Blame The Sixties On Dr. Seuss

Those of you out in Internetland, who actually have met my wife and I, will be familiar with our recently redecorated kitchen. One of the key elements in our post-war 1940's design are the curtains, which feature illustrations from the old Dick and Jane books we knew from elementary school.

Remember Dick and Jane? They were the nice, well-adjusted kids living in an active, kid-friendly neighborhood with dogs and cats and blond little sisters. Dick and Jane rode bicycles and pushed wagons and roller-skated on the sidewalk. Mom and dad seemed never far away; you had the sense they were just out of frame, making sure everyone played by the rules, while they did the dishes or washed the Hudson Hornet.

Then, along came Dr. Seuss.

Suddenly good old Dick and Jane were, well, uncool. Progressives (we called them liberals, or commies, back then) criticised Dick and Jane's neighborhood for being too middle-class, too white, and, in effect, too goodie-two-shoes. The dear Doctor, on the other hand, illustrated his neighborhoods with Salvador Dali-esque houses and trees and odd-shaped characters we'd never seen before. Even the typography was deformed! The Left loved Seuss's creativity, his tongue-twisting alliterations, his rebellion against conformity and uniformity.

"Oh, the places you'll go," Seuss promised. A decade before any of my generation smoked their first joints, we'd already been introduced to a hallucinogenic lifestyle.

Meanwhile, over at Dick and Jane's, things were getting tough. Stories were revised. Kids of Other Colors moved onto the block. Everyone wore more contemporary clothing, and Dad got a newer car, but... things just weren't changing fast enough to suit an America dealing with riots in the big city, freedom marches, assassinations, moon shots, and Vietnam.

Suddenly, Dick and Jane's world looked less real than the Cat in the Hat's. Anybody for green eggs and ham? Far out, dude, pass the plate...by the way, did you say "ham," or "hash"?

Seuss had subverted America. Parents in his books looked stupid, and naturally hadn't a clue what to do with a Horton or a Who. Don't look to your parents; only Cats in Hats had answers. Poor Dick and Jane; their kitten only knew how to play with a ball of yarn.

And soon, by the late-sixties, all parents everywhere looked stupid. Our other role models, the ones on TV, had evolved from well-meaning Ozzie and Harriet Nelson into Archie and Edith Bunker. The White House had gone from two war heros, Eisenhower and Kennedy, to two lying crooks, LBJ and Nixon. Republican or Democrat, it didn't matter -- our world was seriously screwed up.

"Teach your children" CSNY sang. So we did. We passed Dr. Seuss on to our kids, and soon, they'll do the same. Dick and Jane fade farther into the nostalgic past, soon to be as arcane as the moralistic stories told in our grandparent's McGuffy readers.

I suppose the kids who are home schooled by conservative parents, or those living in Mormon Utah, or some other outpost of traditional (read right-wing) America will be indoctrinated differently. It probably doesn't matter; the pendulum swings backward, as well as forward, eventually. I hope.

Maybe there's a boy and girl out there, somewhere, happy to ride their bikes down the sidewalk, their dog chasing playfully alongside them, who will never know what a Grinch is, or how he stole Christmas. I don't know. I just know there's something missing from this world I'd like to have back.