Pee Wee Herman, forever enshrined in popular culture, was until recently forever enshrined in my home.

The quirky and loveable man-child kept me company for decades. Long after his beloved Saturday morning TV show went off the air, Pee Wee Herman lived on in my own TV.

Literally.

Pee Wee Herman had long had a place in my home and in my heart.

For several decades he lived inside the mahogany wood cabinet of a vintage 1952 Emerson television set that sat in my office.

The TV had once graced the living room of my childhood home until portable television sets that could be easily wheeled from room to room displaced this bulky piece of stationary furniture.

Retired to the basement, its guts removed, the Emerson spent most of my childhood serving as a peculiar cold war storage cabinet for canned corn and peas. By the 1980s restored and polished up, the set moved into the city with me traveling from home to home to its final resting place in my current Huntington office.

In lieu of canned goods, I used it to display my toys. In the permanent place of honor since 1987 was my “As Seen on TV” Pee Wee Herman talking doll.

The old screen and vacuum tubes long hollowed out, the cabinet housed a tiny Panasonic black and white  TV set, the glow backlighting Pee Wee who sat perched on the edge of the 1950s Emerson.  Dressed in his trademark gray suit, white buck shoes, and red bow tie, the 17-inch doll was eternally posed gabbing on a white rotary wall phone that once hung in my suburban kitchen.

Pee Wee had his pick of other talking dolls with whom to converse. He could be yacking it up with Chatty Cathy, Baby Chatter Box, or even Steve Urkle.

Talking Pee-Wee Herman doll forsook a more contemporary easily-pushed button or an on/off switch for a good old-fashioned pull string. With one tug of the pull string, a voice box in his chest would be activated, and out would come five Pee-Wee Herman catchphrases.

You never knew whether he would say – “I’m Pee Wee Herman!,” “Helllooooo,” “Made you look!” “Ha-Ha!,” “I know you!”

They Talk, Talk, Talk

Vintage talking dolls 1960s

Pee Wee with his old-fashioned pull string harkened back to older talking dolls.

My childhood was a noisy one. Sat morning TV was filled with commercials that tempted  “Just pull the magic ring- you;; never know what they’ll say.”

Vintage talking dolls 1960s

While Chatty Cathy spoke 18 phrases, Bespeckled Charmin Chatty had mastered 120!  Favorite’s Beanie and Cecil had a pull-string dialogue between them and Talking Casper the Friendly Ghost.  Mrs. Beasley from Family Affair had plenty to talk about. But my favorite may have been Cool Scuba Duba–  described as “ a beautiful beatnik ‘really hep’ who says  11 swinging things on random!

Who Pee Wee was gassin’ on the phone with all these years I’ll never know but he sure had plenty of choices.

If These Dolls Could Talk

And then just like that, my office grew silent.

In the process of losing my home to foreclosure in 2020, many of my beloved toys became casualties to this tragedy. In a state of panic, I chose to sell off long cherished collectibles.

Fear temporarily overrode sentimentality.

Everything felt precarious, as the once day-to-day familiar seemed to vaporize. Losing my spacious home, my financial security and a cogent partner all in one cruel swoop created tremendous pressure. Played against the backdrop of a deadly pandemic and the resulting shutdown contributed to the precarious feelings.

With the unknown looming over me of where I might move to, the pressure to downsize, and the fear of insolvency, I rushed to list life-long toys on eBay.

Beloved toys from my childhood became collateral damage in what felt like a war zone.

Like Sophies Choice, I had to select which dolls would be saved, which would be lost forever. An impossible choice fueled by frenzy.  Dolls and toys that had been boxed up in storage and not seen in years were easier to let go. Those who lined my shelves my day-to-day companions were not necessarily spared.

One by one,  week by week they left.

And then the day came for Pee Wee.

That day’s secret word was sad.

Trying to get a sense of control in a very uncontrollable situation I did end up selling pieces of my heart, that in the clarity of the present may not have been necessary.

Today the Emerson TV set is filled again this time with those that survived the great purge of 2020. I love seeing Topo Gigio hanging with Speedy Gonzalez, the 3 Stooges, and Joe Jitsu Dick Tracy’s Chinese crime fighter.  It is an inclusive place with quirky characters of all races, and gender commingling.

It’s a place Pee Wee Herman would feel right at home with.

Post Script

Paul Ruben has died but Pee Wee Herman will live forever in our hearts. Even without my doll beside me