"When people die, they don’t come back - ever?"
- Big Bird
Actor
Will Lee played
Harold Hooper, the kindly proprietor of the
general store on
Sesame Street and a fixture on the show.
Mr. Hooper was responsible for the most poignant moment on the show that I remember from my childhood.
Bert and Ernie were shopping for
Christmas presents but were low on cash, as
puppets often are. So
Ernie traded in his beloved
rubber duckie for a display case for Bert’s
paper clip collection while
Bert traded in his precious collection for a
soap dish for Ernie’s duckie.
Isn’t it ironic? On
Christmas Day, Mr. Hooper saves the day. His gifts to the pair were the rubber duckie and paper clip collection! I was too young to know that it was one of thousands of rip-offs of
O. Henry’s
short story "
The Gift of The Magi" – at one point every show on
TV had a Magi rip-off episode – and I loved the touching
sentimentality.
When Will Lee died in
1983 (several years after I was too old and cool to watch Sesame Street), the producers of the show had a dilemma on their hands. Death is a sensitive subject to present to kids, but to their credit they rose to the challenge. Instead of Hooper disappearing from view or being quietly replaced without explanation – the fate of most secondary characters on TV – the show tackled the issue head on. They heavily promoted a special episode to give parents as much warning as possible, and aired it on
Thanksgiving weekend, so the whole family would be home to discuss what had happened. The episode never aired again (I have not seen it) so unprepared kids would not stumble across it in
reruns by accident.
Mr. Hooper’s character became the first indication to me of the
generation gap. As I get older, the gap gets wider and more obvious, but it was a shock to me at the time. Kids who watched Sesame Street post-1983 had no idea who Mr. Hooper was, and I first learned this when I casually mentioned him (I have no idea why) to my
high school girlfriend, who was a grade or two lower. "Who?" she asked. I was stunned. I was also stunned by another bit of news. "Who the hell is
Elmo?" I wanted to know.
Little did I know of the horror that was to come years later:
Tickle Me Elmo.