The Secret of the Old Mill (Part One)

I got a copy of this book—which is an Applewood Books reissue, Facsimile Edition, original text—at the used bookstore in the Milwaukee airport for $9.00. It had been a present to “Max” from “Mom & Dad.” “Wishing you a wonderful year in 3rd Grade.” It was originally published in 1927, following The Tower Treasure and The House On The Cliff, the third in the series.

Frank and Joe Hardy are waiting at the train station for their dad, but he doesn’t show up—not an uncommon theme with the Hardy Boys over the years. In the meantime, a man asks them to change his five dollar bill for five ones, and between them they scrounge up four ones and some change. This is 1927 mind you; an inflation calculator tells me this is 70 clams by today’s standards. These guys are flush!—though part of that money is from their mom, to buy pie plates. Next stop is a general store where the proprietor, Mr. Moss, makes numerous, unrelenting jokes about the Hardys being detectives. When they pay for the pie plates, the man tells them that the bill is counterfeit, which they then confirm at the bank. When their father, famous detective Fenton Hardy, finally arrives at the train station later that afternoon, he informs them that he is indeed working on a counterfeiting case. What are the odds? And that is the beginning of a new mystery for the Hardys.

Then there’s this description of Callie Shaw, in school: “Callie, a brown-haired, brown-eyed miss with a quick, vivacious manner, was one of the prettiest girls attending Bayport high school. She was Frank’s favorite of all the girls in the city, and each morning he glanced over at her desk and never failed to receive a bright and fleeting smile that somehow made the dusty classroom seem a trifle less drab and monotonous, and when she was not there it always seemed that the day had gotten away to a bad start.” It is not explained why she is sometimes “not there” but on this day she is “not there” as in paying no attention to Frank, which causes him distress. Come recess, he asks what the problem is, and she apologizes for being distant, saying she’s worried about her cousin, Miss Pollie Shaw, the proprietor of a beauty salon. It is explained that Callie’s parents live in the country, but Callie stays in the city with her cousin in order to attend school. Which is interesting; I wonder if it was common for people to do that? I suppose the quality of the schools was profoundly different, or maybe there was no option at all for going to school where her parents lived in the country.

A woman had come into Pollie Shaw’s salon and had purchased $12 worth of beauty preparations, but only had a fifty to pay with. Pollie had changed the bill, which turned out to be counterfeit. It seems to me that’s a lot of money to pay for hair care products in 1927, which is some 50 years before Aveda, and ten years before Paul Mitchell was even born. But women were serious about their hairstyles; maybe they spent relatively more, at that time, than they do now. Anyway, it’s pretty interesting, this cousin Pollie being an independent businesswoman, and cool that Callie’s living with her. It’s impressive that she was able to change a fifty dollar bill. A lot of people won’t accept bills that large these days, even. Also, I think it’s funny that a beauty salon is the object for such a large counterfeit sting. Some years back I worked at a collection agency, dealing with bad checks, and it seemed that a disproportionately large amount of checks were written to hair salons for beauty products, or by salons to product suppliers.

So at this point of the book, both the Hardy Boys and Callie Shaw’s cousin have been “stung” by the counterfeiters. That is the word they use—a common slang expression, first used in 1812—though I’m certain I didn’t hear the word used in that way until the movie, The Sting, from 1973. The Hardys discuss it with their father, who exclaims, “So they’re dealing in fifties now!” Mrs. Hardy is saddened. “I’m sure I don’t know what the world’s coming to,” she says, “when men will make bad money and know that poor people are going to lose by it.”

...to be continued.

More on Revisions

According to what I've read, the first three Hardy Boy books were published in 1927 and then a new title was put out roughly once a year after that. In 1959 they started revising the first 38 books, and this went on for many years. You can often tell by the copyright date if it's a revised version; they will have the original copyright date along with the date of the revision. Another way to tell is that the original versions had 25 chapters and were usually around 215 pages, while the revised versions were shortened to 20 chapters and around 180 pages. You generally can't tell from the cover, the type of binding, etc., if the book is an original or revised text. Covers, dust jackets, bindings, and illustrations were altered and changed over the years with many, many printings, and they do not reflect, necessarily, the changes in the text.

The variations in the stories and the writing go from very little change, to heavy changes, to entirely different text. In my opinion, it's best to ignore the rewritten versions at all. The original versions do have flaws, occasional bad writing, dated language, and offensive racial stereotypes, but they are in general much better written than the revised versions, and much more interesting. There is more humor in the original versions, and sometimes there is just plain weirdness. If you have read many of the bland, revised Hardy Boy books and you go back and read some of the original versions, you're in for a surprise.

Right now I'm reading "The Mystery of the Chinese Junk" which is interesting because it is number 39 in the series, and was one of the first books to come out after the revision project began. The version I have is copyright 1960. I'm not sure if there were additional revisions on some titles in later years, but if there were, they are a must to avoid. The "Chinese Junk" was one I got for my 10th birthday in 1970 and I was pretty transfixed by it at the time. Though it became somewhat less magical when I discovered that a junk is a kind of boat, and the book wasn't about some kind of Chinese artifact found in a salvage yard.

My Quest and How It Got Started

The crucial thing is that I started reading Hardy Boy books sometime in the 1960s, which isn't long after they started to be updated, revised, and sometimes completely rewritten. They were usually given to me as a gift from my parents, so they bought them new from the bookstore, or department store, so they were always the most currently published version—they never bought me used books from the used bookstore. So as far as I knew, these books were the only versions ever written. Then one day, when I was in grade school, I got a Hardy Boy book from the library—I believe it was "The Shore Road Mystery"—and there was something terribly wrong with it. It was like I was on drugs, reading that book, though at the time I didn't really think of the concept of "on drugs"—it was like I had gone insane—though I wasn't really aware of that concept, either. I was confused. It was so different—it was the same characters, but their personalities were different. The language was different. It was the same, but different. I had no idea what was going on. There was something terribly strange about that book—and strangely attractive. It wasn't until years and years and years later that I discovered that the Hardy Boy books I read were all rewritten versions of the original ones. That older book from the library was one of the original versions. Once I realized that, I knew that I had to go back and reread all of these books in their original text. But they're not easy to find. So that is my quest. Maybe quest is too strong a word. Well, okay, quest.

Who is Callie Shaw?

She is next door right now with her stethoscope to the wall!