Pee-Wee Harris in Luck

Another episode in the life of the loveable Pee-Wee Harris, Boy Scout and Boy of Superior Appetite, who always lands on his feet, even when things don't turn out as planned.

By : Percy Keese Fitzhugh (1876 - 1950)

01 - The Art of Choosing 02 - 'They're Off' 03 - Some Doings 04 - Action 05 - Pals 06 - The Woods Trail 07 - The Hero 08 - Pee-Wee Goes To It 09 - A Vision of Splendor 10 - Another Vision of Splendor 11 - Hope Triumphant 12 - Deserted 13 - Hope Advances Against Snailsdale 14 - Forward, March! 15 - Handling the Crowd 16 - The Milky Way Falls Down 17 - The Last Sally 18 - Chaos and Confusion 19 - Going Down 20 - In the Fog 21 - Every Which Way 22 - At the Cross-Road 23 - En-Route 24 - Side-Tracked 25 - Pee-Wee's Luck 26 - The Two Perfectly Lovely Fellows 27 - The Last Laugh 28 - The Outsider 29 - Three of a Kind 30 - As Luck Would Have It 31 - The Third House 32 - Marooned 33 - In the Dead of Night 34 - The Clue 35 - Pee-Wee, Scout 36 - The Last Destination

Pee-wee Harris first appeared in 1915 as a supporting character in Fitzhugh’s series of novels about the Boy Scouts of "Troop 1, Bridgeboro, NJ". Though Pee-wee is small of stature and young of age, he is the quintessential First Class Boy Scout. He is almost always wearing one of his many Scout uniforms, and carries a compass, a pocketknife, a belt axe, and some food to appease his never-ending appetite. His fellow Scouts would say that "Pee-wee is not in the Boy Scouts, the Boy Scouts are in him."

His adventures were so numerous that in 1922 Pee-wee was given a book series of his own. The series revolves around him using Scouting skills such as signaling and stalking to have adventures and solve mysteries. The hero of these stories usually gets himself into predicaments through his enthusiasm for the Scout way and his noble intentions. But Pee-wee is the kind of boy who always lands on his feet. He takes a situation that he manages to screw up with his zeal and, with his Scout knowledge and a huge dose of luck, always seems to come out on top. “Even when he loses, he wins”. The series also featured other Scouts from the "First Bridgeboro Troop" such as Tom Slade, Roy Blakeley, and Westy Martin, who each also had their own series of books, the first two preceding the Pee-wee series and the last following it. The Pee-wee Harris book series ran until 1930.

Like many of the Scouts in Fitzhugh's novels, Pee-wee was based on a real person, in Pee-wee's case – one Al Gar Bloom, whose father ran a newsstand near Fitzhugh's studio in Hackensack, New Jersey. Al, himself a Scout, would regularly pester Mr. Fitzhugh to see the manuscripts before they were sent off to his publisher. When the Pee-wee Harris series began; Al was the natural choice as the Scout who would grace the cover of the first volume. Al lived in Hackensack for many years, eventually becoming a reporter for the Bergen Evening Record. In an interview given in the 1970s, Al had this to say about PKF’s books: “Fitzhugh’s books – moral, humorous – were well suited to my generation just as the Rover Boys, Horatio Alger and Oliver Optic were rigidly keyed to the moral tone and drive for material success of their respective eras.”