I stole the title of this post from a poem by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, an Italian-American poet from Paterson who has an uncanny knack of telling my life story in her work. In the poem, the speaker describes Nancy Drew as the best friend she didn’t have, the adventurous girl she wanted to be but was too timid.
Like Gillan’s eleven year old speaker, I, too, was a fraidy cat–fearful of getting hurt and getting in trouble, so my adventures had to be vicarious. And like so many of us who end up writers, I found those adventures in books.
For that I will be forever grateful to Carolyn Keene, who allowed me to explore hidden staircases and haunted bungalows without ever leaving my house. And for giving me a smart, plucky heroine who had her own blue convertible (and who found solving mysteries more stimulating than her boyfriend Ned.) Nancy Drew was the kind of girl I could be some day, if I were lucky.
As Gillan so eloquently puts it:
Nancy Drew, I still love you
for taking me away with you,
carrying me away from the tight
confines of my life, to a place
where everything is possible
and bravery is common
and miraculous as stars.
♥ ♥ ♥
Excerpt from Italian Women in Black Dresses, by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
I wonder what ever happened to all my Nancy Drew books! I remember the one from the picture so well!! I think at one time I had the whole series…though you know as a kid I probably just looked at the pictures!
I wonder where mine are, too! I’m pretty sure I had the same series from the 60s–I suspect our mothers either threw/gave them away. (Do you remember the old Two Guys store on 22? That’s where I used to buy them for 79 cents.)
My ten-year-old daughter is reading my old copies now — I saved about 25 of them. Some of the covers still give me an involuntary chill when I see them, even though I don’t always remember the story anymore.
So jealous! As my cousin Christi and I noted above, we don’t know where our old copies are. I do have one from the 1940s that I bought at a book sale years ago, that has a cool cover.
Thanks for stopping by, Liz.
Rosemary, you walk in our shoes with your memories. Nancy was the girl who did what we all wanted to do and never had the guts. I used to think of my older brother as Carson Drew, imagined deep mysteries hidden in the guarded whispers of my mom’s friends when I was banished to my room, and loved to sneak into the back of the grocery to keep watch on his frightening old mother … later she reminded me of Madame LaFarge with her knitting needles.
First, you can buy all Nancy Drew in sets, from the first to the last, in bundles of as many as twenty on e-Bay. Second, you do know that Keene was the pen name of many writers?
Thanks for the poem and the memories. Yes, before Nancy, my best hero was Pippi Longstocking. I had great fun with her since my dad had been a “sea-faring” man in the Italian merchants before jumping ship to marry my mom
Hmmm. . .sounds as though there’s a novel in the story of your parents’ courtship–have you ever considered that?
Nancy Drew was my friend, too!
When I got to college, one of my male professors let on that he was Carolyn Keene for awhile, as well as the guy who wrote the Hardy Boys’ mysteries. Pooh! He and I did not get along and I was rather upset to think that this old nasty guy wrote some of my favorite stories. He was a card carrying member of the female women haters club.
Say it ain’t so! My favorite “Carolyn” was Harriet Adams, whose father published them for many years.