Dispatches from the 50s #1

Captain Ghost, by Thelma Harrington Bell

May 06, 2024

Because the weedy field was on the edge of town where there were only a few houses, no one fussed about it. No one sneezed and complained when the goldenrod bloomed or the sweet white clover was shoulder-high to a boy or girl of ten.

—Captain Ghost, by Thelma Harrington Bell

*Captain Ghost*, under the dust jacket & the dust jacket.

Looking back, I am not sure why I tracked down Captain Ghost?

There’s a minor mystery element, but it’s much more in the vein of Swallows and Amazons or a Jolly Enid Blyton Romp™ than my usual fare. I just Googled around, and it was an early winner of the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award—now the Vermont Golden Dome Book Award, which is basically Vermont’s Kids’ Choice Award for books—and as I have a habit of trawling down through book lists like that for authors & titles I don’t know, I bet that was where I found it.

It follows three children, ages eight to eleven, as they turn a fallen tree into a ship. It starts as an imagining game, but when the solitary old man who lives on the outskirts of town joins in, it turns into a full-on construction project. It’s super process-y, with lots of descriptions of the kids using the tools and conversations about how they build the various parts of the ship, and beyond a little bit of interpersonal stuff, that’s about it?

There’s a very very minor subplot about some long-lost jewels and a Bad Man who wants them, but truly, it has so little bearing on the rest of the book that it’s almost not worth mentioning. (Well, beyond the fact that the other man involved in the jewel storyline doesn’t have a name and is literally only referred to as “the Portuguese” throughout, because 1959.)

Although: It’s not really made explicit in the text, but there’s a much darker WHAT IF story under the jolly pretending and intergenerational friendship—the jewel storyline climaxes with the Bad Man attacking the Captain and leaving him tied up all alone in his house. If Captain Ghost and the kids hadn’t become friends, they wouldn’t have known his habits and rhythms, and they wouldn’t have thought to check on him, and he could have just… died? Like, of dehydration?? Because he was EXTREMELY tied up, and he had no friends and no neighbors who’d have heard him yelling for help?

Anyway, while I can’t see it becoming one of those books that I go back to again and again, there are some great moments—some because they read as unintentionally hilarious in 2024, some just genuinely great.

I’m fascinated by this description of Ginger, because depending on how you read it, you could argue that it depicts gender as a binary OR it depicts gender as a spectrum:

Gary Fisher was eleven; Michael Brown was eight, and small for his age. Ginger Morris was a girl with coppery hair, and was ten years old. She did not think of herself as a girl exactly, because, being an only child and part tomboy, she managed very well to be both boy and girl to her parents. Gary and Mike were glad to have her walk with them. She was always good company and often came up with interesting plans for play.

This is one of the moments that read to me as genuinely, in any year, hilarious:

“It’s the back part of the ship, silly. And what do you know? It was called the poop, or afterdeck.”
Mike giggled.
“There’s nothing funny about that,” Gary said in disgust.
“Then why did you say, ‘What do you know?’”
“Well, well, because—well, it was different from what I expected,” Gary explained lamely.
“Let’s call it the afterdeck,” decided Ginger.
“Oh, no!” cried Mike. “Oh, no! It’s the poop-poop-poop deck!” And he ran off down the path, exploding into “poops” at every third step.

EXPLODING INTO POOPS.

I mean.

The next time I have a patron wax nostalgic about Olde Timey children’s books because they don’t like the scatological humor in modern children’s books, I’ll have to pull this one out. It’s also a fantastic character beat for Gary, who likes to think of himself as MUCH more mature than Mike.

There are occasionally interludes where we get to listen in on the parents discussing the kids—these are largely moments that EXTREMELY go into the Unintentionally Hilarious category:

“Too bad we can’t be wicked parents,” Mr. Morris added with a mischievous grin, “and put the children on bread and water until they tell us what it’s all about. As things are, it would be prying to ask any more questions.”
“I know someone who is going to burst with curiosity,” said Mr. Brown darkly.
“Who is that?” Mr. Morris wanted to know.
“Mike’s mother,” Mr. Brown answered, laughing.

WOMEN, AMIRITE?

Here’s another one:

Mr. Brown laughed with special heartiness. This was just what he had predicted. “You keep out of this,” he said, and shook a playful finger at his wife.
She felt quite foolish and very much like a little girl who has not been minding her own affairs. “I didn’t know that I had such a huge bump of curiosity,” she said laughing. “I’ll be good.”
“I’d hate to have you burst with curiosity,” he said grimly.

That said, there’s something strangely fun about these moments, too—despite wanting to kick Mr. Brown in his paternalistic shins, there’s something that feels warm and lived-in here? (That might be me bringing my own vibes in—90% of our entertainment in this household is in trying to get the Sickest Burn on a daily basis.)

Read the next bit and I *dare* you to tell me that Gary isn’t actually Michael G. Scott.

This is the moment I found myself in the uncomfortable position of wanting to kick a CHILD in the shins, but I am who I am:

“Can I do some of the nailing?”
“Girls never nail straight. Anyway, we’ve got to find a good level spot first, to lay the beams.”
“All right, you find the spot and I’ll get the beams. But I’m going to do some of the real work too,” Ginger insisted.

That said, a little while later:

He stood by, hands in pockets and a frown on his face, while Ginger worked, a tip of pink tongue showing at one corner of her mouth. He was genuinely surprised to find that a mere girl could handle a hammer as well as she could. And the nails she drove seldom seemed to bend either. He had to admit to himself that she was good, but it would not do to tell her so. It might give her big ideas.

TOTALLY MICHAEL G. SCOTT, RIGHT? The name clinches it.

Great Ginger character beat that doubles as an I-See-You-Young-Reader:

He had slipped something into his pocket. Ginger saw him do it, but she did not ask what it was. She never asked questions when anyone wanted to be secretive. She felt secretive herself sometimes.

And lastly, I shall leave you with an obligatory use of the word ‘jolly’:

It took heaving and ho-ing to raise the slim fourteen-foot mast and step it in. She stood firm, and Ginger’s pennant, caught by a breeze, floated out, and the crow’s nest looked so jolly that the three wanted to run shouting around the boat. Boat? This wasn’t a boat. This was a ship, now that it had a mast. A real ship.