
L: Thanks! It was fun to write. Snarkout Boys is out of print, but it can still be found in print in a larger Pinkwater collection called 5 novels. Well worth a read. And After Dark is fun. It has some science fictional elements to it as well. Murakami blurs the lines between fantasy and science fiction and “literature”, and After Dark is no exception.
Qugrainne: Ah, you scamps! We did most of our more mischievous stuff during the day: stealing watermelons from the neighbors field and such. Skinny dipping too. Did that a lot as a kid but during the day in the creek or the river. Did skinny dip once in the town swimming pool where I went to high school, but we were all much older and there was no sneaking out involved…just sneaking “in” to the pool.
cbjames: The early morning hours are interesting, you are right. On the rare occasion where I get up earlier than normal and go into work early I am acutely aware of how much more calm and restful everything is.
I do think your students would enjoy Snarkout Boys. You’ll have to let me know if you read it to them.
I thought “snarking out” was what my best friend and I did in high school when we talked about the horrible “popular kids.” 🙂
I have an anthology of 5 novels by Pinkwater: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, Slaves of Spiegel, The Snarkout Boys and the Avacado of Death, The Last Guru and Young Adult Novel. I’ve read the first two and the third, which you review here, is next up, though I’m not exactly sure when I’ll get to it, what with everything else piled up round this place. Still, your review prods.
You say you’re reading this out loud? Oh my. Do you do voices and stuff? I wish my wife liked out-loud reading, but she’s not a fan, any more than she can stand it when I break into song, which is rare any more and was never frequent…
I wonder though, speaking of reading aloud, if you have ever read, or even heard of, a book by Jim Dodge titled FUP. I did read it aloud to someone, long ago, and we enjoyed it immensely. You will see the pun in the title as soon as I tell you that Fup is the name of a pet duck.
As for sneaking out, we were way out in the country and there was no place to sneak to. Or anyone to sneak with, except the family dog. No, my big rule breaking event was simply to turn the light back on and read long into the night.
I worked Graveyard Shift – it was 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM a full 8 hours, not the short shift some worked. I got off at 6:00 AM, got breakfast at a cafe on the way home, slept until 1:00 PM, went to the beach for the rest of the afternoon, had dinner, did whatever until 9:00, showered and got ready for, then went to work. It was okay for the summer, but not a shift I’d want to work year ’round.
RkR: No, I’ve never been one to do voices, which seems odd sometimes because I’m the sort of person who I could seeing doing voices. Just never have. My wife and daughter both enjoy being read aloud to. I rarely read aloud to Tori anymore because she works or is gone so much…the life of an adult teen…but I read several books/short stories aloud to my wife during the year.
I haven’t heard of FUP, but when I popped over to Amazon and read the second review down, by Anne somebody, I wished I had it in my hand right now!
RkR: I wasn’t one to sneak lights to bed often to read either. I did like staying up late to read, but didn’t do the flashlight under the covers thing much, if at all. I do remember when I was older turning my radio down low and sneaking it to bed so that I could listen to music. This happened more in my teen years when I was focused on girls and late night FM radio meant dedications and lots of romantic pop music.
I was a huge fan of Daniel Pinkwater’s books when I was a teenager. There was a great one about pirates, and “Borgel” was fun, but my eternal favorites are the Snarkout Boys. The weirdness is entertaining, but I love how Walter and Winston talk about movies! There’s this one passage where they talk about Laurel and Hardy, and why they’re funny because the things that happen to them happen at exactly the right moment, so even if you know what’s going to happen it’s still perfect…I hope my kids are okay with having Pinkwater for bedtime stories in a few years. I’ll be sad if they don’t like him.
a lot of my co-workers on the graveyard shift were college students. We’d usually get the night’s work done in the first hour or so and then they could work on homework or read or whatever the rest of the night. As long as we were in ‘our’ areas and awake it was pretty much anything goes! I got a LOT of reading done in those 8 months. 😀
sgist: That is exactly the way my job was. We had little to do other than stay awake so it was a good place to study, to read books, and to watch the occasional movie.
Ella: Wonderful to hear from you! 🙂 Yes, we just read that passage recently and I loved the way Pinkwater wrote it. It is exactly the way I feel about certain films, books etc. I think Pinkwater has the kind of rhythm that will appeal to kids today. That statement Walter and Winston make about Laurell and Hardy are very apropos to Pinkwater’s writing.
In one of those serendipitous moments that occur with just enough regularity to make you think that there is an interesting sense of humor out there, the main character in the audio book I am listening to right now, Richard Peck’s YA novel, Here Lies the Librarian, has just been foiled in her own attempt to sneak out at night to work mischief.
I hope you ordered it, Carl (FUP I’m talking about, and that you’ll read it when it comes. I really love it, and now that I’m speaking of it, I realize it’s time to read it again.
I need to see if I can interlibrary loan it, because our local library doesn’t seem to have it.
This sounds wonderful, I’m going to pick it up for my son…and myself..lol I’ve always been a fan of the dark. It gives me a feeling of serenity and peace. In the summer we do a lot of night swimming as well, i absolutely love it.
Kelly: Yes, serenity is a good description of what I feel when I take walks at night or am out driving in the early morning. Without the hustle and bustle all around it is much easier to feel peace.
Oh my, what a wonderful post! You know my very favorite thing about it? The fact that Tori will still ask you to read aloud. That thought just makes my heart want to burst with joy…I so hope that our munchkins will do the same at her age. And *sigh* I can’t believe that I still have not gotten around to reading The Snarkout Boys to the boys. Hey, but like you said, those regrets of things “undone” can still be rectified, right?
Debi: Yes they can! 🙂
I am happy that although my daughter is not much of a fan of reading herself, she does love to be read to. If her future husband (and no, she is not engaged) is a reader then that will be something fun they can do together (and maybe produce grandkids that are readers!!!)
Oh Carl, you made me long for my own care-free days as a kid. Wonderful post!!
Stephanie: Thank you, I long for those myself at times.