The Doody Truth

Henry Allen: All lives feel like they're lived in exile from something, because they are.

That's the way it is, boys and girls.

So, 60 years after I appeared on the "Howdy Doody" show, I'd like to offer a qualified thanks to Howdy, Buffalo Bob, Clarabell, Big Chief Thunderthud, Mr. Bluster, all of them, for wising me up -- and sending me into exile from Doodyville the instant I walked on the set.

I was 7, an excitable boy, but one who cast a cool eye on things, who actually courted disillusion. It seemed the only way to escape childhood and its children "with their shallow violent eyes," as the poet Philip Larkin put it. Of course, I would end up taking refuge in a world of grown-ups with their sly and shopworn eyes, but the "Howdy Doody" show gave me all the warning I needed about that, too.